Amanda Byrne is pursuing a Master of Environmental Studies with a concentration in Environmental Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. She worked at ICF International for four years primarily supporting EPA’s ENERGY STAR program after graduating from Penn State with a Bachelor of Science in Energy, Business and Finance.

On December 15, 2011, many leaders in the energy efficiency industry came together in Philadelphia to talk about initiatives they are taking on, and to collaborate via roundtable discussion on how to effectively build on this momentum. Many types of stakeholders were represented including utilities, non-profits, government agencies, and service providers among others from the private sector. Select case studies were presented by Johnson Controls, Metrus Energy, The Reinvestment Fund, the City of Philadelphia’s Green Works program, and Liberty Property Trust. I was lucky enough to help out at the event and listen in to the discussions that developed. As someone who has worked in the energy efficiency industry for several years, I thought this event was particularly eye-opening. In addition to possible approaches, real solutions to making energy efficiency mainstream were discussed. For example, a municipal representative suggested that one approach to selling energy efficiency to elected officials is to present the opportunity in a way that can be used to sell it to constituents.

Other topics covered throughout the event included energy efficiency goals and incentives, building codes, building labeling, behavior change, and risk mitigation. The points that follow include key highlights of the day’s discussion:

• Setting energy efficiency goal levels appropriately is critical to achieving the goals. Incentives for achieving goals, including tying employee bonuses to goal achievement, can help ensure goals are met.
• Building code adoption and implementation have their barriers at the state and municipal levels, but enforcement seems to be the biggest issue. Solutions to enforcement include utility credits towards their Energy Efficiency Resource Standards goals for training code officials; and implementing codes based on building performance outcomes rather than taking an input approach. (If interested in learning about current building codes, visit U.S. DOE’s Status of State Energy Codes.)
• Most attendees agreed that building energy labeling is important. However, it is becoming more and more mainstream to build efficient buildings. So labeling systems need to keep up. It is also important to encourage the public to think about building energy consumption the way they think about vehicle fuel efficiency. (If interested in learning about current building energy rating and disclosure policies, see comparison matrices and maps here.)
• Building design, energy consumption indicators, and gadgets can only go so far – building tenants need to evolve their behavior within the building to ensure maximum energy reductions are realized. Training facility managers and others on this topic can help battle behavior issues. Some attendees commented that color-based energy price indicators have been extremely effective. Marla Thalheimer, Sustainability Manager at Liberty Property Trust, also shared that by simply installing an energy monitoring system in a building, a 4% energy consumption reduction was realized without implementing any retrofits. In other words, the building achieved large energy savings from energy consumption visibility alone.
• Risk mitigation is a key feature of energy efficiency, and should not be forgotten. Energy efficiency mitigates not only energy cost risks, but also operational risks. When a building runs more efficiently, equipment within the building has a reduced chance of encountering problems.

The event’s discussions concluded by addressing the idea of whether or not we have reached a tipping point in energy efficiency efforts. Some did not think so, but others suggested we might be there at the state and city levels, as more and

Image from Censtarenergy.com

more localities are setting goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce energy consumption. It was also suggested that we are at least heading in the right direction. Innovation is increasing, and trends including urbanization and reduction of commercial space are pushing us towards more energy-efficient lifestyles.

It is clear that there is plenty of progress to be made towards a more energy-efficient and sustainable society; but forums like these prove that we are in fact moving in the right direction whether or not the tipping point has been reached. During this Ceres event, gaps and solutions were brought to light by diverse leaders in the field. This type of exchange is crucial to making change happen. So keep the key points from this event in mind as you walk through your office building, your home, or attend your next class. The more these ideas are discussed and debated, the better!

Ecole des Mines de Paris

The Multi-master’s program is a unique opportunity for graduate students to obtain three master’s degrees in two and a half years (full-time). The students take eight credits here at Penn in the Master of Environmental Studies program and then head to Ecole des Mines de Paris in Fontainbleau, France for five months and then to Beijing to study at Tsinghua University for three months. At both universities, students undertake courses, lectures, site visits, case studies and projects to deepen their knowledge about global environmental management issues. Their education is then capped by a six month internship with a company or NGO anywhere in the world; their internship report serves as their thesis.

