BP agrees to spend $400 million to reduce pollution at Whiting refinery
By Michael Hawthorne Tribune reporter8:46 p.m. CDT, May 23, 2012
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By Michael Hawthorne Tribune reporter8:46 p.m. CDT, May 23, 2012
OpenTable founder Templeton talks up his new gig: Impact Engine
April 26, 2012OpenTable founder Templeton talks up his new gig: Impact Engine BLOGS06
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By Steve Hendershot
The Impact Engine, a new accelerator program for social-entrepreneurial companies, announced last week it hired OpenTable founder Chuck Templeton as managing director. Mr. Templeton, who runs collaborative consumption website OhSoWe and also sits on the boards of GrubHub Inc. and I-Go Car Sharing will devote half of his time to Impact Engine.
Impact Engine is designed to hatch for-profit businesses that aim to advance social or environmental good as well as to make money. It is the brainchild of two faculty members at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, Jamie Jones and Linda Darragh; the pair hatched the program last fall while Ms. Darragh worked at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, but she announced plans to return to Northwestern last month. They raised $500,000 for Impact Engine from prominent local investors including Mr. Templeton.
The program will begin accepting applications on May 7, select about 10 participating companies in July, then launch its three-month program in September. The program will culminate in an investor day similar to those held by accelerator programs Excelerate Labs and Healthbox.
Mr. Templeton tells Crain's more about the program, why he was drawn to it and how he plans to juggle a busy schedule.
Crain's: Accelerators such as Excelerate Labs thrive on involvement from veteran entrepreneurs who want to have a hand in building the next generation of companies in their industry. What's the appeal for them to take the same kind of role with Impact Engine, given its socially minded focus?
OpenTable founder Templeton talks up his new gig: Impact Engine BLOGS06
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Templeton
C.T.: What you're seeing right now is a lot of entrepreneurs who have recently acquired some wealth and are starting to think well, maybe (the traditional philanthropic route of) starting a family foundation is not right for me. What I need to do is put my skills and resources to work helping other entrepreneurs solve problems using business methodology rather than purely making donations. The challenge is to create enduring companies that use business principles to solve social problems.
Entrepreneurs who have had exits are involved with Impact Engine in two ways: mentorship and capital. Research proves that entrepreneurs with mentors have a higher chance of success than those that don't have mentors. That's one of the key pieces that determines an entrepreneur's success — talent, entrepreneurship and capital. And that's the other way that the exited entrepreneurs can get involved, is they can provide capital. Instead of putting $2 million into a family foundation, now they're investing money directly into these triple-bottom-line companies focused on people, planet and profit, and these investments let them use business skills to create enduring organizations.
Crain's: The three-month accelerator model seems to have worked best with tech companies. Are you expecting mostly tech companies? Is that an expectation or requirement?
C.T.: Not at all, at least in some cases. One of the challenges with accelerators is that if you're trying to locate people here in Chicago and put them in office, well, if you're dealing with a renewable energy company with a cellulose-based system and they're out of Nebraska or Iowa or someplace where there are a lot of natural resources, it can be tough to get those companies to spend 12 weeks in Chicago. It's easier to get tech companies to move, because a lot of times it's just two computers and two people.
But that doesn't have to be the case here. If there's a grass-fed beef farm out of Wyoming that's come up with an innovative way to do something related to the way beef is raised, or that could have an impact on our consumption of grain, that could make sense for Impact Engine.
Crain's: How did you decide to take on this commitment? What does this mean for OhSoWe and your other ventures?
C.T.: This whole emerging world of impact investing that's out there, this is something I'm very passionate about. I was already an investor in the Impact Engine and believed in what (Ms. Jones and Ms. Darragh) were trying to do. They were looking for someone to run it, to be there every day and work with the entrepreneurs. I already spend a lot of time doing that now, meeting with two or three entrepreneurs per week while running OhSoWe, so I thought this was a good opportunity to formalize that through the Impact Engine. So I threw my hat in the ring.
Meanwhile, (OhSoWe cofounder Arun Sivashankaran) and I are going to continue to go forward with OhSoWe, which is very aligned with this social/environmental/for-profit idea. OhSoWe is not breaking any land-speed records for growth right now, but we are seeing nice growth and we're learning a lot about collaborative consumption. We also know that's going to be a long haul, and it's going to take time for people to change their behavior. So what we're working on is how we can maximize our runway and continue to let time be our friend. I'm going to spend 50 percent of my time on Impact Engine, then more than that once the class is in session. Arun will probably spend 10 percent of his time on it, so we can have his technical expertise and business acumen.
But, definitely, I'm busy.
Steve Hendershot writes "Silicon City," Crain's weekly column on Chicago tech news and newsmakers.
Follow Steve on Twitter: @stevehendershot.
Follow Ann on Twitter at @AnnDwyer_Crains.
