Energy | Our Green Lab

Volkswagen’s Green Commitment: $52 billion

July 23rd, 2012

German automaker Volkswagen aims to drop the average emissions from its new vehicles to 120 grams CO2/km by 2015, as part of a “fundamental ecological restructuring” likely to be worth more than €40 billion (US$52 billion by 2016.

The company says more than two thirds of its entire €62.4 billion (US$82.1 billion) investment programme for the coming five years will be directly or indirectly spent on “ever more efficient vehicles, powertrains and technologies, as well as environmentally compatible production.”

VW has been looking to bolster its green reputation since being targeted by campaign group Greenpeace over its alleged lobbying against deeper cuts to EU emissions targets.

The company’s new emissions reduction target would represent a 30 percent cut on 2006 levels for Europe’s largest carmaker, and a sizeable reduction on its current average emissions for new vehicles of 135.5g/km, which sits fractionally below the E.U. average of 136.1 g/km in 2011.

VW said that under the new plan it wants every new model generation to be on average 10 to 15 percent more efficient than its predecessor, while emissions will also be cut from both production processes and manufacturing plants.

As part of the announcement the company unveiled a new €600 million (almost US$790 million) investment designed to expand its use of renewable energies such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric power, in order to achieve a 40 percent reduction in emissions from energy supplies by the end of the decade.

Plants will also aim to reduce water and energy consumption, as well as overall emissions, by a quarter over the next six years.

Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn, chairman of the Volkswagen Group Board of Management, also declared that 2013 would be the “year of e-mobility” for Volkswagen, starting with the release of the two door mini e-up!, which will then be followed by further all-electric or partially-electric vehicles from many of the Group’s brands.

“Our declared goal is to make Volkswagen the leading automaker in ecological terms, too,” he said on the eve of the Geneva motorshow, before stating that Volkswagen’s new five year strategy will focus on responsible conduct towards employees, society, and the environment.

“To take pole position and to sustain that lead over the long term, you have to understand all these dimensions of our business and to practice them convincingly at every level,” Winterkorn added. “We are raising the bar much higher when it comes to sustainability.”

Tags: Albemarle Corporation, clean technologies, eco-friendly, full-cycle products
Posted in Albemarle, Company Information, Energy, Sustainability, Transportation, fire safety

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Albemarle Welcomes Recent Regulatory Efforts to Improve Fire Safety

July 23rd, 2012

BATON ROUGE, La., July 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB), today offered its encouragement to recent efforts announced by California Governor Brown, the California Bureau of Home Furnishings and the Senate Appropriations Committee to assess the need for improvements in fire safety standards for home furnishings.

“California should be congratulated for their pioneering standard-setting efforts of 1975, which focused on ignition of furniture foam by an open flame,” said Dr. David Clary, Albemarle Chief Sustainability Officer. “We are encouraged that fire safety standards are being revisited after 35 years because fire remains a very real problem in the United States. According to the National Fire Protection Association, in the United States alone, fires currently cause one civilian death every 2 hours 49 minutes, an injury every 30 minutes, and one building fire every 65 seconds.”

California’s fire safety standards for home furnishings are embedded in Technical Bulletin 117 (TB117.) California’s TB117 recognized open flames as an important source of home fires. According to the National Fire Protection Association, during the period 2005 to 2009, open flames caused more than one in five of the upholstered furniture fires and 12% of the associated deaths in the United States. A recent study funded by the U.S. government shows fire safety standards that address open flames as a source of fires provide increased escape time and the highest level of safety.

Regulatory efforts since 1975 demonstrate that California TB117 can be improved. For example, in 1988, recognizing advances in science and technology in the interim decade, Great Britain published a stricter standard which considers different sources of ignition and both the fabric and the foam cushioning of the furniture under real world conditions. Research conducted in Great Britain demonstrates that by 2007, the new British standard resulted in 37% fewer furniture fires each year and a 64% reduction in deaths from furniture fires.

Albemarle Corporation supports efforts to strengthen fire safety standards and is committed to delivering fire safety solutions based on sound science.

About Albemarle
Albemarle Corporation, headquartered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is a leading global developer, manufacturer, and marketer of highly-engineered specialty chemicals for consumer electronics, petroleum refining, utilities, packaging, construction, automotive/transportation, pharmaceuticals, crop protection, food-safety and custom chemistry services. The Company is committed to global sustainability and is advancing its eco-practices and solutions in its three business segments, Polymer Solutions, Catalysts and Fine Chemistry. Corporate Responsibility Magazine selected Albemarle to its prestigious “100 Best Corporate Citizens” list for 2010 and 2011. Albemarle employs approximately 4,000 people and serves customers in approximately 100 countries. Albemarle regularly posts information to www.albemarle.com, including notification of events, news, financial performance, investor presentations and webcasts, Regulation G reconciliations, SEC filings, and other information regarding the Company, its businesses and the markets we serve.

