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Renewable Energy Saves Fortune 100 Companies $1.1B Annually

Posted by Soulskill on from the powered-by-hamsters dept.

Lucas123 writes: A new report authored by several environmental groups say data shows more than half of Fortune 100 companies collectively saved more than $1.1B annually by reducing carbon emissions and rolling out renewable energy projects. According to the report, 43% of Fortune 500 companies, or 215 in all, have also set targets in one of three categories: greenhouse gas reduction, energy efficiency and renewable energy. When narrowed to just the Fortune 100, 60% of the companies have set the same clean energy goals. Some of the companies leading the industry in annual clean energy savings include UPS ($200M), Cisco ($151M), PepsiCo ($121M) and United Continental ($104M).

37 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Saved? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How much of that "savings" is tax breaks/subsidies?

    1. Re:Saved? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't see any problem with that if the taxes and subsidies are there to offset the damage done by pollution. You produce less pollution, you pay less towards dealing with it. Maybe we even off an incentive to get you to invest, with the expectation that it will cause prices to fall more quickly.

      --
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    2. Re:Saved? by MrL0G1C · · Score: 2

      Solar is already price competitive in some places and is set to get cheaper. In Italy Ikea are set to save on costs with solar without any subsidy. As solar prices drop, this will become possible in many more places, warehouse roofs are ideal for solar.

      http://cleantechnica.com/2014/...

      All that's needed is investment into large scale storage. There are a lot of ways this can be done, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

      --
      Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
  2. Careful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you tell that to republicans there may be spontaneous mouth foaming.

    1. Re:Careful by bhlowe · · Score: 2

      Its VERY easy to get a real, positive return on a solar investment within a few years. That's because electricity rates are high, and solar panels are now cheap. Only government organizations can manage to screw up such an easy return on investment... (For instance, schools, government buildings such as the White House, etc. where the only concern is appearing green.) For dollars spent vs. dollars saved, solar is a fantastic investment, even without government subsidies.

    2. Re:Careful by Kenja · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How much did it cost Saint Reagan to remove the solar panels from the White House?

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    3. Re:Careful by funwithBSD · · Score: 2

      I would like to see your numbers.

      Despite half of my system being tax credits, it is still taking 7 years to earn back the investment.

      If I still lived in Milpitas, with PG&E gouging me, it would take 4 or 5 years.

      Of course, I did not need an air conditioner there, so I used a lot less power.

      --
      Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
    4. Re:Careful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Aggressive skepticism has been the response to every single environmental conservation claim in my memory since the government recommended people turn off the lights when they left work (remember those light bulb stickers people stuck to the light switches to remind you?), and it turned out that companies' power bills did, in fact, go down (le shock!).

      Every single time, we get a round of "nuh uh! There's no way them environmental hippies could save money! Imma gonna go burn tires to prove them wrong!"

      By the time the "fad" has reached actual corporations with stockholders and accountants, you can be pretty sure that the beancounters have crunched the numbers and come up with a good reason for it.

      If you're going to claim that its due to a tax credit somewhere, I'd point out that at this point, most everyone is assuming the next administration will be Republican and will probably cancel all the environmental regulations and credits again.

    5. Re:Careful by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 2

      This is a silly objection. That isn't how payback times are used.

      Payback time is a quick indication of return on investment. You then compare that return on investment with the other options available to you, such as leaving the money in the bank.

      If you included interest rates in payback time, you'd need to be constantly adjusting it as rates changed, and it would differ for different entities depending on their access to finance. Instead you keep it simple, and each entity has its own idea (based on circumstances and current interest rates) of what the effective payback time is of leaving the money in the bank (or not borrowing it, or investing it in other opportunities.) (For example, a start-up is likely to require a very short payback time - they're strapped for cash and are trying to get their Big New Idea to market where they hope it will make a fortune. Up-front money is then very expensive compared to down-the-road money. For them, it may make sense to lease a supercomputer even if buying it would have a two year payback time.)

