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Green is in the Eye of the Beholder

NPR’s Morning Edition completed its series on global climate change with a look at Masdar, a soon-to-be-built an Abu Dhabi city that aims to be the first city with no carbon emissions. Claiming to be carbon-neutral is certainly bold, so Reporter Joe Palca went a step deeper examining how, exactly, designers plan to do that.

Toward the end of the story came an interesting quote from Liz Darley at Bioregional, the firm that will calculate the city’s carbon emissions.

"What they're currently doing is deciding where that boundary is drawn," Darley says. "That is, in itself, quite a complex thing to decide on as a project team ... because it could include all the carbon expenditure of flying between Europe and the Middle East the design team is incurring. It could go to the extent of you guys coming here to interview us. Once you start peeling back the layers of the onion, it just goes on and on and on forever."

This struck me as quite interesting since our offices here on Prospect Hill in Waltham have a new neighbor, a building that purports to be the first LEED-certified office building the area. This is certainly a good thing, but I wondered about all this environmental stuff as the large parking lot went up next to it. Not to mention, the building’s design is your standard suburban office variety with no retail on the first floor, so those of us in the complex who may want to have a bit of lunch still have to jump in our cars and head somewhere else. Yes, we have a cafe with outdoor seating, but that can get old VERY fast.

In fact, the marketing copy on the sites proclaims that the building has 716 total parking spaces, certainly fewer than the 893 in our building, but the transportation to both buildings is the same.


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There are those who say that free parking is a major part of the problem. That because it’s so easy to drive and park, we choose to do that rather than find alternative transportation. They have a point. Except that building put up in an office park don’t give people that alternative. The Westin Hotel, also up here on Prospect Hill, recently started charging $9 to park a car overnight. That wouldn’t be so bad, except there is no way to get here EXCEPT to drive. The people who have tried to take the bus often abandoned the concept because it’s so onerous to do so. I try to bike here a few times a week, but the trip up Totten Pond Road brings me just inches from speeding trucks. It’s enough to make even the most ardent cyclist pretty nervous.

So how green is green? Is it better to build a LEED certified building on a hill in Waltham or is it better to encourage businesses to move toward more urban settings with better public transit? Is it better to build an entirely new carbon-neutral city or to take the same technologies and apply them to existing communities?

By Chuck Tanowitz on May 12, 2008 5:12 PM
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Kleiner Raising New Green Round

Great to see KPCB raising another round for green investment. It shows that despite a softening economy, people believe that green is still a good investment. It is probably a good bet since the political climate at the federal level will likely change dramtically in t-minus nine months. Maybe Kleiner's celebrity fund raiser, Al Gore, will play a role in changing that political climate?

Why is this important? Because it feeds the marketing and lobbying coffers of green companies, allowing them to better compete with traditional industries trying to slow green adoption.

It is also important because green marketers need to realize that the market is still going to get even noisier. They need to be pushing their executive teams for additional budget in 2008 and 2009, because the softening economy may have little impact on how aggressive their competitors will be.

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By Jason Morris on April 28, 2008 6:35 AM
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Sometimes Simple Point is Most Critical

When posting on a blog it is sometimes easy to overthink your topic and gloss over some of the really simple topics that are incredibly critical. This dawned on me when reading a post by John Gartner at MarketingShift.

His post is about how Green has reached mainstream levels in terms of buzz according to Nielsen research. He gives some useful information throughout the brief post, but John's simple yet critical point is his last one: "Companies have to develop a marketing message that is genuine and not condescending to the desirable demographic."

This is a critically important point for a couple of reasons:

1) We have reach the second stage in green hype. The first stage was the embracing of Green by hype watchers as the next big thing in business and lifestyle. The second is an age of backlash and skepticism driven by fear that it will be adopted, along with general pushback by media and others who will say that adoption is not nearly matching the Stage-One hype. A lot of the media out there right now is focused on the inefficiency of solar, the negative impact of biofuels and freak windfarm fires. This makes it a prime period of time for green washers to get destroyed by media and the general public. Hence, why John's "genuine" statement is important.

2) People sometimes overlook that communications and marketing can come across as condescening. Look at the presidential campaign. You have the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barrack Obama trying to spin every little piece of information or data their way, to the point that it sometimes gets insulting to the viewer.  An Editorial in the NY Times this week accused them of thinking the American people are a bunch of "rubes."

This is how I feel sometimes about green marketing--that is so superficial and transparent, it does more harm than good. So the simple message is: Be genuine and don't condescend. If you have to fool someone or oversell your greenness, it won't appear green to your audience, it will be transparent.

 

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By Jason Morris on April 25, 2008 6:41 AM
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Earth Day Noise Pollution

We're often asked by clients if the biggest trade show of the year in their respective space is a good location to announce news. We usually answer their question with a question: "What is the goal of the announcement?"

