US green business progress report: could do better

The adoption of green technologies and business models is continuing despite the slowing economy, but there are worrying signs that the pace of change is still nowhere near fast enough to limit the risk of dangerous levels of climate change.

That is the central conclusion of a major new report from Greenbiz.com, which assessed several green business metrics from across the US economy and found that while some low-carbon technologies and business models are fast approaching the mainstream, others are making only marginal progress.

"This year's update is a mixed bag of encouraging and discouraging news," said Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com and the report's principal author. "But on balance, despite a growing chorus of corporate commitments and actions, we are less optimistic that these activities, in aggregate, are addressing planetary problems at sufficient scale and speed."

The report found that greenhouse gas emissions in the US rose 1.4 per cent in 2007 and fell by only 0.6 per cent per unit of GDP, the smallest annual improvement in carbon intensity since 2002 and evidence that overall efforts to cut carbon emissions are not proving effective enough.

The report also found only marginal improvements in a number of other key areas, with the proportion of people using car pools or public transport to get to work increasing only fractionally and the number of employees working from home actually falling from a high of 9.5m to 8.6m last year.

Moreover, average annual emissions per car showed no improvement, while there was similarly little progress in removing toxic chemicals from the manufacturing process. And the number of large US firms reporting their carbon emissions through the Carbon Disclosure Project actually fell from 146 in 2007 to 140 a year later.

However, the report did show considerable progress in a number of areas, most notably in the field of clean tech investment, where venture capital investment more than doubled in 2008 to more than $7.5bn (£5.3bn).

Partly as a consequence of the soaring investment, the 928 clean tech patents filed last year represented a new record for the sector, while the generation of non-hydro renewable energy grew nearly seven per cent in 2007 and the number of renewable energy and energy-efficiency jobs topped nine million.

The greening of the US-built environment also continued apace, with the number of new and existing buildings certified as LEED-compliant more than doubling in 2008 and water use per dollar of GDP falling from 14.2 gallons in 2002 to 12.58 gallons in 2007.

Writing in the foreword of the report, Makower said that despite the ongoing struggle to cut overall emissions, there were plenty of reasons to remain optimistic.

"Green building is on the rise, spurring new technologies that save energy and money while creating more healthful workplaces," he wrote. "There is a green race taking place in the automobile industry, with every major manufacturer planning to introduce electric vehicles. The leading consumer product makers and retailers are starting to rigorously assess the environmental impact of their products using sophisticated metrics, sending signals up the supply chain that tomorrow's products will need to hew to higher levels of environmental responsibility."