[tt] NYT: Business of Green: A Special Section (several items)

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Business of Green: A Special Section
http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2007/11/06/business/businessspecial3/index.html
[All included that could be.]

[50]The Carbon Calculus
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Chris Richards for The New York Times
SHAKEUP A coal-burning plant in Washington, where a Senate
subcommittee approved a bill to create a cap-and-trade system for
carbon dioxide emissions. Support is not as strong in the House.

A proposal in Congress to put a price tag on greenhouse-gas
emissions could overturn the economics of energy.

[53]For Suppliers, the Pressure Is on
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
Call it Phase 3 of the greening of corporate America. Companies are
looking at their supply chain as the next frontier for combating
climate change.

[55]Radioactive Nimby: No One Wants Nuclear Waste
By JAMES KANTER
More than a half century after the opening of the first commercial
reactor, there is still no permanent disposal site for highly
radioactive waste.

[57]Foreign Firms Envision Wind Farms Dotting the U.S.
By PETER MALONEY
The United States is the fastest-growing market in the world for
wind power. Despite a patchwork of laws and regulations, many
European energy companies would like to plant their windmills here.

[58]Private Efforts to Preserve the Coast
By FELICITY BARRINGER
The concept of an easement is clear when it comes to land. But who
owns the water, or the fish, or the right to fish?

[60]Aiding the Environment, a Nanostep at a Time
By BARNABY J. FEDER
The ability to manipulate matter on a tiny scale could lead to
environmental breakthroughs. Billions of dollars are being spent,
but the most exciting green nanoproducts are still on the drawing
boards.

[62]Taming the Guzzlers That Power the World Wide Web
By MATTHEW L. WALD
As energy consumption by data centers climbs, energy efficiency
becomes a priority.

[64]Mums the Word: We Found a Greener Gas
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
Whats greener than HFCs for refrigeration? Carbon dioxide. Thus the
public relations problem.

[66]Conservation at the Touch of a Button
By MATT RICHTEL
Companies are giving up control of their electrical systems, and
they are being paid to do it. The goal? To better manage the nations
burdened power grid.

[67]Salt Lake City Is Finding a Payoff in Conservation
By KEITH SCHNEIDER
Sound environmental policy has emerged as a central organizing
principle of the citys economic growth.

[68]DotEarth
A blog about climate change, the environment and sustainability.

Related Blog
[70]Business of Green
From the International Herald Tribune, a global dialogue on the
environment.

References

    50. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/businessspecial3/07carbon.html
    53. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/businessspecial3/07Supply.html
    55. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/businessspecial3/07nuke.html
    57. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/businessspecial3/07blow.html
    58. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/businessspecial3/07water.html
    60. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/businessspecial3/07nano.html
    62. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/businessspecial3/07save.html
    64. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/businessspecial3/07gas.html
    66. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/businessspecial3/07cutoff.html
    67. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/business/businessspecial3/07cities.html
    68. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/
    70. http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/green/

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For Suppliers, the Pressure Is On
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH

HOME DEPOT did not sell organic roses this past Mothers Day. Why?
There were no cheap local ones available. And the amount of carbon
that would have been emitted by shipping cheap ones from Venezuela
seemed to eclipse any environmental benefit of avoiding pesticides
and such.

Were working with local farmers to help them grow organically and
still be price competitive, said Ron Jarvis, Home Depots senior vice
president for environmental innovation. For now, he added, well
stick with conventional roses.

Call it Phase 3 of the greening of corporate America. Companies have
turned to alternative energy, bought hybrid fleets and otherwise
tried to clean up their own acts. Many have helped customers go
green by stocking green products, selling carbon offsets along with
airline tickets or offering electricity from renewable resources for
those willing to pay extra.

Now they are looking at their supply chain as the next frontier for
combating climate change. Carbon footprint is absolutely new
territory, said W. Drew Schramm, a senior vice president at the
furnishings company Herman Miller and a member of the committee on
social responsibility at the Institute for Supply Management, a
trade group. Were not sure how well measure it, were not sure how
well deal with it, but weve told our suppliers, Get ready, because
were going to ask you a lot of questions.

Environmental experts and supply-chain consultants say they are
hearing such comments more and more. Companies are finally looking
at their full carbon footprint and seeking a model for distributing
responsibility for it, said Emma Stewart, the director of
environmental strategy for the nonprofit group Business for Social
Responsibility.

That may be the true goal. But in business, such discussions are
rarely couched in terms of sharing blame. Instead, they emphasize
how much more efficient thus, less costly green operations can be.

Corporate America has approached this with the attitude of green is
gold, said Daniel Mahler, a partner at the consulting firm A. T.
Kearney. Recalcitrant suppliers will eventually lose business, said
John M. Davies, vice president of green technology research at AMR
Research, but first, companies will try to show them how greener
practices can make them more viable in the long term.

The push may soon change the nature of what is on store shelves. In
September, Wal-Mart announced a pilot program with suppliers of
seven common items DVDs, toothpaste, soap, milk, beer, vacuum
cleaners and soda to measure and reduce the amount of energy used in
making and distributing them. In marketing and store displays, Home
Depot gives preferences to its EcoOptions line of environmentally
friendly products, and the company has said it would favor suppliers
that came up with a new category of green product, like a recyclable
power tool.

Nor are retailers the only ones dangling the carrot. When costs and
convenience are comparable, the banking company HSBC Group flies its
employees on the airline with the most fuel-efficient fleet. If that
airline costs more, HSBC tries to negotiate a better price before
buying the cheaper-but-dirtier tickets. We want to influence the
system long-term, said Francis Sullivan, deputy head of group
sustainable development for HSBC.

In 2005, General Motors started a pilot program in China in which it
shared lessons from its experience in manufacturing and energy
efficiency with suppliers, and then asked the suppliers to suggest
goals for reducing costs and carbon emissions. It is expanding the
program to other countries.

We focused on best practices at our own facilities first, because we
werent going to ask these independent companies to do something we
hadnt done, said Elizabeth A. Lowery, vice president for
environment, energy and safety policy at G.M.

Timberland, the shoe company, is reaching even further into its
supply chain. Since making rubber is a carbon-intensive process,
Timberland is working with Vebram, which makes rubber soles, to use
more recycled content. Since pesticides and herbicides can lower
soils ability to absorb carbon, Timberland is also using more
organic cotton in some lines. It has also introduced a footwear line
called Earthkeepers, which uses only material that has met strict
criteria for low carbon impact.