Graduated students have had diverse, applied experiences, from working on carbon capture and storage to working for NBC Universal in greening their filming. The students chose internships in South Korea, China, the US, France and Hong Kong. Meili Gault is a student in the program defending her thesis on Chinese corporations’ social responsibility initiatives this month. Student Kevin Wu is working for InnoGreen in Hong Kong, where he is evaluating carbon offset projects for REDD+ funding around Southeast Asia. Zoe Reich, who completed the program in 2011, has been helping NBC Universal reduce filming costs while reducing their environmental footprint. Veronica Lee wrote her capstone paper on “Sustainable Development in Practice: Rural Planning for Eco-Tourism Development in Southern China.” The report provided a qualitative account of the energy, water, and material flows in and around the valley in YiXian County in southern China that would be necessary to accommodate a large influx of international and national tourists.

Tsinghau University

The program allows students a unique way to interact with European and Chinese businesses and academics.  If you are interested in applying, please click here or here for more information and contact Yvette Bordeaux, head of the Master of Environmental Studies Program.

Douglas Miller is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania pursuing a double major in Philosophy, Politics, Economics (PPE) and Environmental Studies. At Penn, he founded Green Acorn Business Certification & Eco-Consulting and serves on the board of several sustainability-related organizations.

Green Scissors is a campaign launched by Friends of the Earth (FOE) that seeks to end environmentally harmful subsidies issued by the US Federal government. Green Scissors “strives to make environmental and fiscal responsibility a priority in Washington” [2]. The campaign exposes perverse subsidies and builds “a strong case that the federal government can protect our natural resources, reduce the growth of government spending, and make a significant dent in the national debt” that now amounts to several trillion dollars [2].This campaign has not only been worthwhile and effective for eliminating so-called perverse subsidies, but has been an important example for opportunities to overcome political differences to address environmental problems.

Subsidies come in various forms. More generally, subsidies are a “form of government support extended to an economic sector…generally with the aim of promoting an activity that the government considers beneficial to the economy overall and to society at large” [5]. The three main types include those that provide preferential treatment for a particular sector, encourage a certain activity or process that otherwise would not be pursued, and ensure the survival and stability of strategically important industries.

Perverse subsidies are those that “exert effects that are demonstrably and significantly adverse” for both the economy and environment and display the two following requisites [5]: First, subsidies are economically perverse when they maintain production processes that would otherwise be non-starters, reduce costs so far that natural resources are wasted or overexploited, harm others while attempting to benefit one economic area to the extent that their net impact is negative, and deter efforts at sustainable exploitation, use of cost-saving technology, and improved management [5]. Second, subsidies are environmentally perverse when they foster activities that result in environmental harm (whether at the site in question or farther afield, and come to fruition immediately or later in time), encourage inefficient and often profligate use of fossil fuels and stimulate the development of nuclear energy, foster grand-scale expansion of car culture rather than public transportation, promote inefficient and wasteful use of water, lead to overexploitation of fisheries and forests, generate air pollution, and stimulate practices that degrade the natural resources underpinning agriculture [5].

Perverse subsidies have at least six features in common. First, they induce higher taxes for everyone since they increase government spending. This furthers government budget deficits. Second, perverse subsidies “divert government funds from better options for fiscal support, notably health and education” [5]. Third, they “undermine market decisions about investment, and they reduce pressure on business to become efficient” [5]. Fourth, perverse subsidies benefit an elite few at the expense of the majority of the population. Fifth, they “often serve to pay the polluter” [5]. Sixth, perverse subsidies drive numerous forms of environmental degradation, which imposes intrinsic harm on the environment and acts “as a further drag on economies” [5].

Perverse subsidies confuse the forces of supply and demand by altering actual prices for goods and therefore create a misinterpreted guide – inaccurate prices – for individual decisions. The absence of appropriate prices for scarce resources “leads to their excessive use” and results in market failure [6]. Moreover, perverse subsidies make an already “bad situation worse” [6].

In the Green Scissors 2011 report, perverse subsidies existing in the domain of energy, agriculture, land and water, and transportation are revealed. The 2011 report has identified “more than $380 billion in wasteful government subsidies that are damaging to the environment and harming taxpayers” [2]. These subsidies “make things worse for people and our common home in the natural environment” [4]. The extensive list of the perverse subsidies identified by Green Scissors can be found at the conclusion of this document.

The most notable facet of this campaign in its strategy: Green Scissors “offers a roadmap for how Congress can bridge the gap between ideologically diverse perspectives to begin moving towards deficit reduction in a productive fashion” [2]. The groups comprising the Green Scissors partnership – Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and The Heartland Institute – exemplify this roadmap. Even though these four groups “have different missions, histories, goals and ideas about the role of government,” there exists common ground where they can work together to promote the public interest [2]. Despite their differences, they all agree that it is necessary “to overcome our nation’s budgetary and environmental woes by tackling spending that is not only wasteful, but environmentally harmful” [2]. Green Scissors thus offers a glimmer of hope – in an era riddled with political polarization and rigidity – for the ability of people with ideologically divergent perspectives to come together and promote shared public interests. Moreover, were these groups to work separately their efforts would certainly be less effective.

