Huffington Post reports top American Corporations are weighing in on policy as they seek to meet sustainability goals, noting AEE's role in clean energy policy work. Read excerpts below and the entire Huffington Post piece here.
The fossil fuel industry has historically steered American energy and environmental policy. Now, retail and technology companies are grabbing at the wheel. Corporations are making big pledges to cut emissions or go carbon free, in part by powering their operations with electricity generated from renewable sources like wind and solar. Hundreds of companies, including Apple, Ikea, Facebook, Google and Danone have committed to going 100% renewable...
“There is real corporate interest in getting renewables, not just for PR purposes and reputational enhancement, but also based on economics and eco-efficiency,” said Zdravka Tzankova, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University who studies environmental policy. Renewable energy is increasingly attractive to companies; the costs for large-scale wind and solar technologies are comparable with those of traditional energy generation technologies and continue to fall. Yet little progress has been made toward decarbonizing the U.S. energy system...
The big heroes in this new trend of bringing big corporate energy users to advocate in favor of renewables are groups like Ceres, Advanced Energy Economy, World Resources Institute — these nonprofits that are trying to mobilize the corporate political influence and power behind the pro-renewables policy agenda...
If Ceres and AEE and other environmental groups manage to mobilize the political power and policy influence of corporate renewable buyers, I think it could be a game-changer. These are very powerful companies — we’re talking about tech companies like Google, Apple, Salesforce, Facebook, and some large retailers, Walmart, IKEA — and they have a lot of power over state legislators...
Read the entire Huffington Post piece here.