If you are going to design carbon out of a product, you have to
understand every place in the life cycle that carbon comes in, said
Betsy Blaisdell, manager of environmental stewardship at Timberland.

That is not easy to ascertain. Companies are still grappling with
whether to include carbon emitted in transporting materials to their
shops or from mines and fields to their suppliers factories in their
own tally of carbon emissions. And verification of a suppliers
environmental claims can be difficult.

General Electric, for one, does not include supply-chain emissions
when it calculates its carbon footprint. Weve drawn the boundary
around activities over which we have operational control, and our
reduction efforts are focused within that boundary, said Peter
OToole, a G.E. spokesman. Earlier this year, A. T. Kearney and the
Institute for Supply Management asked 40 large companies about their
sustainability policies. Almost 60 percent had a formal policy for
their own managers and designers, but only 36 percent had a policy
for their purchasing people to follow.

But that percentage seems likely to grow, and could create a
headache of its own: what if a suppliers biggest customers differed
in their definitions of green?

Some companies are addressing that now. Ms. Blaisdell of Timberland
said there was cross-brand collaboration among footwear companies to
create a common means of evaluating the suppliers carbon footprint.
Gavin Neath, senior vice president for global corporate
responsibility at Unilever, said that the company was uncertain as
to whether we should be putting direct pressure on our suppliers at
this stage. But, he said, Unilever is talking to competitors about
collaborating nonetheless.

Unilever has 10,000 suppliers across 65 countries, and auditing them
all would be a lengthy, laborious process, he said. And imagine if a
supplier got six different questionnaires from six customers.

That worries electronics companies as well. So 30 of the biggest
ones have signed on to an Electronics Industry Code of Conduct,
laying out what they expect from suppliers in terms of social issues
and environmental performance. Many of the companies still work
one-on-one with some suppliers on carbon-reduction projects, and
few, if any, have handed suppliers ultimatums of go green or else.

But each company uses the same questionnaires and sets similar
goals.

If youre going to make a real difference, you have to let go of your
corporate ego, said Bonnie Nixon Gardiner, the global supply chain
manager for social and environmental responsibility at
Hewlett-Packard, which buys $53 billion worth of products each year.
Many of us are operating in the same regions, with the same
suppliers, even in the same factories, so our voice together is
going to be much more powerful.

As environmental questions have gained prominence in private
industry, the government has also become involved. In 2004, the
Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Commerce
formed the Green Suppliers Network, through which a small company
can learn sophisticated management and manufacturing techniques that
can make it less carbon intensive and more profitable. We dont go in
saying, Go hug a tree, said Kristin Pierre, program manager for the
Green Suppliers Network. We say, We will help you be more efficient
in the way you use time, labor, materials and energy.

That is the line corporations take, too. We dont say, Reduce
greenhouse gases or we wont buy from you, because its better if
people see their own interests aligned with greenhouse-gas
reduction, said Susan Tomasky, executive vice president for shared
services at American Electric Power, which is encouraging many of
its suppliers to let the Green Suppliers Network perform a technical
review.

A small number of suppliers are taking steps to go green before they
feel pressure to do so. They see it as a pre-emptive strike and a
competitive tool rolled into one.

We know the requests will be coming from our customers, and this is
how we can differentiate ourselves, said David Wright, the
innovation manager at the PrimeAsia Leather Company, a tannery in
China that has been steadily increasing its use of solar and wind
energy and energy-efficient reflective paints. And we can always go
back and demand more energy efficiency from our suppliers, too.

In fact, many suppliers include greenness when they bid for
business. Mr. Sullivan of HSBC reports that some office supply
companies have been promoting their carbon neutral paper. He is
skeptical; most such claims are not verifiable.

Yet he welcomes such pitches. If nothing else, they show that the
supplier understands HSBCs focus on climate change.

If we have two bids that are equal in every other way, of course we
prefer the company that seems to share our values, Mr. Sullivan
said. Its a question of brand compatibility.

_______________________________________________________________

Radioactive Nimby: No One Wants Nuclear Waste
By JAMES KANTER
WÜRENLINGEN, Switzerland

SWEEPING his hand across the surface of a warm cask heated by some
of the most radioactive material on earth, Walter Heep says he is
confident that the contents can be kept safely and securely
aboveground for the next few decades.

Asked what might happen beyond that time frame particularly if Swiss
voters continue to reject proposals to bury nuclear waste
permanently at a deep underground site Mr. Heep is blunt about the
problems that a lack of such a site will present for the future of
the nuclear industry in Switzerland.

We are not planning on a Plan B, said Mr. Heep, chief executive of
Zwilag, a company that safeguards waste from the countrys five
reactors in storage buildings here in Würenlingen, near the border
with Germany. We need a final repository in Switzerland.

Because the production of nuclear energy generates virtually no
carbon dioxide, around the world the industry is trying to ride a
wave of enthusiasm for green sources of power as demand for energy
is surging. But a huge obstacle remains: more than a half century
after the opening of the first commercial reactor, there is still no
permanent disposal site anywhere for highly radioactive waste of the
kind overseen by Mr. Heep.

The industry and many governments are seeking to entomb the waste
the long-delayed Yucca Mountain project in Nevada is the most
prominent example but aversion to nuclear facilities remains strong,
making it hard to find suitable sites and damping the industrys
hopes for a nuclear renaissance.

The failure to properly address waste disposal in the first decades
of nuclear energy development has left a legacy of doubt in the
minds of the public and politicians over its overall safety,
Tomihiro Taniguchi, the deputy director general for nuclear safety
and security at the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at a
conference in Bern, Switzerland, in October. If this doubt is not
ameliorated soon, it could well lead to all the ambitious plans to
expand the use of nuclear power on a global scale being
significantly delayed.

Around the world, waste and spent fuel are stored on an interim
basis in pools of water or in casks, many near ground level. That
leads to concerns about the vulnerability of the materials to
disasters like terrorist attacks, and it raises persistent questions
about whether the materials can be effectively monitored for periods
that exceed recorded human history many times over.

Firing neutrons at waste in a process called transmutation can speed
up radioactive decay, reducing the amount of time the waste remains
dangerous. Reprocessing spent fuel reduces its volume and toxicity.
But neither procedure eliminates waste. So international officials
like Mr. Taniguchi say permanent disposal in a combination of clay
and rock, or in salt domes, is the best long-term option for
isolating waste like spent fuel, which contains materials that can
take up to a million years to degrade to the extent that the
toxicity is negligible.