Green Scissors has achieved various successes. In total, the campaign helped cut $26 billion in perverse subsidies issued by the Federal government since 1994. During the past year, “lawmakers have taken action on a few of the important issues targeted by the Green Scissors coalition” [2]. While hardly any of the changes go far enough in reducing the size of or outright eliminating perverse subsidies, the successes should “serve as a starting point for Congress as it moves forward on repealing environmentally harmful and wasteful spending” [2]. In 2011, Green Scissors’ efforts in exposing perverse subsidies resulted in various policy successes. First, the Senate voted to eliminate the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit. While the bill has stalled, the vote suggests that this subsidy will expire at the end of the year without an extension. Second, an amendment to the Agriculture Appropriations bill capped “the amount of any one entity at $125,000” [2]. Third, the House supported an amendment to “stop the Department of Agriculture from providing yet another subsidy for the ethanol industry for blender pumps and ethanol storage” [2]. Fourth, the House of Representatives voted to cancel the bribe used by the US to stop Brazil from enforcing a WTO ruling that ruled US cotton subsidies as trade distorting.  Fifth, the House voted overwhelmingly to “reduce and, over time, phase out the large taxpayer subsidies provided to people who purchase homes in flood prone areas” [2]. There are also signs that other perverse subsidies will be reduced or cut in the near future. This was observed in debates over identifying oil and gas subsidies as potential targets for cuts, as well as debates about limiting the eligibility for commodity payments.

Green Scissors also contributed to policy achievements in 2009 and 2010. The 2009 Congress allowed many perverse subsidies given to dirty industries in each of the previously highlighted categories to expire. This included subsidies given for liquid coal, biodiesel, refined coal, coke, timber logging, existing open-loop biomass facilities, and alternative vehicle fuels. Other successes included the elimination of perverse subsidies for the Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste repository, Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, North Shore Road that would have cut through the one of the largest road-less areas in the eastern US, Royalty-in-Kind program which allowed oil and gas companies to “make royalty payments to the federal government in the form of oil and gas rather than cash,” and the Yazoo Backwater Pumping Plant [1]. Royalty rates were also increased by about fifty percent for offshore drilling.

From Window on State Government

Eliminating or sharply reducing perverse subsidies, such as the billions of dollars worth of cuts already achieved by Green Scissors, removes barriers for laying the foundation for a more sustainable economy. Doing away with these subsidies helps shift consumption “sharply away from environmentally harmful products and services and toward those that are easy on the environment” [6]. Moreover, there is a double dividend as perverse subsidies are removed or greatly reduced. First and foremost, the formidable obstacles created by perverse subsidies that hinder sustainable development are removed. Second, “a huge stock of funds available to give a new push to sustainable development” becomes available [5]. Taxpayers also no longer pay a double price, which is the act of paying once for (perverse) subsidies and then paying again for the environmental and economical costs.

Green Scissors should be commended for its ambition and successes. Since its initiation in 1994, the campaign “has helped cut $26 billion in environmentally wasteful from the federal budget” [3]. Green Scissors has thus been successful in making progress towards achieving its clear-cut goal of eliminating perverse subsidies. It has pursued a bold, unconventional strategy to achieve this aim by working with ideologically contrasting organizations in order to find common ground and work together to promote shared public interests. Its objectives also help solve two problems at once: the federal deficit and environmental issues. In so doing, the Green Scissors campaign has not only been effective in helping cut billions of dollars in perverse subsidies from federal spending but has also set a precedent in building a partnership consisting of diverse organizations.

Works Cited

[1] Aurilio, Anna, Michele Boyd, Michelle Chan, Jennifer Cox, Steve Ellis, David Hirsch, Kate McMahon, Jackson Mueller, Karen Orenstein, Erich Pica, Emily Rhodes, Josh Sewell, Severin Skolrud, Michael Surrusco, Justin Yang, and Erich Zimmermann. “Green Scissors 2010: More than $200 Billion in Cuts to Wasteful and Environmentally Harmful Spending.” Friends of the Earth (2010). Print.

[2] Autumn Hanna (Taxpayers for Common Sense), Eli Lehrer (The Heartland Institute), Benjamin Schreiber (Friends of the Earth), and Tyson Slocum (Public Citizen). “Green Scissors: Cutting Wasteful and Environmentally Harmful Spending.” Friends of the Earth (2011). Print.