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BrightFarms, a company that finances, builds and operates rooftop greenhouses for food retailers, recently announced the opening of the nation's largest rooftop farm in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
New York City is about to update its zoning regulations to catch up with the Bloomberg administration’s environmental image and to make it easier for buildings to insulate exterior walls, install solar panels and put gardens on rooftops.
With buildings accounting for 75 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, city planners say, the hope is that owners will take steps to increase their structures’ energy efficiency, produce their own renewable energy, put storm water to good use and, in some cases, even grow food.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the City Council support the proposed new rules, which the Council is expected to approve in a vote scheduled for Monday. The zoning changes would affect building types as varied as office towers, warehouses and apartment buildings.
The new regulations would encourage better insulation by allowing buildings to add up to eight inches of thickness to exterior walls without its being counted in the building’s maximum footprint. Other changes would relax height limits and facade restrictions to make room for equipment like solar panels, wind turbines, awnings, green roofs, recreational decks and skylights.
Solar installations, in particular, have the potential for significant growth: under the new rules, panels would be allowed on flat roofs anywhere below the parapet regardless of building height. On sloping roofs, the panels could be mounted flat.
Rooftops could also accommodate boilers and other equipment that might operate more efficiently there than in the basement, officials said.
But some changes apply only to certain buildings. Wind turbines could rise up to 55 feet above roofs, but only on buildings taller than 100 feet or those near the waterfront, where winds are consistent enough to generate power reliably. And the greater latitude for rooftop greenhouse installations would apply only to nonresidential buildings, including schools, that promote education or year-round food production.
BrightFarms, a private company that develops greenhouses, said this month that it planned a 100,000-square-foot commercial greenhouse on the roof of a city-owned warehouse building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The operation is expected to yield a million pounds of produce a year.
The changes in the zoning rules were based on recommendations by a task force of design and construction professionals enlisted by the city to propose ways to promote energy efficiency and other environmental improvements for buildings.
Adding green features to buildings can cost thousands of dollars, and officials with theCity Planning Department said they were not certain how many property owners would ultimately take advantage of the new rules.
Lowering utility bills is generally the biggest incentive for older buildings to undertake energy upgrades. City planners estimate that New Yorkers spend $15 billion a year powering and heating roughly one million buildings.
“Every building is going to make different decisions,” said Howard Slatkin, the director of sustainability at the City Planning Department. “We’re creating more choices.”
The city offers tax incentives to property owners who install features like solar panels or green roofs. Still, Angela Pinsky, a senior vice president with the Real Estate Board of New York, the industry’s trade group, said questions remained about how quickly upfront costs could be recovered through electricity savings.
She said, however, that other features like green roofs were appealing to many building owners, and that the zoning changes would eliminate a “very large hurdle.”
Some builders suggested that the main advantage of the new rules would be saved time.
Paul Freitag, the director of development for the Jonathan Rose Companies, a developer of major green projects in the city, said the new rules in many cases would eliminate the need to apply for a variance to add special features. He said it once took him 18 months to get city approval to install exterior solar shades on one building.
The new rules would allow sun-control devices and awnings to project two and a half feet over areas that are zoned as open space. Mr. Freitag said the more flexible approach would help property owners consider improvements “based on what they want and not on whether it’s difficult to have it approved.”
“A lot of people will say, ‘We can do this differently’ once they realize their options,” he said.
Russell Unger, the executive director of the Urban Green Council, the New York chapter of the United States Green Building Council, which confers the seal of approval, known as LEED certification, for environmentally sound buildings, said that improvements in energy efficiency were the best long-term investment for property owners looking at the bottom line.
He estimated that a three-story residential building that added four inches of insulation to its exterior walls could save 10.5 percent on its yearly heating bills, reducing a utility bill of $3,575 by about $373.
The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, said the changes would help bring more certainty to the building industry in terms of what would be allowed.
“We’re giving people looking to build or rehab a building a permanent green light to make that building greener,” she said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 26, 2012
A previous version of this article misstated the unit of how high wind turbines could rise above roofs under proposed zoning changes as 55 inches. It also erroneously stated that the new rules would allow sun-control devices and awnings to project two to six feet over areas zoned as open space.
By Julie Wernau Tribune reporter12:10 p.m. CDT, April 16, 2012
Mayor Rahm Emanuel at a news conference in January about recycling. (Antonio Perez/ Chicago Tribune / April 5, 2012) |
Copyright © 2012, Chicago Tribune
Hitchhiking is so yesterday. A San Francisco-based startup called Zimride is using the power of social media to connect drivers with people needing rides -- saving people money, helping the environment and sometimes helping its customers make new friends.
"Zimriding is really fun," says John Zimmer, the company's co-founder and chief operating officer."We've had people who have met a girlfriend or boyfriend, or found a new job."
When I first heard about Zimride, I was dubious. Is there really a business in car pooling, especially when it requires riding with a stranger?