“Safe Harbor” Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements in this press release regarding Albemarle Corporation’s business that are not historical facts are “forward-looking statements” that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see “Risk Factors” in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Tags: Albemarle, Albemarle Corporation, clean technologies, Earthwise, eco-friendly, Sustainability
Posted in Albemarle, Company Information, Energy, Flame Retardants, fire safety

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Albemarle Supports EPA Efforts to Address PBDEs

July 12th, 2012

BATON ROUGE, La., July 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – In a letter to Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB) today offered its support of the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to finalize its proposed actions on Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). Such action will ensure that decaBDE will not be imported into the United States after December 31, 2013.

In the letter, Dr. David Clary, Albemarle’s Chief Sustainability Officer, commented, “Albemarle supports the EPA proposal to amend the PBDE SNUR to designate manufacturing, importing, or processing of decaBDE for any use which is not ongoing after December 31, 2013 as a significant new use. Further, Albemarle supports the EPA’s efforts to promulgate a test rule for PBDEs if it determines that manufacture (including import) or processing of PBDEs has not ceased by December 31, 2013.”

Albemarle, in cooperation with the EPA, announced a voluntary phase out of its production of decaBDE in 2009. The company is on schedule to cease commercial production of decaBDE entirely by the end of 2012 in accordance with its agreement with EPA and will limit commercial sales within the United States in 2013 to only transportation and military applications requiring that additional transition time.

While many science-based and peer-reviewed studies have shown decaBDE to be safe in its intended use, Albemarle is committed to delivering safe and effective products with increasingly smaller environmental footprints. The company’s proactive innovation has allowed it to bring two polymeric flame retardants to market in the last few years: GreenArmor and GreenCrest. These polymeric flame retardants, marketed under the Earthwise™ portfolio, represent the latest fire safety technology and provide additional certainty about product safety as they can’t be absorbed by animal or human cells. GreenCrest has successfully completed review by EPA’s New Chemicals Program and GreenArmor has been submitted for such a review.

Tags: Albemarle Corporation, clean technologies, corporate sustainability, eco-friendly, Sustainability
Posted in Albemarle, EPA, Energy, Sustainability

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How Walmart is Using its Sustainability Metrics to Drive Productivity

June 8th, 2012

Whenever Walmart takes on a project, it creates ripples — if not tidal waves — throughout every industry it touches. So it’s somewhat surprising, looking back, to learn that when the retail giant first began tackling sustainability goals, it followed an anecdotal, aimless route, seeing an opportunity and going after it, without a system.

Of course, Walmart measured its suppliers and products on “everything under the sun” according to Jeff Rice, but it did not have a real framework until it launched the Sustainability Index in 2009.

Rice, Walmart’s director of sustainability, talked about the necessity of having that kind of framework, and of developing a systematic approach to supply chain sustainability — and especially the importance of metrics — during a panel at the Sustainable Brands conference in San Diego.

The Sustainability Index, which is not proprietary to Walmart but open for use by any company, serves as a tool to improve the products its customers favor, integrate sustainability into the business, increase product quality, find supply chain efficiency and drive the productivity loop by reducing costs.

“Building sustainability into the business helps you through the bad times and when things get hard, and through transitions in leadership. We also went through a major leadership transition at Walmart, when (Lee) Scott left and Mike (Duke) came on,” Rice said.

When asked about working with its many suppliers spread across the globe, he said the company approaches the challenge in bite-size chunks, developing a system that works in one country and then applying it elsewhere, so that the key has been to develop practical, actionable tools.

Most of Walmart’s suppliers have reacted positively, Rice said, especially since it’s shifted methods from the long, detailed questionnaires of the past that collected item-level information, but which resulted in a daunting and time-consuming task for its suppliers.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

Tags: clean technologies, corporate sustainability, eco-friendly, Sustainability
Posted in Company Information, Consumer attitudes, Energy, Sustainability

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Liquid-Cooled LED Bulbs Ready for Summer

June 2nd, 2012

Photo credit: Switch Lighting

Switch Lighting’s LED bulbs have similar technical specs to its competitors, but the startup is counting on clever design and good looks to stand out in a crowded field. The company plans to make its first three general-purpose light bulbs available this summer to lighting distributors and today is expected to introduce a three-way bulb and a 240-volt bulb for markets outside the U.S.