[3] Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Public Citizen, and The Heartland Institute. Green Scissors | Cutting Wasteful and Environmentally Harmful Spending | Green Scissors. Web. 13 Nov. 2011. <http://greenscissors.com/>.

[4] Lehrer, Eli. “Go Green…By Cutting Government.” Interview by Benjamin Schreiber. Washington Journal for Wednesday, September 21. C-SPAN, 21 Sept. 2011. Web. 13 Nov. 2011. <http://www.c-span.org/Events/Washington-Journal-for-Wednesday-September-21/10737424286/>.

[5] Myers, Norman, and Jennifer Kent. Perverse Subsidies – How Tax Dollars Can Undercut the Environment and the Economy. Washington, DC: Island, 2001. Print.

[6] Speth, James G. The Bridge at the Edge of the World – Capitalism, The Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Print.

Please click the link below to read Caroline’s (IGEL’s Graduate Intern) review of Wharton alum Eric Lowitt’s new book, The Future of Value: How Sustainability Creates Value Through Competitive Differentiation. The book argues why altruism is the death of sustainability and uses cases, interviews and more to show that sustainability is the best business move to take.

Eric Lowitt will be on campus March 21, 2012 to present in the IES/IGEL Seminar Series, noon to 1:30pm.  The event is open to all.

Click here to read the review online at Wharton Magazine’s website>> http://whartonmagazine.com/issues/fall-2011/sustainability-the-future-of-value/

Douglas Miller is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania pursuing a double major in Philosophy, Politics, Economics (PPE) and Environmental Studies. At Penn, he founded Green Acorn Business Certification & Eco-Consulting and serves on the board of several sustainability-related organizations.

Green Acorn Business Certification & Eco-Consulting was founded in August 2009 by Penn undergraduate students Douglas Miller, Lambros Theofanidis, and Ori Kedar. The aim of the program is to encourage local businesses to incorporate sustainability into their business model and provide a resource for promoting more sustainable purchasing habits among Penn students. Partnerships have been established with various groups on campus, including two freshmen Wharton School classes, to strengthen the organization’s efforts.

Green Acorn offers a streamlined certification process for businesses that use sustainable practices. It also offers consulting services to help businesses not only meet but also go above and beyond certification requirements. In addition to the cost savings and market differentiation businesses achieve by adopting the practices found within Green Acorn’s certification checklists, certified businesses are awarded free advertising and other promotions.  Green Acorn also has campaigns to inspire students to support certified businesses. Furthermore, window decals are placed on the storefronts of certified businesses as a seal of approval to help students identify these stores from the street.

As more businesses integrate sustainability into their operations, Philadelphia will benefit from lowered energy and water use, reduced waste, increased reuse and recycling of materials, improved air quality, and increased environmental awareness. Likewise, as more Penn students make purchases from certified business, other businesses will be encouraged to go ‘green’ or else be left behind the curve.

Green Acorn designed its certification process to be simple and accessible to any type of business that wishes to reduce its environmental impact and increase profits. The requirements for certification are therefore either cost-free or low-cost. The reason for pursuing this strategy is that Green Acorn believes a sustainable economy can only develop if the everyday small business owner knows how to, and finds value in minimizing the environmental impact of his or her business. By designing certification checklists that are simple and can be potentially achieved by any business, Green Acorn has engaged in a strategy of taking baby-steps towards sustainable business practices. There is a checklist for each of the three business types – restaurant, office/retail, and food truck – eligible for certification. Each checklist addresses waste management, pollution prevention, resource conservation, and environmental awareness. At present, twelve businesses have been certified.

Green Acorn has pursued empirical research to enhance its efforts and increase insight on the environmental impact of the Penn community. In April 2011, survey data was collected regarding Penn student purchasing habits. This data was gathered from a randomized group of students representing about 2% of the Penn student population. Even though it was found that nearly 90% of students find it essential for businesses to adopt sustainable practices, 85% believe sustainability is not a fad, and a majority believes that sustainability effort are not costly, only one in every five Penn students regularly go to sustainable businesses around campus. Students are thus sending inaccurate signals to local businesses regarding sustainability. Nonetheless, 85% of Penn students find the information Green Acorn provides regarding the environmental impact of businesses important. In response to these findings, Green Acorn will soon be helping students address their unfulfilled intentions to support sustainable businesses by launching its Green Card initiative. Thanks to a Penn Green Fund grant, this initiative will offer students – at no cost to them – both (a limited number of) gift cards as well as long-term discount cards for use at certified businesses.