We explain that if the goal is stand-alone media coverage, they might be better off using the event to pre-brief media and announce a couple of weeks later when the market has exhausted its news. If the goal is to drive business development activities, announcing what they are doing at the show to give sales and bizdev a press release to shop to customers and prospects might be the way to go.

The green/clean tech world is relatively immature when it comes to events. There are several that are vying to become the RSA, NRF, Mobile World Congress or JavaOne of their respective markets---such as Solar Power and GreenXChange Expo--but for the most part there is not yet that one event that makes green marketers exhaust their news arsenal.

But unlike security, open source, application development, retail technology and wireless, green does have a landmark "event" that brings every marketer out of the woodwork with a news announcement: Earth Day. I performed a highly scientific research project (40-second searching of Google News by source) and found about 500 commercial press releases from the past 24 hours that mention Earth Day.

My favorite? Purex announced that Jaime Pressly has become its spokesperson for the company's green campaign. I can just see Joy, Randy, Earl and Crabman doing what they can to stop global warming on My Name is Earl.

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But the point is that Earth Day may have officially become the noisiest day in the Green world. The question for marketers then becomes: "Should you announce signidicant news on Earth Day?"

I think the answer would be a resounding "No." Earth Day is much too noisy, especially when you also factor in this year's Presidential campaign, earnings season and just about every other news event that could drown out a momentum announcement, new corporate green initiative or donations to a green charity.

My advice? Avoid Earth Day like the plague and don't contribute to the noise being created by marketers in every sector from detergents to light bulbs. Better yet, follow the advice of my eight-year old daughter who said, "Let's shut everything off today that uses electricity, including the Wii, Webkinz, the TV and the toaster."

Generation Green speaks. Shut off your computer, take the day off and celebrate Earth Day away from the noise.

 

 

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By Jason Morris on April 22, 2008 11:24 AM
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Speeds, feeds and....weeds?

According to a recent survey from IDC, we have seen an inflection point with regards to the adoption of Green IT. According to the firm, more than half of all IT buyers now consider "greenness" as part of the buying criteria. The number one driver in green purchasing decisions is economic revolving around operational costs. As energy prices continue to go higher, there is little chance that this trend will stop anytime soon.

What does this mean? It means even more hardware marketers will tout the greenness of their products through PR and advertising. It means that companies that reduce storage and other infrastructure requirements (SaaS) will continue to point to the indirect costs those products save customers. Bottom line? Green IT is here to stay.

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By Jason Morris on April 21, 2008 5:26 PM
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Renewable Energy Tax Credit Decisions Coming

Back from a short hiatus while the RSA event was going on. Security is Schwartz's biggest practice group and when RSA takes place it is all hands on deck.

So what did I miss while discussing whether or not social networks are the next big target for security threats? Well, nothing since I was still paying attention. But we saw a major development last week in the Senate, where they attached renewable energy tax credits to a housing finance bill with the hopes that it would go back to the House and pass, only then to be signed by President Bush. The measure was passed 88-8 in the Senate. The biggest hurdle facing the bill is from House Democrats who must figure out where the money will come from to finance the credits. I think it is safe to say, based on past behavior, that Bush will not sign anything that increases taxes on oil companies.

This next week or two should be interesting.

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By Jason Morris on April 14, 2008 9:18 AM
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How Best to Put Out the Fire? Solar in SF, Zero-Emission Cars

The public will for change exists. The research supports it. The economics are getting there. So what's the problem? Some of the same problems that have stifled green adoption for the past several decades. In the specific cases below? Politics and Detroit.

Word from both Chris Morrison of VentureBeat and Craig Rubens of Earth2Tech that the City Supervisor in San Francisco has stalled a plan that would have provided $6 million in consumer solar rebates to residents that implement solar electric systems. His concern? That only the wealthy will be able to take advantage.

I know housing prices in the city have come down a bit, but aren't most property owners in San Francisco considered wealthy anyway? Aren't there also programs and special financing in place for solar installations for affordable housing projects? I know that solar on affordable housing is one of the areas where Schwartz client Borrego Solar specializes, so I suspect the answer is "yes." I think it is time that politicians get creative and invest more in green rebates and tax credits, rather than focusing solely on which is the best approach, taking credit and further delaying something that is sorely needed.

Which brings us to Detroit and a post from Katie Fehrenbacher of Earth2Tech. Apparently Big Auto has successfully muddled the adoption of zero-emission cars in California by focusing the debate on which type of car should qualify, battery, plug-ins or fuel cell automobiles.

I really think the best analogy for some of the inane debates taking place in the cleantech and renewable energy world are analagous to firemen watching a house burn down while they argue over whether it is most effective to use foam, water or sand, and which qualifies as a truly efficient fire-fighting tool. I hate to disagree with the great Billy Joel, but we did start the fire and we are continuing to feed it.

 

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By Jason Morris on March 28, 2008 10:45 AM
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