Posiva, a waste disposal company owned by Finnish nuclear operators,
is digging a tunnel at Olkiluoto, an island in the west of Finland,
in anticipation of final approval for storing waste a quarter of a
mile underground. Burial could begin in 2020. That could make the
site the first of its kind, demonstrating to opponents of nuclear
power that long-term disposal is feasible and helping the Finnish
nuclear industry save money on storage in future decades.

But the Finnish case is exceptional. Many residents in the Olkiluoto
area accept nuclear facilities because there are already nuclear
power plants on the island that provide employment and hefty tax
revenue. The local geology also turned out to be favorable.

In other parts of the world, similar efforts face seemingly
implacable opposition. For decades, United States authorities have
sought to put high-level waste inside Yucca Mountain, in Nevada.
President Bush gave the green light in 2002, but Nevadas governor
vetoed the plan. Although Congress overrode that veto and government
officials say they could open a site there by 2017 if all goes
according to schedule, few people consider that timetable realistic.

The prospect of sustained opposition from Nevada has left officials
in the federal government hinting at the need to restrict
transparency in the future.

Winning local support is a noble objective, said Edward F. Sproat,
the director of the federal Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste
Management.

But if you set your program up so that local acceptance is an
absolute necessity to site your repository, Im not going to say you
will fail, but you should be prepared to fail, he said.

In Japan, which generates a third of its electricity at nuclear
plants and where authorities are aiming to raise that proportion,
the central government is offering up to $17 million each year in
subsidies to municipalities that volunteer to be considered as
disposal sites.

In January, Toyo, a rural town in southern Japan, was the first to
apply for the subsidies. But some town assembly members and
residents, as well as neighboring local governments, protested. The
Toyo mayor, Yasuoki Tashima, who backed the project, called an early
election to seek endorsement for his plan, but he lost
overwhelmingly. His successor promptly withdrew the application,
saying that the town had narrowly avoided a reckless act.

Kenji Ogiwara, a vice minister of economy, trade and industry, said
no other municipalities had applied since the election in Toyo. Mr.
Ogiwara, who spoke in Bern, also seemed to say that the Japanese
government should get tougher by nominating sites rather than
waiting for volunteers.

In France last year, to increase public acceptance after widespread
protests in the 1980s against burial, legislators made such plans
contingent on the ability of future generations to exhume waste. The
law in France which relies on nuclear plants for more than 80
percent of its electricity and has one of the largest accumulations
of waste in Europe was written to allow for other means of disposal
if new technology comes along.

Some experts warn that those requirements make sites more costly to
maintain and could undermine the viability of underground storage.

The idea is that at some point youll seal the shaft and walk away
because you cant guarantee monitoring for hundreds, let alone
thousands, of years, said Simon Webster, the head of a unit
responsible for nuclear fission at the European Commission. Leaving
a channel of escape into the biosphere could be self-defeating.

At Zwilag, the interim storage site overseen by Mr. Heep and owned
by four Swiss nuclear operators, the temperature of high-level waste
inside the casks is about 575 degrees Fahrenheit. But because they
are insulated, the casks deliver a steady warmth similar to a
household radiator.

Openings in the walls of the storage building naturally move fresh
air around the casks and through the roof, even during warm weather,
removing the heat without spreading radioactivity, Mr. Heep said.

There is plenty of room for casks at Zwilag, which is not expected
to fill up until much later this century. But the industry may need
all the space it can get if opponents continue to find ways to stop
burials.

Voters in Nidwalden, a Swiss canton, rebuffed the government in 1995
and 2002 on plans to bury waste there.

After those setbacks, Switzerland passed legislation that took
effect in 2005, depriving cantons of the right to veto plans to bury
waste, but allowing for a national vote on the final selection of a
site.

We think thats not fair, said Jean-Jacques Fasnacht, a doctor who
lives in Zürcher Weinland, one of many areas that Swiss authorities
are studying as a future waste site. We worry that people living in
Geneva wont be concerned about what happens in the north of
Switzerland.

Dr. Fasnacht, a co-president of a Swiss antinuclear group, KLAR
Schweiz, is joining forces with similar groups in France, Germany
and Austria to raise money for studies with the intent of persuading
Swiss voters that underground burial will still leave waste
vulnerable to attacks by terrorists and to radiation leaks from
geological changes.

_______________________________________________________________

Foreign Firms Envision Wind Farms Dotting the U.S.
By PETER MALONEY

THE European Union has taken the lead on many climate change issues
from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol to passing laws to require and
encourage the development of renewable sources of energy. Why, then,
are so many European energy companies looking to the United States
for investment opportunities?

For António Mexia, the chief executive of Energías de Portugal, the
answer is short and simple. The United States is the fastest-growing
market in the world for wind power, he said. If we want to be a
leader, we have to be here.

In July, Energías paid nearly $3 billion to buy Horizon Wind Energy
from the Goldman Sachs Group. The purchase, Mr. Mexias first foray
into the United States, doubled the amount of wind power in
Energíass portfolio, giving the once sleepy utility the
fourth-largest wind-farm capacity, behind Iberdrola of Spain, FPL
Energy (an affiliate of Florida Power and Light) and another Spanish
company, Acciona Energía.

All the biggest players in wind power are focused on the United
States. Earlier this year, Acciona acquired the wind farm
development rights of EcoEnergy of Elgin, Ill., and Iberdrola bought
CPV Wind Ventures of Silver Spring, Md. Iberdrola also added the
wind development company PPM Energy of Portland, Ore., through its
acquisition of a British company, ScottishPower, in April, and in
2006 it bought Community Energy of Radnor, Pa. BP, based in Britain,
also added to its green portfolio in 2006, by buying two United
States wind developers, Greenlight Energy and Orion Energy. Last
month, the German company E.On bought the North American wind farms
of Airtricity, of Dublin, Ireland, for $1.4 billion.

In short, those looking to be big come here. In America you can put
up a 200- or 300-megawatt wind park, Mr. Mexia said. You cant do
that in Europe, because there is not as much open space.

There is also greater potential for growth in the United States,
where wind farms account for about only 1 percent of installed
generating capacity. In some European countries, that figure is as
high as 10 percent.

But the biggest incentive is not the scope and speed of the wind
blowing across the Prairie States, but a number of laws put in place
in Washington and about half the states to encourage the development
of renewable energy.

