Smart Catch is a James Beard Foundation program that focuses on sustainable seafood at the restaurant level, with member eateries ranked based on the species they serve and how they are sourced. Smart Catch's approximately 400 "leaders" must offer menus that are at least 80% sustainable.
Retrofits to install green roofs on shopping centers are difficult, which invites a better path to investing in surrounding land to create enticing green and open space, Dialog Chairman Jim Anderson argues. "Imagine a mall that operates as a complete community, one where seniors take their morning walks and receive care in the same place as youth play and learn, entrepreneurs collaborate and network, vulnerable groups can access support systems and feel welcome, and busy families drop off the kids for extra-curricular activities while running errands in the same place," he writes.
RE100 member companies sourced 20% of their electricity needs from renewable energy power purchase agreements in 2016, up from 1% in 2015 -- a figure that underscores the rapid growth of nonutility PPAs, says consultancy ScottMadden. The report says PPAs are attractive for companies because they offer pricing stability and encourage sustainability through renewables.
To create the sustainable future necessary for large-scale food production, General Mills is reinventing farming with a look back at classic methods like regenerative farming. "We consider this form of returning to some of our old practices a form of innovation," said Carla Vernon, president of General Mills' natural and organic operating unit.
New Jersey is pursuing a goal to add 3.5 gigawatts of installed offshore wind capacity by 2030 -- a goal that would create thousands of jobs, stimulate many downstream industries and deliver low-cost energy to the state, write Debra Coyle McFadden and John Shinn of the New Jersey Work Environment Council. "New Jersey is strategically positioned to be an economic leader in the region's adoption of offshore wind," they write.
NextEra Energy Resources has arranged a 145-megawatt, 15-year power purchase agreement with enterprise solutions firm Iron Mountain for its Pretty Prairie project in Kansas. "The Pretty Prairie wind project will not only help advance Iron Mountain's renewable energy goals, it will help drive the local economy forward," NextEra Vice President of Development John Di Donato says.
EnBW will launch a new office in Jersey City, N.J., by the end of the year that will serve as its headquarters for the state and New York. Senior Vice President Dirk Gusewell, touting EnBW's experience building offshore wind farms without support mechanisms, says the company is trying to gain a foothold in the region.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has introduced a new $27.5 million fund that will help prepare workers for jobs in the state's emerging clean energy industry. "Clean energy jobs are the jobs of the future, and because Governor Cuomo has put the state on a path to lead the nation in clean energy growth, those jobs will be disproportionately created here in New York," New York State Energy Research and Development Authority President and CEO Alicia Barton says.
Google has set a new goal to offset 100% of its carbon emissions from noncarbon-emitting sources in perpetually in real-time -- a model scientists refer to as spatial and temporal specificity. While Google's exact blueprint has yet to be released, experts speculate that it could involve a combination of different clean energy sources in different areas and transmission network changes.
Sony has accelerated its plan for moving to 100% renewables in the US to 2030, a decade earlier than the goal announced last month. Renewables now power a quarter of its American operations.