Renewable Energy Saves Fortune 100 Companies $1.1B Annually

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).

Comments

Saved?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Saved?

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Careful

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Careful

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:So... how much did they spend to get this savin

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Citation?

[stomv]

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.

Re:So... how much did they spend to get this savin

[TapeCutter]

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.

Re:Actual savings?

[wiredlogic]

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

drops in the bucket

[Jeremy Erwin]

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.

Re:drops in the bucket

[afidel]

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.

Re:drops in the bucket

[KingOfBLASH]

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.

Re:drops in the bucket

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:So... how much did they spend to get this savin

[riverat1]

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.

Re:Actual savings?

[cirby]

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.

drops in the bucket

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:So... how much did they spend to get this savin

[sycodon]

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.