At the federal level, energy legislation calls for subsidies for
wind power producers in the form of a tax credit. Meanwhile, 25
states now have laws that require utilities to obtain a certain
quota of the power they sell from renewable resources. That
combination puts the United States at the top of Ernst & Youngs
ranking of countries based on their renewable energy markets.

For many United States companies, however, that patchwork of laws
and regulations amounts to a headache. Things are much simpler in
Europe.

Spain, for instance, sets electric rates once a year, and many
European Union countries have simple feed-in tariffs, under which
producers are paid at fixed rates for electricity generated from
renewable resources. But in the United States, regulation is a daily
event, said Edward Tirello, a senior strategist at Berenson &
Company, a consulting firm.

Until recently, Mr. Tirello said, many European energy companies
were state owned, and they still enjoy the legacy of their monopoly
positions, including rich cash flows.

For Mr. Mexia, the mix of state and federal laws in the United
States provides Energías de Portugal with regulatory diversity. It
also provides an investment field unfettered by legacy issues. It
does not hurt that European utilities are used to lower margins.
They are usually happy to receive a 9 percent return on equity,
whereas utilities in the United States commonly receive rates of
return of about 11 percent. Unregulated power-generation assets,
including many wind farms, have no caps on their profits.

But European power companies are not just looking at the United
States; they have expanded to countries in Europe beyond their
traditional home bases and are considering projects in Asia.

The U.S. is a bridgehead in a global market for renewable assets,
said Jonathan Johns, head of renewable energy at Ernst & Young.

Bolstered by the bulk and visibility of its United States
acquisitions, Iberdrola plans to spin off its renewable energy
business in an initial public offering before the end of this year.

Energías de Portugal, which has already demonstrated a willingness
to pay up to stay in the game, is unlikely to be far behind.

We are studying an I.P.O. of our worldwide wind business in 2008,
Mr. Mexia said.
_______________________________________________________________

Private Efforts to Preserve the Coast
By FELICITY BARRINGER
SAN FRANCISCO

ON the last Friday in October, Ed Ewing, who has spent four decades
fishing out of Morro Bay in California, took his newly leased boat,
the South Bay, for a trial run. He was testing the repairs he had
made to the used craft and calibrating the net-and-weights apparatus
he will use when he trawls for sole, sable and sand dabs off the
central coast.

As his trial run ended, the Nature Conservancys own trial run began.
The fisherman and his boat, gear, one-year fishing permit and plans
for catching bottom-dwelling fish are part of an experiment. Nature
Conservancy executives hope the market mechanisms they use to
conserve environmentally sensitive land can help restore troubled
fisheries.

The concept of an easement would be translated to marine
environments to control where fish are caught, how many of a
specific species are caught and the gear used to catch them, said
Chuck Cook, a Nature Conservancy official who is on loan to the
University of California at Santa Barbara as project leader of the
Sustainable Fisheries Group. But there is a difference between the
legal framework of land transactions and the regulations that govern
coastal fishing. It is clear who owns land. But who owns the water,
or the fish, or the right to fish?

Both the Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense, another large
national environmental group that favors market mechanisms, are
working to resolve those questions by lobbying federal fishery
managers and regulators to adjust their permitting systems to allow
for conservation easements.

You have to have a fishery with a dedicated access to it, so there
is a bundle of legal interests that can be leased, bought and
traded, Mr. Cook said.

There are just 10 such limited-access programs along the coasts of
the United States, covering less than 10 percent of the total
harvesting areas, the National Marine Fisheries Service says.

One is a trawl fishery off the central California coast, a
particular concern to environmentalists because the commonly used
heavy gear not only produces a large by-catch of stocks that are
quickly being depleted, like canary rockfish and cow cod, but can
also hurt the sloping rocky habitat where these species live.

After consulting local fishermen about how to keep commercial
fishing productive while trying to protect depleted stocks, the
conservancy bought up seven trawling permits and four boats from
fishermen on the central California coast for $3.8 million. Two
boats were scrapped, and one was leased back to Mr. Ewing, along
with a license to trawl but with lighter gear and restrictions that
keep him mostly on sandy or muddy bottoms and away from the rock
slopes. Asked if he could make a living this way, he said, Im not
sure yet.

While the marine program is in its embryonic stages, it represents a
potentially major expansion of the use of easements for conservation
objectives. Six months ago, the Nature Conservancy created a finance
unit that structures acquisitions intended to earn returns for
investors.

In 2002, the conservancy worked with the Great Northern Paper
Company to protect 241,000 acres of forest near Mount Katahdin in
Maine. The conservancy bought $50 million of loans to Great
Northern, retired $14 million and refinanced the rest. In return,
the company transferred 41,000 acres to the conservancy and placed a
conservation easement on 200,000 acres that allows some logging but
guards sensitive habitat.

More recently, in partnership with a Montana-based equity fund
called Beartooth Capital, the conservancy put an easement on the
3,160-acre Bear Mountain ranch in Clyde, Idaho, which abutted the
conservancys 625-acre Summit Creek Preserve. The easement restricts
construction and will keep cattle mostly away from sensitive
streambeds. In return, Beartooth, the ranchs owner, acquired the
625-acre parcel as well as new access to roads and the right to
maintain Bear Mountain as a working ranch.

But the deal-making can leave other conservation groups feeling
shortchanged. One of the largest deals, with the Plum Creek Timber
Company, involving about 350,000 acres around Moosehead Lake in
northern Maine, has raised hackles.

The conservancy, with the Appalachian Mountain Club and the Forest
Society of Maine, has contracted to buy 74,200 acres for $35 million
from Plum Creek. The group also acquired a conservation easement
that prohibits development but allows continuing logging and access
for hunters and hikers on 266,000 other acres.

About 20,000 acres remain available for developing vacation homes,
resorts and amenities.

Jym St. Pierre, the Maine director of a conservation group called
Restore: The North Woods, said, We think theres too much development
in too many of the wrong places, and the conservation to offset it
is too weak. Because the deal is contingent on state regulators
agreement to Plum Creeks plans, Mr. St. Pierre feels that the
conservancy is giving Plum Creek cover.

William Ginn, the conservancys director of conservation markets and
investments, responded, We believe what has been created is far
superior than what would have happened had this been left just to a
regulatory process. In the last 15 months, he said, the conservancys
revolving funds have put $300 million into such transactions. With
the help of $500 million more from partners like Beartooth Capital,
the group has bought or obtained easements on more than a million
acres of land.