Green Acorn has over the past several months collected survey data from 53 businesses around Penn’s campus with the aim of gaining insight on the environmental impact of the local business community. The results illustrate the opportunity for Green Acorn to vastly improve the environmental impact of the surrounding business community. Many stores do not recycle, use efficient lighting and other appliances, use compostable disposable materials, offer local/organic food, or offer durable tableware. Many local businesses thus produce more waste and use more energy than would occur if they adopted sustainable business practices. The survey results can be found below:

Green Acorn takes an innovative approach to encourage both local businesses and students to adopt sustainable habits. It has been successful in working with numerous stores on campus become more sustainable and increasing student awareness of the environmental impact of purchasing habits. Continued efforts and research will be pursued to enhance the effectiveness of its initiatives and consulting services. Green Acorn will remain persistent towards its ultimate objective for every business in the Penn community to adopt sustainable practices and be certified

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Aishwarya Nair is a Masters of Environmental Studies student at Penn, with a focus on Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management. With a B.A in Economics & International Relations from the University of British Columbia, she is currently researching solutions for sustainable electrification in rural areas in the developing world and the redesigning of the grid system.

The days of the earth movement being limited to tree hugging and long-haired hippies are over.  Green fever is sweeping across the global corporate landscape, and I didn’t have to look much further to find the proof of this statement than IGEL’s Careers in Sustainability, Energy and Business event.

On October 5^th, executives from SAP, MERCK & Co, Coca-Cola, the Dow Chemical Company, and Sustainable Life Media met with Penn students to discuss the future of careers in sustainability and social impact. For those looking at the possibility of entering a green career, the advice is simple. You can start anywhere but sustainability is about being cross-functional, understanding business, and being able to speak the “different” languages to communicate across the board. Just as important, however, is picking the right company to work for; it must be a company that understands sustainability as well, and has a purpose that they take active steps to achieve.

Also appealing was the knowledge that sustainable ideas could come from anywhere. With more and more businesses seeing the profitability in greening up their supply chain and their products, today’s focus is on building relationships between disciplines (finance and sustainability for example).

by Amanda Byrne, MES Student

by Amanda Byrne, MES Student

Amanda Byrne is pursuing a Master of Environmental Studies with a concentration in Environmental Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. She worked at ICF International for four years primarily supporting EPA’s ENERGY STAR program after graduating from Penn State with a Bachelor of Science in Energy, Business and Finance.

How often do you hear electric utilities talk about their work in the sustainability and environmental impact mitigation spaces? Let me tell you, it is a very enlightening experience. Two utility employees participated on the second panel of IGEL’s October 5^th event – Careers in Sustainability, Energy and Business – and discussed many ways they are driving those types of efforts within their companies. Rye Barcott, commercial associate in the Sustainability Office of Duke Energy, and Melanie Dickersbach, Climate and Environment Strategy Manager at Exelon Corporation, both talked about their work to move their companies to a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly framework. An interesting fact that the panelists mentioned is that much of the utility work force will be retiring in the coming years. The utility industry is worth looking into if you are interested in corporate sustainability career opportunities. Based on questions from interested audience members, Melanie and Rye gave the following tips to those interested in careers in that field:

• It is important to first understand the structure and intricacies of the utility industry in order to address future challenges.
• It is particularly helpful to have sales experience.
• Internships with utilities are a great way to get your foot in the door and start building utility experience.

Gary Survis, CEO of GeoscapeSolar, and Bill Kunze, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Nature Conservancy also participated on the panel and highlighted the following key points with regard to careers in energy and corporate efficiency:

• Consumers are making decisions based on finances over their emotions (particularly in the solar industry), so it is important to understand the financial components in this business space.
• It will benefit students to study cultural shifts in terms of attitudes towards sustainability.
• Experience at consulting firms can help build experience with breadth and depth for these types of careers.

It is evident from the panelists’ comments, and their resumes alone, that cross-functionality in sustainability careers is important. But that doesn’t mean we have to pursue five different career avenues before settling into sustainability. We can learn from these experiences and figure out how best to tailor our curriculum and the types of companies we pursue to our interests.

This event was the first career event that IGEL held this year, and it was extremely useful for me to hear career and curriculum pointers directly from industry (in particular, employees that hold the types of positions I want!). If you weren’t able to make it, check out a recording of the event here. To hear more from some of the panelists individually, check out panelist interviews here, or at: http://www.youtube.com/WhartonIGEL.