      What is missing from this analysis is depreciation of assets. After 6.4 years, money in the bank will have depreciated much less than the solar cells. Payback time is a rough guide - it tells you whether it is worth your while doing a more detailed analysis including finance cost, depreciation, tax implications etc.

      --
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    6. Re:Careful by afidel · · Score: 2

      Cost of capital for well rated companies is around 4.25%, at most it will add a few months to the roi if you're looking at 6-7 years otherwise.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    7. Re:Careful by smooth+wombat · · Score: 2

      So...you mean it has to be subsidized.

      Yes, just like sugar, corn, soybeans and football stadiums.

      Your point being. . .?

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  3. Meanwhile... by bhlowe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Meanwhile, people without the ability to harvest energy from the sun and reap the tax benefits are getting socked with energy bills doubling every 5-7 years. (My average $500+/mo energy bills are why I'm getting solar installed this month!)

    1. Re:Meanwhile... by geekoid · · Score: 2

      Assuming you can move. Moving requires money, it means breaking with contact, it means needing a new job.
      If it was easy, everyone would live in Hawaii.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    2. Re:Meanwhile... by Harlequin80 · · Score: 2

      Energy Prices in Brisbane Australia range around the $0.27/kwh........

      A $1200 bill a quarter is high but common for a lot of larger families (5+ people)

    3. Re:Meanwhile... by kolbe · · Score: 2

      California here!

      2,750sq ft. occupied by 5, $120 per month.

      Do you run every appliance continuously or run a casino out of your home?

    4. Re:Meanwhile... by dbIII · · Score: 2

      Energy Prices in Brisbane Australia range around the $0.27/kwh

      Yet the wholesale price at the generators is close to the lowest in the world. A fake competition "market" made up of local monopolies in the middle is fucking everyone over in that situation and driving people to solar to get away from the price gouging.

  4. Re:So... how much did they spend to get this savin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These companies would not stay in business for long if it wasn't saving them more than it was costing them. Put the tinfoil hat away.

  5. Citation? by stomv · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Germany doesn't sell daytime power "at a loss". Power at night on the European grid doesn't sell for high prices. Show some citations, ye of eyebrow raising claims.

    --
    Support a few technologists in Washington.
    1. Re:Citation? by budgenator · · Score: 2

      Germany doesn't sell daytime power "at a loss". Power at night on the European grid doesn't sell for high prices. Show some citations, ye of eyebrow raising claims.

      Well let's see;

      Over the weekend, prices on the power exchange in Germany/Austria (Phelix) fell to roughly -2 cents per kilowatt-hour for peak prices and were also slightly negative at around -0.3 cents for baseload power. The effect of solar and wind in France was even more dramatic, though the roles of baseload and peak power were reversed, with the former costing -4 cents and the latter -2 cents. Negative power prices on the weekend

      Selling at a negative price is pretty much the ultimate definition of "at a loss". This is reinforced by

      Lower prices “leave a trail of blood in our balance sheet,” Bernhard Guenther, chief financial officer at RWE, Germany’s biggest power producer, Germany’s New Coal Plants Push Power Glut to 4-Year High

      While the baseload coal plants are losing money;

      Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs.
      Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity," Allnoch told Reuters. "Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over." Germany sets new solar power record, institute says

      That's a lot of power to have to replace when the sun goes down or the weather turns to shit.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  6. Re:So... how much did they spend to get this savin by TapeCutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Jebus do you people not understand the word "save"? In your example you have spent $80K. Aside from that some very effective measures don't even need capital expenditure, for example, the giant multi-national I work for has saved millions by implementing simple things such as getting people to turn their desktop off before going home, teleconferencing in preference to flying, etc. When you have 180K employees these two simple measures alone will add up to millions in savings.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  7. Actual savings? by cirby · · Score: 2

    Not from "reducing carbon emissions and rolling out renewable energy projects."