With new opportunities on sea as well as on land, he said, the
amount of investments in these types of deals will increase.
_______________________________________________________________

Aiding the Environment, a Nanostep at a Time
By BARNABY J. FEDER

SOME of the grandest ideas about how to preserve the environment
involve molecular-scale engineering known as nanotechnology. Such
visions might inspire more confidence, though, if there were real
products available to achieve them.

Nanotechnologys supporters have been talking for more than a decade
about fashioning new metals, plastics and biological compounds that
could enable innovations like increasingly efficient batteries for
electric cars and solar energy panels for homes. They also say that
nanotechnology can be used to restore damaged environments by
cleansing polluted soil, for example, with tiny particles that could
make toxins harmless.

There is nothing implausible about such ideas. It is easy to see how
the ability to manipulate matter at the scale of a few nanometers,
or billionths of a meter, could lead to environmental breakthroughs.
That is one reason billions of dollars are being spent on
nanotechnology research.

For now, though, nanotechnology is often linked to the environment
in a negative way: the fear of the potential hazards posed by novel
inventions. Novelists like Michael Crichton have imagined nanoscale
robots creating an ecodisaster. On a more practical level,
toxicologists are struggling to assess the damage actual particles
can do to living cells and laboratory animals.

Unfortunately for nanotechnologys reputation, the most exciting
green nanoproducts are still on the drawing boards. To most
Americans, nanotechnology means limited improvements, as in
stain-resistant clothing, superdurable bowling balls or transparent
sunscreens.

The first products the public has heard about have been luxury
items, said David M. Berube, a professor of communications at the
University of South Carolina, who studies public perception of
nanotechnology. The next highly visible wave will include
antibacterial cleaning agents, followed by pharmaceuticals and
medical devices, he said.

But the absence of a symbolic green nanotech product does not mean
there is no progress. While shifts to cleaner and greener sources of
energy are critical, energy conservation remains the most powerful
lever to improve the environment, said Sean Murdock, executive
director of the NanoBusiness Alliance, a trade group. And
nanotechnology has been playing a role in energy conservation for
decades.

Mr. Murdock said the best example might be specialized glass for
commercial buildings that PPG Industries began marketing in 1982. A
transparent coating only a few nanometers thick sharply increased
buildings ability to retain heat. That cut their demand for energy.

Since then, PPG has developed a far more environmentally beneficial
window named Solarban, which slashes demand for air-conditioning in
warm climates. The trick has been to develop transparent coatings
that block light at infrared frequencies, which add heat. The new
coatings cut infrared penetration by 46 percent while allowing more
light to get through than earlier, less-effective
infrared-reflecting windows.

But PPGs Solarban windows and similar products are and will probably
remain too costly for most homeowners or for commercial buildings.
So some experts say that a better example of the environmental
benefits of nanotechnology may be the light-emitting diode.

L.E.D.s have already replaced old-fashioned incandescent bulbs in
traffic lights. Now, because of improvements in the light-emitting
microchips, white L.E.D.s show signs of becoming an alternative to
fluorescent lights as a replacement for the staggeringly inefficient
but cheap incandescent bulb in other uses.

When you go to Japan, they dont even use incandescent Christmas tree
lights anymore, said Stephen B. Maebius, a patent lawyer in the
nanotechnology field. Its all white L.E.D.s.

Less noticeable to consumers are advances in catalysts, said Barbara
Karn, a nanotechnology expert in the research arm of the
Environmental Protection Agency. Nanotechnologists have been
successfully tinkering with the metals and other materials used as
catalysts at oil refineries or in automotive catalytic converters.
They are exploiting basic science: the smaller the particles of a
catalyst can be made, the more surface area is available to assist
reactions. That leads to faster chemical reactions, energy savings
and less waste.

There could be a downside, Ms. Karn said. Some of the industrial
products benefiting from the nanocatalysts are toxic chemicals.
Making them cleaner and cheaper to produce may leave the industry
with less incentive to find safer alternatives.

Ms. Karn said a different symbol of green nanotechnology might be
the products being synthesized to clean up waste sites, especially
nanoscale particles of iron compounds that have been under
development since the mid-1990s. When injected into contaminated
soil, they have proved far more effective than larger iron-based
compounds at breaking down hazardous organic compounds like PCBs and
dry-cleaning fluids, and at neutralizing poisons like lead and
arsenic.

Six ounces of nanoscale particles does the job of a ton of
micron-size particles because of their vastly increased surface area
and the greater ease with which they move through the soil in water,
said Wei-xian Zhang, a pioneer in the field at Lehigh University in
Bethlehem, Pa.

Environmentalists say they remain worried about the long-term impact
of dumping novel nanomaterials into the environment to clean up
hazardous wastes. And there is another potential downside. Jennifer
Sass, the senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council,
said that any nanotechnology cleanup product could deflect attention
from the underlying problem.

I hope the public will ask probing questions like, Who put that
pollution there in the first place, and why didnt the government
stop them? she said.
_______________________________________________________________

Taming the Guzzlers That Power the World Wide Web
By MATTHEW L. WALD

BEHIND every Google search, direct deposit, MapQuest request and
rant on a blog is a data center crammed with machines called servers
and, behind them, a power plant.

And similar to the way computer-processing speed doubles every 18 to
24 months, energy consumption by the data centers climbs, too. It
doubled between 2001 and 2006 and unless energy efficiency becomes a
priority will do so again by 2011, according to a study this year by
the Environmental Protection Agency.

By last year, data centers scattered from northern Virginia to
Washington State were consuming 1.5 percent of the nations
electricity supply, the E.P.A. study says, straining the system in
areas where power demand is high.

The amount of energy spent on data centers is huge, and its not
really very well understood, said Brian Brouillette, a vice
president of Hewlett-Packard, one of several companies that supply
data centers with energy-efficient equipment and information.

Companies tend to be secretive about how much it costs to run their
servers, but several experts said that energy costs can be 40
percent of the cost of operating a data center. In three years, the
cost of running a server can top its purchase price.

Not that data center managers, eager to expand their facilities,
think about energy first.

Its not misunderstood, Mr. Brouillette said. Its just nonunderstood.

In the dark ages, circa 2000, servers consisted of stand-alone
computers, each drawing hundreds of watts, stacked in racks 19
inches wide and 6 feet high. Today the demand for the Web is so high
that the racks are organized in ever-expanding farms like rows of
corn each holding maybe dozens of blades, or motherboards with a
single processor.

A farm typically draws 10,000 watts or more, generating heat with
each one. For every watt to run the computers, the farm may need
nearly a watt for air-conditioning.

