Post-Paris, The Sustainable Entrepreneurship MBA Now More Than Ever

From the Editors

In the wake of the kerfluffle over the United States’ exit from the Paris Climate Agreement, we at The Sustainable Entrepreneurship MBA believe, among others, two very important things.

First, ain’t no stoppin’ us now. Climate change and sustainability, and resource sustainability, represent the most significant economic and business development opportunities in a generation. The business and economic case for these opportunities — to say nothing of the environmental case — is powerful and, arguably, irreversible. According to the New York Times, these opportunities represent a $6 trillion market by 2030. The shift is happening, and the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement — while discouraging — will do little, if anything, to derail the immense problem solving opportunities, and rewards, around climate change.

Everyday, someone is breaking new ground in the production, conservation, or distribution of clean renewable energy. Everyday, someone is reinventing how we move around — how we transport ourselves and the things in our lives in revolutionary ways that save energy, space, and time. Everyday, someone is innovating and inventing new technologies that change the way we build, rebuild, heat, cool, and live in our homes and businesses while consuming as little as the earth’s resources as necessary.

In short, with or without the Paris Agreement capitalism, disrupted and reinvented, is a force — along with many others — to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems.

Second, our Sustainable Entrepreneurship MBA is part of the solution. More important than ever post-Paris, we must develop a new generation of business leaders who will build, innovate, disrupt, and reinvent climate change-focused enterprises in a world that demands it. In other words, UVM’s Sustainable Entrepreneurship MBA is more important than ever and its graduates increasingly more vital to sustainable businesses.

While traditional MBA education simply turns out people educated in business models, approaches, and ethics that are more a part of the problem than the solution, our mission is to prepare leaders to transform today’s businesses and invent tomorrow’s ventures through a lens of sustainability.

We believe our students and alumni are uniquely prepared to be change agents and to lead within enterprises — or start new ones — that are solving the world’s most pressing problems — including climate change, and with or without a Paris Climate Agreement.

And, in this new reality, we believe our students will be in greater demand by businesses, enterprises, and organizations than ever before.

Learn more, and apply to a program that will not only change your life, but change the world, too.

From the Web: REI Moves Ahead With Its Green Initiatives

Despite President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the historic Paris Climate Accord on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, many American businesses are moving forward with green initiatives. That is because going green will likely be less of a financial burden to corporate treasury groups as time goes by, said author and former Executive Forum speaker Andrew Winston.

Winston noted that major companies like REI, Boeing, UPS Wal-Mart, Google, Microsoft and Apple all use substantial amounts of renewable energy, and are reaping the benefits. “It’s not a small experiment anymore; there are tons of big companies like this,” he said. “And all of them see it as a good deal because they’re saving money.”

Learn more (via AFP) >>

From the Web: Eating on the Brink: How Food Could Prevent a Climate Disaster

If we want to address climate change, we have to talk about food.

What we eat is responsible for a whopping one-third of all atmospheric warming today. Global meat and dairy production together accounts for roughly 15 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, making the livestock industry worse for the climate than every one of the world’s planes, trains, and cars combined.

Christine Figueres, who led the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, reminds us that climate stability requires limiting warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius. To do that, we need to start reversing current emissions trajectory, start a downward turn, by 2020. Yes, 2020. That means engaging every sector, food included.

Learn more (via CIVIL EATS) >>

From the Web: Sustainable business at a crossroads, again

In 2008, when MIT Sloan Management Review and the Boston Consulting Group began their sustainability research program, it was the start of the Great Recession, and pundits were predicting the end of sustainability on the assumption that executives would turn away from corporate social responsibility initiatives in favor of “making money.”

But survey results in that first year held a surprise. Contrary to common wisdom, a large number of companies were doubling down on, rather than abandoning, their sustainability commitments.

Investing in business sustainability turned out to be a good bet. Today, more than a dozen companies, from Walmart to Toyota, have billion-dollar sustainable business lines — making money indeed.

But eight years on, these so-called “green giants” are still in the minority.

