Publications

Cool Companies: How the Best Businesses Boost Profits and Productivity by Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Author Info

By Special Arrangement with Island Press

Joseph J. Romm

May 1999

Click here for Cool-Companies.org, the official site of the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, a one-stop-shop that helps organizations reduce greenhouse gas emissions with practical advice, tools and technologies.

Details

Praise for Cool Companies:

"It would seem that Dr. Joseph Romm is a 21st century alchemist, but here is his book full of examples of companies — micro-small to mega-large — that are improving the environment while simultaneously increasing their profits. Their experiences are an invaluable guide to a more hopeful future and a refutation of the claims by too many in industry that they can't afford to be good citizens by cleaning up their polluting effluents." —Walter Cronkite

"Joe Romm draws on his rich experience as the senior U.S. DOE efficiency manager to show how energy efficiency investments improve productivity, yield high return on investment, and mitigate climate change. Industry, universities, medical centers and commercial building owners can all take advantage of the proven ideas in this book."—Thomas R. Casten, President and CEO, Trigen Energy Corporation, and author of Turning Off the Heat

Despite ongoing negotiations, consensus has not yet been reached on what action will be taken to combat global warming. A number of companies have looked beyond the current stalemate to see the prospect of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions not as a roadblock to growth and innovation but as a unique opportunity to increase profits and productivity. These "cool" companies understand the strategic importance of reducing heat-trapping emissions and have worked to cut their emissions by fifty percent or more. In the process, they have not only reduced their energy bill, but have increased their productivity, sometimes dramatically.

In Cool Companies, energy expert Joseph Romm describes the experiences of these remarkable firms, as he presents more than fifty case studies in which bottom line improvements have been achieved by improving processes, increasing energy efficiency, and adopting new technologies. Romm places efforts to reduce emissions in the context of proven corporate strategies, showing managers how they can build or retrofit their operations with the latest technologies to reduce emissions and achieve quick returns on the investment. Case studies explain:

the concept of "lean production" and why systematic efforts to reduce emissions so often lead to productivity gains

how changes in office and building design can significantly increase productivity, greatly compounding gains achieved from increased energy efficiency

options for "cool" power - from cogeneration to solar, wind, and geothermal energy

energy efficiency in manufacturing, including motors and motor systems, steam, and process energy

In profiling successful companies such as DuPont, 3M, Compaq, Xerox, Toyota, Verifone, Perkin-Elmer, and Centerplex, among many others, Cool Companies turns on its head the notion that the effort to combat global warming will come with massive costs to the industrial sector. It is a unique and essential business book for anyone concerned with increasing profits and productivity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

About the author — Joseph Romm is executive director of the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, a nonprofit consulting firm. He served as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, where he directed the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Among his books are Lean and Clean Management (Kodansha, 1994) and The Once and Future Superpower (Morrow, 1992).

Other Info

288 pp., 1999, ISBN 1-55963-709-9

Publication Price

$ 24.95 each

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