To learn more about LED bulbs, click here.

Tags: Albemarle Corporation, corporate sustainability, EPA, Green Chemistry, LED, Sustainability
Posted in Company Information, Consumer eco-products, Electric, Electronics, Energy, Sustainability

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McGreen, the Greening of McDonald’s

May 31st, 2012

Can McDonald’s and “Best of Green” be in the same sentence? At first it sounds like the mockumentary sequel to Best in Show. After all, those big golden arches are not only easy to see from the road, they are still to critics a figurative symbol of a dubious food supply, sprawl and our disposable society. The company is slow to change, too. Not only does it take a new item forever to appear on the menu, but ideas to make the company a more sustainable company are slow to catch on even if they are still just a dream.

But McDonald’s is changing. More of its locations are actually pleasant and even edgy, have wifi and are not the drab plastic prisons in which you spent your 1980s teenage years. On other fronts some catching up is still in order, as with its hazardous attempts at social media campaigns that have left its marketers’ faces as red as those strawberry sundaes. Across the pond in the United Kingdom, the company’s about face and re-about face on sourcing local chicken draw exasperated cries in London and beyond. But around the world, some interesting projects are occurring on waste, energy and green building.

To read about the new green projects, visit TriplePundit.

Tags: Albemarle Corporation, clean technologies, corporate sustainability, eco-friendly, full-cycle products, green business innovation, Sustainability
Posted in Chemistry, Energy, Green Chemistry, Green awards, Sustainability

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5 Technologies that are Helping the Military ‘Go Green’

April 25th, 2012

All branches of the US military are on the pursuit for energy-conscious technologies.

“Militaries that fail to innovate lose strategic advantage. Nations that fail to innovate lose economic edge. Clean energy innovation is an essential strategy for making the United States and its service men and women safer, stronger and more successful,” wrote the authors of the Pew report.

Below are 5 examples of technologies that are employed by the U.S. military that officials hope will turn out to be both environmentally sound and strategically advantageous in the long run.

On-Base Electric Vehicles – The military is beginning to make use of small electric cars on base. They are made from recycled plastic and can reach speeds of 25 mph. The military will be slower in rolling out “green” combat vehicles, since performance is paramount to troops’ safety.
Solar Power Shades – Solar shade helps to cool the tent that soldiers stay in while 72 panels absorb sunlight to produce two kilowatts of power a day.
FED – A Greener Humvee – The Fuel Efficient Ground Vehicle Demonstrator, or FED, would have the same capabilities as the M1114 Humvee but with about 70 percent greater fuel efficiency.
Hybrid-Electric Ships – The amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island is the only Navy ship with a hybrid-electric propulsion system, but the goal is to switch more of the fleet over to “green” engines.
Biofuel-Powered Aircraft – The Navy and Air Force have already demonstrated that they can fly fighter jets on a 50/50 mix of biofuel and standard jet fuel. The Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet flew on a blend derived from camelina seeds.

Tags: clean technologies, corporate sustainability, eco-friendly, environmental business innovations, green business innovation, green military, Sustainability
Posted in Biofuels, Consumer eco-products, Eco-regulation, Electric, Electronics, Energy, Sustainability, Transportation

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Albemarle Introduces Next Product in the Earthwise Portfolio of Sustainable, Eco-Friendly Solutions

April 12th, 2012

Innovative polymeric fire safety solution is result of technology license from Dow

(BATON ROUGE, La.) April 12, 2011–Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB), a leader in the development, manufacture and marketing of flame retardants, announced today that it has expanded its Earthwise™ platform of sustainable products by introducing a new polymeric flame retardant for use in extruded (XPS) and expanded (EPS) polystyrene applications.

This new technology, licensed from Dow Global Technologies LLC (DGTL), a subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW), will be commercialized under Albemarle’s Earthwise brand and provides a stable, high molecular weight, non-PBT (Persistent, Bioaccumulative, Toxic) polymeric technology for use in these demanding applications. This new technology is expected to become the preferred choice to meet critical fire safety requirements for both XPS and EPS.

Albemarle’s agreement to manufacture and sell this premium technology confirms the company’s commitment to provide customers with sustainable, innovative fire safety solutions that meet the increasing demands of global regulations and standards, such as energy efficiency and sustainable design for these thermal insulation materials.