MIT SMR’s latest report, “Corporate Sustainability at a Crossroads,” shows that most businesses have yet to crack the sustainability code. And now, after our eight annual surveys of tens of thousands of managers and more than 150 thought-leader interviews, we know why: Sustainability success requires a long-term, strategic-level commitment combined with business model innovation that goes way beyond changing light bulbs or charitable giving. Many managers understandably recoil from this level of sustainability commitment.

This brings us to the crossroads, because the election of Donald Trump seems to offer businesses a way out.

Learn more (via GreenBiz) >>

From the Web: Ikea’s solution to peak stuff? Invest in plastics recycling plant

Ikea has bought forest in Romania and the Baltics, wind farms in Poland and now it is investing in a plastic recycling plant in the Netherlands.

For the Swedish furniture giant, extending control across its supply chain in this way could help it become more sustainable by avoiding environmentally damaging activities like illegal deforestation and plastic waste.

Learn more (via The Guardian) >>

From the Web: Here’s How Thousands of B Corps are Making the World a Better Place

More than 2,000 B Corps in 50-plus countries—and they’re all making the world a better place. Kim Coupounas, the director of B Lab, has been a part of the B Corporation community since 2007, after she and her husband cofounded an outdoor brand called GoLite. GoLite went on to become a Certified B Corp as it made beautiful outdoor equipment and apparel in an environmentally and socially responsible way.

Over the years, Coupounas has watched the B Corp world flourish under the nonprofit B Lab, which develops and maintains the standards underpinning the B Impact Assessment companies undergo to pursue B Corp certification. “I’ve spent the past three years engaging and growing the community of B Corporations in Colorado,” Coupounas says. “In three years, we more than tripled the size of the B Corp community in Colorado and generated a number of truly innovative practices that are being used throughout the global B Corp community now to enhance B Lab’s mission overall. I’m now focused on reaching companies beyond Colorado and getting them on the path to measuring and improving their impacts.”

Learn more (via gb&d Magazine) >>

From the Web: Solar Innovations Mean We Can Bring Power To The 1 Billion Who Still Live Without It

Electrifying the entire world is an important part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Recent advances in renewable energy and microgrids means that it might be possible to do it quickly–and cleanly.

Learn more (via Fast Company) >>

From the Web: Germany Breaks Record, Gets 85% Of Electricity From Renewables

 

 

 

 

 

 

On April 30, Germany established a new national record for renewable energy use. Part of that day (during the long May 1 weekend), 85% of all the electricity consumed in Germany was being produced from renewables such as wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power. Patrick Graichen of Agora Energiewende Initiative says a combination of breezy and sunny weather in the north and warm weather in the south saw Germany’s May 1 holiday weekend powered almost exclusively by renewable resources.

Learn more (via Clean Technica) >>

From the Web: Light-powered device purifies air and generates clean energy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5.5 million people died prematurely because of air pollution back in 2013 – and half of those people lived in India or China. Air pollution continues to plague people around the world today, but now researchers from KU Leuven and the University of Antwerp have found a way to transform that dirty air into energy. They designed an air purifying device able to fit in a person’s hand that only needs light to work.

The groundbreaking device houses two small chambers divided by a membrane. In one chamber air is purified; in the other hydrogen gas is generated. Nanomaterials in the device act as catalysts to both break down pollution and produce the gas. Scientist Sammy Verbruggen of both institutions, who’s lead author on a study published recently about the device in ChemSusChem, said the hydrogen gas can be stored and used as fuel in the future.

Learn more (via inhabitant) >>

From the Web: Higher, cheaper, sleeker: wind turbines of the future

With the UK government ending subsidies for onshore wind and the Trump administration pushing for a return to coal, you might think the wind power revolution had run out of puff.

Far from it.

The cost of energy from offshore wind in Britain has fallen by a third since 2012, and wind accounts for over 40% of new capacity in the US, representing an annual investment of $13 billion. Now next-generation wind technologies promise to make wind energy safer and more affordable – if they can make the difficult jump from research prototypes to commercial products.

Learn more (via The Guardian) >>