Most people think of chemically-based batteries when they think about energy storage. Yet energy can be stored in all sorts of ways, depending on the operation using it and the length of time it needs to be stored. An interesting selection of energy storage options that have been showing up recently as the renewables market grows, so I thought I’d …
This is the fourth in a series of posts exploring the growing opportunities of strategic sustainability. The first summarised 10 hidden opportunities and the second explored 4 levels of sustainability strategy. Then we started to explore the opportunities. First up was “The trap of one-way business thinking“. Today we’re talking volume vs value. Business performance has traditionally been measured in …
A recent start-up in Portland, Oregon is social car sharing. Instead of renting from a carshare company, you rent cars by the hour from people around you. So “waste” unused car hours are reduced and the car owner gets some extra income. (Part of the scheme includes management of risk issues such as insurance.) It’s a smart combination of the …
I got seriously interested in sustainability years ago, during post-graduate studies. I was fortunate to be introduced through great books like “Natural Capitalism”, “Cradle to Cradle” and “Biomimicry”. Along with a mass of detail and lots of “reasons why” sustainability was important, I found a set of straightforward strategies that challenge out-of-date 20th century assumptions about the “how” of doing business. I …