Category Archives: VROI

Tilting our Windmills: Vertical Turbines in the Fast Lane

Anyone who’s changed a tire while semi-trailers roar past, or stood at the entrance to a subway tunnel as the train approaches, knows how much wind energy these machines generate. Yet that force blows wastefully away, dissipating in some field or side-tunnel.

What if, instead, we harvested this energy to light our homes and run our machines?

Turns out the cost of upright windmills – rather than the behemoths of the countryside – is quite low. The cost of the wind? Free as air.

Garbage in, Electrons Out? Thermophilic Bacteria Do Both

The electrical properties of certain bacteria have been studied for a long time. But now, it is believed the critters living and creating biofilm mats in certain Yellowstone thermal pools could be made to generate enough electricity to power small electronic devices. They could do this in some of the harshest environments on Earth, while gobbling PCBs and other environmental toxins for lunch.

It may read like science fiction but, down the road, we may be powering our phones and computers with these microscopic, pollutant-munching, electron-streaming microbes.

4D Materiality™: An Old Tool Gets a Makeover

“The pilots’ association … seemed simply indestructible. And yet … in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, the association and the noble science of piloting, were things of the dead and pathetic past!“ – Mark Twain (1883) When Simple Tools Were EnoughWe’re heading to an important meeting in heavy traffic, unfamiliar terrain, a…

Gonna Build a Lego House? Move Over Ed (Sheeran), You’ve Got Company

For all our elegance of design, the deconstruction of our buildings invariably ends in massive piles of toxic rubble.

Architects and ingineers are working to unbuild our structures as thoughtfully as we build them.

The useful lives of such Reversible Buildings transcend market conditions, making them far safer investments than standard structures.

The question is, will we take the wrecking ball to our current model of construction?

Vietnam Varietals: The Race to Save Rice

Rice is the single most essential food crop on Earth, the staple food of billions. Yet around the world, many rice varieties – and millions of other plant species – are being sorely tried by climate conditions they aren’t genetically adapted to.

Still, some varieties can manage higher temperatures, wetter or drier conditions, and various elevations, better than others.

Within its slender curves, Vietnam boasts temperate zones, tropical rainforests, mountain highlands, monsoon-swept flatlands and – to the south and east – more than 2,000 miles of corrugated coastline. In other words, it’s an ideal place to search for such varieties.

This is not an academic exercise. Whole populations may soon be dependent upon the success of such a breeding program.

April and Paris: Is This the Onset of
the De-Carboniferous Period?

In early 2020, we forecast the coming legal challenges to unsustainable behavior in Blame: The Worm Will Turn. That April, almost exactly a year before the landmark legal decisions described below, we wrote about forensic climate accounting, saying: As costs and damages from human-driven climate events continue to rise dramatically, so will lawsuits against Big Carbon industries…

Floating Homes: The Tides of History Meet Historically High Tides

In the next few years, hundreds of millions of people are going to be underwater without creative solutions to hold back, manage, or adapt to higher sea levels.

For submerged or chronically engulfed communities to survive, they will require homes that can withstand such conditions.

Where relocation is impractical or impossible, floating homes are an obvious part of the solution

NRS: Finding ROI Using
Customer Science™ and InVEST™

Paddling giant NRS wondered what might happen if consumers knew of the company’s values.

Would revenues increase? What value would the market place on brand-level sustainability commitments vs. product-level initiatives?

Using our Customers Science™ approach, we ran scenarios using the Valutus InVEST™ model and found… well, let’s just say doing good does indeed lead to doing well, so long as people know about it.

Vertical Solar II: If You Build It, