MONEY TO BE MADE:

A Shift to Green: Driven by profit and the opportunity to shape regulations, major corporations are backing stronger measures to reduce global warming (Miguel Bustillo, June 12, 2005, LA Times)

American corporations are increasingly calling for action on global warming, sensing a business opportunity in cutting greenhouse gases while hoping to shape regulations they believe are inevitable. [...]

Although their rhetoric is rife with references to protecting planet Earth, some of the corporations acknowledge that their newfound focus on global warming is driven by opportunity for profit. Duke Energy would like to build a new nuclear power plant, a type of electricity generation that does not emit greenhouse gases, for instance, while GE wants to expand sales of wind power turbines and pollution-control equipment.

"We believe we can help improve the environment and make money doing it," GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt said last month in a speech at George Washington University that attracted widespread notice. "We see that green is green."

Many multinational companies, which already deal with carbon reduction regulations in other parts of the world, believe it's only a matter of time before they will be required in the U.S. Rather than resist the inevitable, they want to help shape new regulations in a way that will give them a competitive advantage.

In addition, some companies fear that in the absence of federal action, many cities and states, which already are proposing their own regulations, will create a hodgepodge of compliance standards across the country.

Those concerns were amplified this month, when California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order that pledges to reduce the state's emissions by more than 80% in the next half-century.

"We don't need a patchwork of inconsistent state or local regulations to complicate and increase the cost of compliance," Duke Energy Chairman Paul Anderson said in an April speech to Charlotte, N.C., business leaders in which he surprised the electric power industry by advocating a federal tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels. "Yet a patchwork is exactly what we are getting, due to federal inaction.

Maybe economic conservatives would feel better if they just thought of it as creative destruction.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 12, 2005 8:44 AM