After talking with John, and learning more about the company, I've changed my mind. Zimride could grow into a nice business. It's off to a good start: Built on college campuses, around workplaces and events, Zimride by last summer had formed more than 26,000 carpools, created more than 100 million shared miles and saved drivers more than $50 million in expenses. Last September, Zimride raised $6 million in venture capital from investors Mayfield Fund, Floodgate and K9 Ventures. Facebook's fbFund provided $250,000 in seed funding back in 2008.
John ZimmerWhen we spoke over Skype last week, John told me that the Facebook platform is key to driving Zimride's growth. "If it's going to be mainstream -- if I expect my girlfriend or my sister to do this -- we need to reinvent the rideshare," John said. "We don't want anonymity." As Facebook emerges as the identity system for the Internet, it's a way for people to check out who their ride-sharing partners are, who their friends are, even the kind of music they like, which can be an issue on a road trip.
John, who is 28, got the idea for the company as an undergrad at Cornell's hotel school, where he graduated first in his class. "From the time I got to college, I was thinking about occupancy," he says. "When you look at our highway system, 80% of seats are empty. That's a 20% occupancy rate. That's an opportunity." He put in a couple of years at Lehman Bros., got out just in time and was introduced to Logan Green, who had a similar idea while serving on a public transit board in Santa Barbara, where he'd gone to school. They launched Zimride in 2007 at Cornell and at UC Santa Barbara, riding on the Facebook platform. The company isn't named after John, by the way; it got its name after Logan traveled to Zimbabwe and saw lots of people sharing cars there.
Today, the company has partnerships with more than 100 universities and companies, including Facebook, Intuit, Genentech and PwC. The colleges and companies pay Zimride a service fee to arrange rides, many of which are commutes of less than 50 miles roundtrip. Zimride doesn't charge people who use the service on its public platform, but it will. For now, it's most popular in California; plenty of people were sharing rides from San Francisco to LA, but there were few options for rides from Washington to Philadelphia or Boston to New York.
McDonald’s has launched Farm Forward, a three-part program aimed at supporting British and Irish farmers, as it aims to increase the sustainability of its supply chain.
The initiative includes a training program for young farmers; provision of a “carbon calculator” to existing farmers; and funding for research and innovation in the British and Irish agriculture sectors. The fast food chain is to pump £1 million ($1.5 million) into the program in its first year, The Grocer reports.
The carbon calculator aims to help farmers measure carbon impacts from their working practices, and understand how to change them in order to approve efficiency, reports The Guardian.
McDonald’s is also partnering with Harper Adams University College, the University of Reading and Newcastle University to fund one-year courses in which students spend time at farms and factories that supply the chain, as well as at McDonald’s franchises.
Brian Mullens, senior vice president of supply chain at McDonald’s U.K. arm, hopes the program will be a “call to arms” and spark similar initiatives by other food retailers, The Grocer reports.
Last week McDonald’s announced that it will serve chicken exclusively from U.K. farmers at this year’s London Olympics, following pressure from farming and environmental groups.
McDonald’s expects to serve more than 30,000 metric tons of chicken at the 2012 games and had been planning to source the meat from farms as far away as Brazil, as well as U.K. farms.
Environmental Leader 3/26/12
One of Amazon’s leading data-center experts has called into question the environmental logic behind large solar farms recently installed or proposed by Facebook and Apple.
In a recent blog post, James Hamilton writes that he couldn’t ”make the math work” for the completed solar array at Facebook’s Prinevill, Ore., facility or the proposed system at Apple’s iDataCenter in Maiden, N.C., and questioned whether the solar farms’ environmental impact was “purely optical.”
Facebook’s 100 kW array was installed at a 25 MW facility meaning, according to Hamilton, that it potentially provides just 0.4 percent of the facility’s overall power.
Digging deeper, Hamilton uses a solar panel output estimator, and data on the array’s geographic location, to suggest that the actual electricity generated might be closer to 0.055 percent of facility power – enough to run the lights at the data center but have “no measurable impact” on the facility’s energy consumption, Hamilton writes.
A similar story is evident in North Carolina, Hamilton, says. He conservatively estimates that the Apple data center should have a critical load of around 60 MW. At a moderate Power Usage Efficiency of 1.3, the Maiden facility would be at 78 MW of total power, Hamilton says. The huge 20 MW solar array, when adjusted for location and altitude using the estimator, would have an average output of about 15.8 percent of its capacity – or 3.2 MW.
Using this rationale, Hamilton argues that a solar facility big enough to power the whole data center would need to be 181 million square feet. Each square foot of data center would require 362 square feet of land taken up by solar panels, Hamilton argues. When federal incentives and high set-up costs are taken into account, Hamilton doesn’t think that solar projects are cost effective either.
“As much as I like data centers, I’m not convinced that tax payers should be paying to power them,” he writes.
Environmental Leader 3/26/12