    They saved money by increasing energy efficiency.

    And you can bet that a huge chunk of that is just replacing incandescent bulbs with LEDs. These are HUGE companies with many, many employees. A savings of $1.1 billion is relatively tiny overall...

    1. Re:Actual savings? by wiredlogic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Most huge commercial operations are using fluorescent lighting in their facilities. Switching to LED en masse would entail a loss.

      --
      I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
    2. Re:Actual savings? by spitzak · · Score: 2

      You are certainly correct that the savings are due to increasing energy efficiency.

      However it is not from putting in LED lights. They were already using fluorescent lights so this is not helping anywhere near as much. Also LEDs are not that cheap yet. It is from free things: getting all the monitors to go into power-save mode at night, turning down the heat or AC, etc.

    3. Re:Actual savings? by cirby · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A lot of companies are switching from old-school fluorescents (which aren't quite as efficient) to LEDs as the fixtures wear out. And yes, they do wear out, along with things like ballasts. There are a LOT of the old T12 fluorescents out there still, not to mention the newer (but still somewhat outdated) T8.

      They also make LED tubes now - a line of LEDs in a package the same size as the old fluorescent tubes. They cost a lot, but over the long run, they're cheaper to run. Once you include lowering air conditioning costs and less manpower spent replacing tubes, they're often worth the money. All you need to do is bypass the ballast (which also saves money in the long run - those things wear out too).

      A lot of factory floors used mercury vapor lights, and those are going away as they get old, replaced with clusters of LEDs.

  8. perfect sense by slashmydots · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Intel builds a new chip-making plant once every decade approximately because they cost double digit billions of dollars. They don't pay off for years and years but smart corporations play the long game. A lot of green technologies pay for themselves in 2-10 years and after that they turn into magical free money machines. So logically corporations that are smart implement them.

  9. drops in the bucket by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Some of the companies leading the industry in annual clean energy savings include UPS ($200M), Cisco ($151M), PepsiCo ($121M) and United Continental ($104M).

    Annual Revenues:

    UPS: 55.4 billion
    Cisco: 48.6 billion
    PepsiCo: 66.4 billion
    United Continental: 38.3 billion

    United Continental only posted 571 million in profits last year, so yes, those savings definitely helped.
    The others? Cisco: 9.9 billion; PepsiCo: $6.7 billion, UPS: $4.3 billion-- the savings reported are akin to rounding errors. It's not all that persuasive.

    1. Re:drops in the bucket by afidel · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How is a 1.5% bump in profit for Cisco or 2% for UPS a rounding error? Most CFOs would kill to find an extra 1.5%, or put another way it's one fewer round of layoffs to meet Wallstreet's latest estimate.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    2. Re:drops in the bucket by KingOfBLASH · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Specious argument. When you break a $100 bill at the grocery store, and the change is less than $20, do you tell the cashier to keep it because in terms of your net salary per year it's "rounding error"?

      Money is a limited resource, and no matter how much a company makes, I can almost guarantee you there was some one who didn't get the budget they wanted due to scarcity of resources.

      Additionally, energy efficient lighting savings keep adding up. It's not like cisco will just save $151 mio. They'll save it year over year, which may turn out to be an additional few billion to their bottom line.

    3. Re:drops in the bucket by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Filling people's heads with the idea that we can use less energy

      Actually, it's the idea that we can waste less energy. So you started out with a straw man. But wait, there's less!

      the idea that we can use less energy as part of the solution is feeding them bullshit.

      In fact, EVs are so much more efficient than ICEs that we can use less energy. Further, more of the energy can efficiently come from clean, renewable sources. Since EVs run on electricity, they can better run on solar power than can cars with ICEs. It's true that you could use the electricity to make liquid fuels, but that would be grossly inefficient; even more inefficient than burning fossil fuels (let us ignore the CO2 for the scope of this conversation, which shouldn't be hard since that's SOP for most societies) and producing electricity to power EVs. It's also true that you can make panels in a dirty, dirty way, but that's a mere distraction in the face of coal's output (even ignoring the CO2) and it's also less true than ever. Today's panels are generally designed with recycling in mind, and they have a lower energy cost of production than ever.

