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Companies Giving Green an Office

By Claudia H. Deutsch The corporate roster of “chiefs” used to be pretty short: chief executive, chief financial officer and, maybe, chief operating officer. Then came the chief marketing and technology officers. Now, the so-called C-Level Suite is swelling again – this time, with chief sustainability officers. These are not simply environmental watchdogs, there to keep operations safe and regulators at bay. The new environmental chiefs are helping companies profit from the push to go green. “Environmental vice presidents usually spend company money, but this new breed is helping companies make money,” said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. The upshot, said Geoffrey Heal, a business professor at the Columbia Business School, is that “what started out as a compliance job has evolved into one that guards the value of the brand.” The titles vary, mixing and matching “chief” and “vice president,” “sustainability” and “environmental,” making it impossible to track how many people fill the role. But whatever they are called, the new environmental chiefs – many of them named in the last two years – wield extraordinary power. They are exploring partnerships with vendors and customers to create green products – and they have […]

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Cellulosic Ethanol Plant to Open Next Year

Martin LaMonica, for News.com The race is on to try to open the first large-scale cellulosic ethanol plant. Range Fuels on Monday is expected to announce that it has received a permit to build an ethanol production plant in rural Georgia that uses wood chips as its feedstock. It plans to break ground on the plant this summer. By next year, the company intends to have a facility capable of creating 20 million gallons of ethanol per year. The site in Treutlen County, Ga., has received a permit to produce 100 million gallons per year, and Range Fuels expects to eventually reach that production amount, according to company CEO Mitch Mandich. “A lot of people are talking about 2009, or 10 or 11–even Secretary of Energy (Samuel) Bodman will say cellulosic ethanol is five years away,” Mandich said. “We think by the time we enter production, we’ll be the first, so the race is on between us and some competitors.” Several companies are pursuing techniques to make ethanol out of plants other than corn, which is how ethanol is made today in the United States. Cellulosic ethanol processes convert plant wastes, like wood chips and grasses, to ethanol. Range Fuels […]

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Squeezing More Fuel Out of Scraps

Michael Kanellos, for News.com Catilin has come up with a way to let biodiesel manufacturers consume both of their major food groups: animal fat and vegetable oil. The company, which was developed from research at Iowa State University, has devised a catalyst that allows fuel refiners to mix different types of oils together in the same manufacturing process. Currently, it’s not easy for biodiesel manufacturers to process animal and vegetable oils together. The catalyst also eliminates a step in the oil-to-biodiesel process. In all, the catalyst could cut processing prices by 30 cents a gallon, CEO Larry Lenhart said in an interview. “Think of this nanocatalyst as an omnivore,” said Erik Straser, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, which was the lead investor in a $3 million initial round of funding for the company. Mohr Davidow also announced it is participating in funding for ZeaChem, which says it has come up with a process that can extract far more ethanol out of rotting vegetable matter than competitors’ processes. Using ZeaChem’s method, nearly all of the carbon out of a pile of vegetable matter gets turned into fuel. Right now about one-third of the carbon in the corn ethanol process winds […]

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McDonald's to Recycle Oil

URL: http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/42915/story.htm Website: http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/42915/story.htm     

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