It costs $4.5 billion a year for the electricity to run the nations
server farms, according to the E.P.A., a sum ultimately picked up by
consumers.

The environmental news isnt all bad. When people use the Internet to
shop or to work at home, they are using less energy to move
themselves and their goods around, offsetting some of the energy
used for computers. But without improvements, the study said, server
farms will require new power plants around the country, something
environmentalists and some power companies want to avoid.

With aggressive improvements, consumption in 2011 could fall back to
the levels of 2001, the study said. But even an enlightened data
center manager would have problems identifying which servers are
most efficient. Unlike cars, refrigerators and washing machines,
servers are not required to meet federal energy standards. The
Energy Star program, which identifies especially efficient products,
evaluates many pieces of computer equipment, but not servers.

Managers who buy data center equipment, including servers and
related hardware, need objective, credible energy performance
information, the E.P.A. said.

Besides the savings from lower utility bills and the benefits from
reducing power plant emissions, many data centers have a pressing
reason to improve efficiency. An increasing number of data centers
in both the private and public sectors are hitting their limits in
terms of space, power and cooling capacity, Lowell Sachs, the senior
manager of federal government affairs at Sun Microsystems, said in a
written statement. In other words, many centers cannot increase
capacity without increasing energy efficiency (or spending a fortune
to build more farms).

One problem, again, has to do with the priorities of data center
managers, who choose servers based on speed, performance and
reliability but generally not on energy use.

In many data centers, those responsible for purchasing and operating
the I.T. equipment are not the same people that are responsible for
the power and cooling infrastructure, who, in turn, typically pay
the utility bills, the E.P.A. said. This leads to a split incentive,
in which those who are most able to control the energy use of the
I.T. equipment (and therefore the data center) have little incentive
to do so.

Or, as Mr. Brouillette put it, Facilities professionals and I.T.
professionals dont have a lot of reason to talk to each other.

Unbeknown to most consumers (although obvious to anyone who has
opened up a computer), computers convert alternating current into
direct current, which in turn is converted to various voltages. In
the process, a desktop PC will waste half the energy it pulls from
the wall, says William E. Weihl, the director of energy strategy at
Google. That is one reason Google assembles its own servers,
choosing components that lose less energy, he said.

Manufacturers are beginning to pay attention. Not many years ago,
typical was 75 to 80 percent efficient, said Richard DuBois, the
senior vice president of marketing at Emerson, a St. Louis maker of
servers. Were pretty religiously running in excess of 90 percent
right now.

And Hewlett-Packard has said that by 2010 it will improve the
competency of some of its servers by 50 percent over 2005 models.

Computers use some strategies that do not work well for servers. For
example, some save energy by shutting down disk drives. So a laptop,
for example, may hesitate when the user wants data. Servers cannot
afford that wait, Mr. DuBois said.

Efficiency experts see savings potential in the chips that drive
servers and PCs alike. Some chips use software to turn off sections
that are not in use, reducing immediate power consumption and
cooling requirements; improved hardware is reducing electricity
leaks. There is also room for improvement in the windowless rooms
that house servers, which must be kept cool or risk breakdowns.
These chambers tend to use modern air-conditioning equipment but
distribute the cool air in ways that are not optimal, experts say.

If you dont have a profound understanding of where the hot spots
are, you just overchill everything, Mr. Brouillette said. Its like
if in your house you kept the air-conditioning on full tilt because
one room had poor air circulation.

His company and others offer thermal mapping or color-coded pictures
indicating temperatures around the room to help data centers direct
cool air to the right places.

Meanwhile, Google is planning to put one of its server farms out in
farm country: Council Bluffs, Iowa. Its a good location for
windmills, the company said.
_______________________________________________________________

Mums the Word: We Found a Greener Gas
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH

PSYCHOLOGISTS and Wall Street traders have long known it: people and
markets act on perception, whether it clashes with reality or not.

Which means that sellers of cold foods may soon have a public
relations problem on their hands.

Hydrofluorocarbons, better known as HFCs, have been the refrigerants
of choice since their predecessor, chlorofluorocarbons, were proved
to hurt the ozone layer. But refrigeration equipment can leak, and
HFCs are a powerful greenhouse gas. So Coca-Cola, McDonalds and
other companies are switching to another gas to keep their vending
machines, trucks and in-store freezers and soda machines cold.

That gas is carbon dioxide. Thus the perception problem.

Thanks to the language of climate change carbon offsets, carbon
neutral, carbon intensive, carbon tax and the like most people think
carbon dioxide is far and away the worst, if not the only,
greenhouse gas around. But pound for pound, HFCs, among other gases,
are far more potent when it comes to trapping the earths heat. So
using carbon dioxide in place of HFCs in refrigeration equipment
poses less environmental risk.

CO2 as a good thing? Even Martha Stewart might have trouble
explaining that.

Really understanding this issue requires a level of scientific
knowledge and sophistication that is beyond most people, said Kert
Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which spearheaded
Refrigerants Naturally, an industry coalition that has been
exploring alternatives to HFCs for several years.

The result, marketing experts warn, could be reputation chaos. The
man in the street just assumes that carbon dioxide is the killer,
said Michael Watras, president of Straightline International, a
brand consulting firm. Those companies better be ready for a huge
image issue.

The issue hasnt arisen yet, for various reasons. Unilever, which
owns Ben & Jerrys, switched to another less-risky gas, propane, for
refrigeration, thus dodging the carbon dioxide bullet. McDonalds is
so far testing carbon dioxide as a refrigerant only in Europe, where
consumers are far more attuned to the scientific issues, said Bob
Langert, McDonalds vice president for corporate social
responsibility.

And companies that normally promote their greenness are keeping an
uncharacteristically low profile on their use of CO2. In September,
for example, Greenpeace and Coca-Cola mailed a press release
publicizing the HFC-free coolers Coke will use at the 2008 Beijing
Olympics. The identity of the replacement refrigerant was not
revealed until halfway down, in passing.

We hadnt even asked ourselves if there will be a stigma attached to
this, because we are so sure it is a strong solution to a climate
problem, said Jeff Seabright, vice president for environment and
water resources at Coca-Cola. But CO2 has developed such a bad
reputation as the cause of climate change that we have to really
explain how harnessing its attributes is part of the solution, not
the cause.

But can Coke and its confreres prevent the inevitable if unfair bad
buzz?