      As I see nuclear as the only viable option for generating the amount of baseload we're going to need for the likes of electric cars, that fills people's heads with the idea that we don't need nuclear, which is also problematic.

      It's problematic only for your view. But battery technology continues to progress, and at the point when EVs have more range than they need (coming soon to a highway near you) they can reasonably be used to smooth out the dips. As well, there are numerous power storage projects in the works right now, and there's no signs that they will slow down. It's far from proven that we require nuclear power, and it's far from proven that we can manage the waste in a responsible manner. Get back to me when we don't have years and tons of nuclear waste just lying around in conditions not in fact all that different from Fukushima.

      --
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    4. Re:drops in the bucket by jez9999 · · Score: 2

      Get back to me when we don't have years and tons of nuclear waste just lying around in conditions not in fact all that different from Fukushima.

      What, and that nuclear power's fault and not the fault of incompetent lawmakers and intransigent greenies?

      --
      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
    5. Re:drops in the bucket by jez9999 · · Score: 2

      Well it's already solved in places with competent regulators, so don't try pretending it isn't.

      --
      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
  10. Re:So... how much did they spend to get this savin by riverat1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So if I spend 80k on a new car to save 1k a year in energy costs, is this a win too?

    That depends on the difference in price between a non-energy saving car you might have bought and the energy saving car you might have bought. Same think with renewable energy. If you need some new source of energy to replace an old source that's worn out what's the cost difference between your various options vs. what you save in production costs after it's installed.

  11. drops in the bucket by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    wtf is wrong with you people?

    its turns out that making modest cuts in energy consumption isn't that painful, saves some money,
    and may have longer term benefits

    maybe I can understand the 'saving the purple spotted toad is costing jobs damn liberals' attitude, but
    you guys have to piss on this? turning off the lights at night?

    god fucking forbid we didn't waste as much energy as possible. imagonna leave my truck running all night
    just to show i'm a true patriot

    assholes

  12. Re:So... how much did they spend to get this savin by sycodon · · Score: 3, Informative

    These companies would be more than willing to throw money away if they can plaster "We're Green" on all their prospectus papers and advertisements.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  13. Avg CEO earned more than 11 million by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    11 million times 100 = 1.1 billion.

    So the headline should be, "Renewable Energy Savings By Fortune 100 Doesn't Even Cover CEO's Salary"

  14. Old Story Soon Forgotten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    After the Arab oil embargo, the US funded a program for business education on energy conservation in industrial plants. It was a six month course with a lot of solid material. Applying this to the processes in the chemical plant where I was working saved a ton of money -- well beyond the costs of implementation. And in general the manufacturing processes ran better. But changes like this are not a one time fix but an attitude, much like cyber security. The abandonment of small cars and rush into SUVs was symptomatic of a collective 'we dont need to care anymore...' attitude. So from where I sit this just looks like a rediscovery of the lessons of the past (so many mistakes...). Industry is different from residential -- in the later good design is probably more important than ongoing management. In the former, from my experience, production requires active management to maintain that balance between costs and output. Given the costs of most RE gear, my bet is that the real savings are in energy management and not covering the roof with solar panels or the parking lot with wind turbines. Same old story -- maybe it will persist better this time.

  15. Re:Details Please? by dbIII · · Score: 2

    However for some others price gouging by their local electricity monopoly provides a financial payback for solar over time in as little as two years in some places. That's trumps all you've written above in those places even though it's an artificial distortion of the market. That's also why those Chinese panel makers are making a fortune selling to those people, a fortune that could have gone to the US companies that developed the technology if they hadn't been discouraged for ideological reasons.