“This expansion of our Earthwise portfolio is another sign of our position as the industry leader in flame retardants, and joins our other key polymeric platforms, Green Armor™ and our family of brominated polystyrene products, SAYTEX® HP-3010, HP-7010 and 621,” said Brian Carter, Division Vice President of global brominated flame retardants. “Albemarle expects to commercialize this new technology in 2014 and is already working closely with customers to fully qualify the product in both applications.”

Albemarle’s flame retardant business is part of the Company’s fire safety solutions within the Polymer Solutions business segment.

Whether consumers are watching a television, sitting on a sofa, taking a commercial airline flight, or swallowing ibuprofen to relieve a headache, Albemarle products are there making lives safer and more livable. For more information, visit www.earthwiseinside.com.

Albemarle Media Contact: Ashley Mendoza, (225) 388-7137, Ashley.Mendoza@albemarle.com

Albemarle Investor Relations Contact: Lorin Crenshaw, (225) 388-7322, Lorin.Crenshaw@albemarle.com

About The Dow Chemical Company
Dow (NYSE: DOW) combines the power of science and technology to passionately innovate what is essential to human progress. The Company connects chemistry and innovation with the principles of sustainability to help address many of the world’s most challenging problems such as the need for clean water, renewable energy generation and conservation, and increasing agricultural productivity. Dow’s diversified industry-leading portfolio of specialty chemical, advanced materials, agrosciences and plastics businesses delivers a broad range of technology-based products and solutions to customers in approximately 160 countries and in high growth sectors such as electronics, water, energy, coatings and agriculture. In 2011, Dow had annual sales of $60 billion and employed approximately 52,000 people worldwide. The Company’s more than 5,000 products are manufactured at 197 sites in 36 countries across the globe. References to “Dow” or the “Company” mean The Dow Chemical Company and its consolidated subsidiaries unless otherwise expressly noted. More information about Dow can be found at www.dow.com.

The Dow Chemical Company Media Contact: Erik van Oosten, (989) 636-5090, evanoosten@dow.com

Tags: Albemarle Corporation, clean technologies, corporate sustainability, Earthwise, eco-friendly, environmental business innovations, full-cycle products, Green Chemistry, Sustainability
Posted in Albemarle, Chemistry, Company Information, Energy, Global Business, Sustainability, Uncategorized

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Learn How to Measure Your Business Carbon Footprint

April 2nd, 2012

Carbon Trust launches new footprinting guide
One of the ways to understand your business’s environmental impact is to uncover its carbon footprint. Carbon Trust recently released a free guide to help you do just that. The guide shares how to perform two different kinds of eco-footprinting. The first helps businesses determine the carbon footprint of a particular product’s life cycle. The second helps businesses determine the footprint of the whole organization.

The guide gives clear, step-by-step instructions for calculating these footprints – a great value for free. You will need to register (for free) with Carbon Trust, and the end of the guide is devoted to outlining the ways Carbon Trust can help your business. If you’re looking to turn (or keep) your business green, check out sustainability planning, or consider attending a green conference in your industry.

Tags: clean technologies, eco-friendly, full-cycle products, Sustainability, sustainable business
Posted in Company Information, Consumer eco-products, Energy, Flame Retardants, Sustainability

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Boulder, CO Hits Green Roadblocks

March 21st, 2012

On the surface, Boulder, Colorado seems to be an environmentally-conscious city. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, “it was the first to levy a tax to protect open space” and approved “the nation’s first ‘carbon tax’ to fund energy-conservation programs.” But despite the city’s efforts to promote these programs and subsidize efforts like energy audits, Boulder’s residents don’t seem to be taking as much action as the city would have hoped for. The energy audits provide homeowners and business owners with recommendations for how to be more energy-efficient, yet the city has discovered that very few people are implementing the suggestions.

As a result, Boulder is planning to take its efforts one step further and actually do the work for residents through programs like “Two Techs in a Truck”. Boulder “plans to spend about $1.5 million in city funds and $370,000 in federal stimulus money to hire contractors to do basic upgrades for residents”. The city has chosen to promote these efforts by showing residents the financial benefits of saving energy. But not everyone appreciates the city pushing conservation on them.

For the full story on the challenges of a city ‘s sustainability, see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704320104575015920992845334.html

Have you hit some green roadblocks?

Tags: Albemarle Corporation, corporate sustainability, eco-friendly, environmental business innovations, Sustainability
Posted in Consumer attitudes, Consumer eco-products, EPA, Energy, Events, Green awards, Sustainability