Marketing experts say yes. But they offer highly divergent and often
mutually exclusive ideas about how.

Eric Hirshberg, chief creative officer of Deutsch/LA, a unit of
Interpublic Group, suggests using placards in stores, stickers on
refrigerated trucks and other visual methods to stress the end
results while playing down the means.

They have to stay on message, which is that they are voluntarily
lowering the climate impact of their refrigerants at their own
expense, he said. They dont have to mention carbon dioxide at all.

And if they do, they certainly should not try to justify its use,
added Jan-Benedict Steenkamp, a professor of marketing at the
Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina.

Its a losing proposition to try to explain that you are exchanging
something very bad for something mildly bad, he said. The companies
should just calculate their carbon footprint, and specify that this
change is reducing it by X percent.

Conversely, Dan Becker, a former Sierra Club official and a
consultant to environmental groups, says he thinks carbon dioxide
should be front and center but that the companies should defuse the
issue by letting Greenpeace do the talking. If an environmental
leader says that irony of ironies, carbon dioxide is the safest
refrigerant, it has a lot more credibility than if companies say it,
he said.

Others suggest that companies simply position the switch as a way of
saying they are reusing carbon dioxide, thus keeping it out of the
atmosphere. The idea of recycling carbon will be a much easier sell
than the idea that other gases are worse than CO2, said Stephen
Ansolabehere, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

Mr. Watras, the brand consultant, disagrees with all the tactics. He
thinks the companies should mount a straightforward advertising
campaign, preferably on prime time television, explaining in simple
terms why carbon dioxide is not the gaseous equivalent of the devil
incarnate. But he thinks they should speak with one voice that of
Refrigerants Naturally rather than as individuals.

A company advertising alone looks like it is pushing an agenda, but
a consortium of companies looks like it is tackling an issue, he
said.

And as any brand specialist knows, perception trumps reality every
time.
_______________________________________________________________

Conservation at the Touch of a Button
By MATT RICHTEL

TALK about remote control.

The Super Stop & Shop grocery in Long Island City, Queens, is
participating in a new system meant to take pressure off the local
power grid. In times of peak demand, some of the grocerys lights,
air-conditioning and even refrigeration systems can be temporarily
shut down by a computer in Boston, 200 miles away.

Nationwide, several thousand businesses like Super Stop & Shop, as
well as residential customers, are ceding control of their
electrical systems during moments of unusually high demand. And they
are being paid to do it.

The system, based on a concept called demand response, is one of the
latest ways that Internet technology is being applied to improve the
management of the nations taxed power supplies.

The supporters of demand-response technology say they can save
utilities and their customers tens of millions of dollars by
selectively curbing demand when the grid is at capacity.

Once the system is in place, the utilitys role is limited to
notifying the operators of demand-response systems that it is time
to start shutting down the lights remotely.

We tie in to their electrical panel, toggle the relay and curtail 40
percent of their lighting, said David Brewster, the president of
Enernoc, one of several publicly traded companies in the
demand-response business.

We are like an insurance provider for the utility industry, he
added.

Enernoc is in Boston, but on a moments notice it can shut down
lights and other appliances in about 1,850 companies nationwide,
including some Whole Foods stores, units of AT&T and small local
businesses. For instance, when power demands in the Queens area
become severe, Enernoc flips the switch on some of the Super Stop &
Shops wall and track lighting and cycles its air-conditioning.

In Boston, Enernoc has a 5,000-square-foot center that operates
around the clock, where teams wait for crisis calls from utilities.

Enernoc installs a small device near a customers electrical box. The
device collects information on electricity consumed at the site and
enables remote access to the companys electrical equipment.

An Enernoc competitor, Comverge, provides a similar service focused
more on residences. Using a wireless paging system that sends
signals to a device connected to a homes air-conditioning system,
pool pump or electric water heater, it can govern power use.

On Aug. 15, for example, ISO New England, the electric grid operator
for the region, issued a system emergency because of peak demands
created by hot weather. In five minutes, Comverge cut the demand
from roughly 60,000 homes in southwestern Connecticut.

>   From January through August this year, Comverge has coordinated 101
such events around the country.

This is going to be mainstream for utilities, said Robert Chiste,
chief executive of Comverge, which is in East Hanover, N.J., and
works with nine large utilities.

Industry analysts say these businesses have a lot of potential, but
they face challenges, too. The systems must function reliably and
not inadvertently shut down power, or leave it down. They could
become less economically useful if electricity supplies increase
markedly; if the price of gasoline drops sharply; or if they fail to
persuade utilities to participate.

Michael Carboy, a financial analyst for Signal Hill, said demand
response on the whole was a good alternative for utilities that must
otherwise pay high rates to buy electricity if demand exceeds
supply. He said wholesale rates paid by utilities could hit $1,000
or more per megawatt-hour during crisis times, versus $60 during
times of ordinary demand. (One megawatt-hour is enough to power a
typical home for up to two months.)

Alternatively, a utility can pay demand-response companies to reduce
use. For instance, a utility might pay Comverge $70,000 to $80,000 a
year for each megawatt that the company can commit to eliminating
from the load. By contrast, if a utility builds a power plant, it
could pay $400,000 to $2 million for each new megawatt of capacity,
depending on the type of power plant.

Utilities pay Enernoc about $80,000 per megawatt of saved energy.

Some of that money goes back to the individual residents or
companies participating in the programs. For instance, Comverge pays
residents about $35 each summer to take part. Enernoc turns over
about half of the fees it collects from utilities to the grocery
stores, industrial sites and other companies that enroll.

The deal has meant about $18,000 a year in payments from Enernoc to
Krinos Foods, a maker and distributor of cheeses, peppers, olives,
cookies and other Mediterranean foods in Long Island City. When
needed, Krinos has agreed to have Enernoc temporarily shut down some
of its lights and refrigerators and cycle its air-conditioning.

During electricity slowdowns, the company has suspended
manufacturing lines and moved workers overseeing them to other jobs,
like manual packing. John J. Tramontana, a plant manager at Krinos,
said the situation had been a financial benefit to the company and
had helped stave off broader power failures in the area. It had few
downsides, with the possible exception of some grumbling from
employees.

People have gotten uncomfortable with the air-conditioning going
down, he said.

Utilities have tried many programs to encourage energy savings,
including offering price breaks to large consumers who agree to
limit electrical use during peak demand times. But the efforts have
been inconsistent.

Providers of demand-response services, by contrast, aim to become
partners of the utilities and a conduit between them and their
customers. Enernoc constantly measures the electrical use of the
businesses where it has installed a system. That way, it can verify
for a utility that it has, in fact, cut use during a crisis.
_______________________________________________________________

Salt Lake City Is Finding a Payoff in Conservation
By KEITH SCHNEIDER
SALT LAKE CITY

AS emblems of the economic transformation unfolding in this high
desert city and its job-rich suburbs, the Mount Olympus Wilderness
and the Black Diamond Equipment company are hard to beat.

The wilderness is 25 square miles of steep granite, mountain brush
and fir. It spills from the summit of 9,028-foot Mount Olympus down
to the eastern edge of this city, which has joined others in the
West including Denver, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle in
pursuing a development strategy based on ecological ideas once
widely mistrusted here: energy efficiency, resource protection, land
conservation and pollution prevention.

The base of the mountain is also the home of Black Diamond, a tiny
start-up when it arrived in 1991 and now a well-known manufacturer
of outdoor gear. The company has taken on the Mount Olympus
Wilderness, in effect using it as an outdoor product-testing center.

Were here because this is such a natural place for our business,
said Peter Metcalf, the president and chief executive of Black
Diamond, which employs 300 people in Salt Lake City. But were no
different than other businesses that are in this region. We all
understand the connection with this place, how we take care of it,
and how well our business performs.

Residents of this city and its suburbs, with a combined 1.2 million
people, have come to view the ties between economic development and
environmental conservation in a new way. They are scrubbing the air
and water, building energy-efficient homes and offices closer
together, constructing regional rapid transit systems, limiting new
highway construction and conserving open spaces and natural
resources.

Authorities on urban policy say that Salt Lake and other cities in
the West, big Eastern ones like Boston and New York and smaller
ones, too, like Grand Rapids, Mich., and Charleston, S.C., have
become incubators of environmental ideas and programs, with tangible
results. Jobs and income are increasing. Central city populations
are stabilizing or growing. Businesses are cropping up.

Environmental policy has emerged as a central organizing principle
of economic growth at the metropolitan level in America, said Robert
Puentes, a researcher in Washington at the Brookings Institutions
Metropolitan Policy Program. Its a very new development, and its
logical. Being more energy efficient and more environmentally
sensitive lowers costs and makes metropolitan regions better places.

It wasnt always this way in Salt Lake City. For more than a century,
Utah was supported by the wealth derived from mining, ranching and
energy industries intent on exploiting, not conserving, the states
natural bounty. Those advocating green values were viewed as a
threat to expansion and prosperity.

But Utahs population, now around 2.5 million, is expected to grow to
5.4 million by 2050. Traffic congestion, the loss of open space to
suburban development, and water pollution along the Wasatch Front,
where 75 percent of Utahs residents live, have become public
concerns. So have the high cost of housing and general anxiety about
a deteriorating way of life.

These days, advocates for the conventional fixes to growth more
highways, more malls, more subdivisions ever farther from town
centers find themselves on the defensive in public hearings. Now
there is a different strategy that involves doing more with less:
less land, less energy, less asphalt, less spending.

Examples in the Salt Lake Valley are not hard to find. Kennecott
Copper is starting a new community at the foot of its gigantic
Bingham open-pit copper mine; it is designed to use less energy and
less land and to put its residents closer to schools, stores,
offices and recreation. Voters last year approved a sales-tax
increase for a light-rail line that will tie the community, named
Daybreak, to Salt Lake City.

But Keith Bartholomew, an assistant professor of planning at the
University of Utahs College of Architecture and Planning in Salt
Lake City, said the region had a long way to go. Our successes mean
its not going to be as bad as it would have been, he said. But doing
less bad is not enough. We need to multiply the successes, and we
need to do it fast. The nest we are soiling is not just the
environment. Its the economy, too.

An example of the half steps Mr. Bartholomew spoke of is a proposed
$1 billion, 14-mile freeway, which critics argue will cause more
congestion and wreck wetlands along the Great Salt Lake. Two years
ago, the states Department of Transportation settled a lawsuit with
suburban residents, and under the agreement, the state will trim the
number of lanes, prohibit billboards, protect natural lands, ban
trucks, limit speeds to 55 miles per hour, require the state to
establish a 2,225-acre nature preserve and restrict development so
the highway serves as a scenic parkway.

Residents are also voting to spend tax money on alternatives to
highways and land conservation. If all goes according to plan, when
construction is finished by 2015, the region will have spent roughly
$3 billion to build a 45-mile light-rail system and an 88-mile
regional commuter-rail network.

The two-term mayor of the city, Ross Anderson, a Democrat, has
shaped much of Salt Lake Citys administration and economic policy
around reducing emissions of gases that cause climate change.

So far, the city has cut emissions by 36,000 tons annually by taking
one small step at a time, like directing every city-owned
installation to switch to energy-sipping lightbulbs, saving $33,000
a year.

Weve succeeded in completely debunking the speculation that
achieving reductions in climate-change gases means economic
devastation, Mr. Anderson said in an interview. Our experience here
and in other cities shows that you can achieve very significant cost
savings by focusing on efficiencies, and at the same time grow the
economy.

Of course, like many Western cities, Salt Lake City was poised for
growth anyway. Economists and business development authorities cite
many factors, including a strong work ethic, good public schools and
universities and a history of cultural stability rooted in the
Mormon Church. But they also mention the beginnings of an
environmental ethic, an update of an old cultural value in the area.

There is a sense of stewardship in this region, and its been here
ever since the pioneers came, said Jeff Edwards, the chief executive
of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, a recruitment
agency. People feel the land is a gift, and they will do what they
need to sustain it.

In effect, Mayor Anderson and other Salt Lake officials say, green
ideas as old as Earth Day are producing healthier metropolitan
economies. It makes sense, then, that in Salt Lake City the Mount
Olympus Wilderness attracts devotion. And that is where Mr. Metcalf
of Black Diamond comes into play.

Mr. Metcalf embodies a mix of business acumen and environmental
advocacy. He is also the vice chairman of the Denver-based Outdoor
Industry Association and has brought the industrys two annual trade
shows to the Salt Palace.

Mr. Metcalf has helped attract nearly 50 outdoor equipment and
apparel makers to the region, including Quiksilver, the makers of
Rossignol ski equipment, and Backcountry.com, an online retailer.

Its not about being an environmentalist or a conservationist, he
said. I care a lot about that. But its really about dollars and
business. If this place is ruined, this company and others will go.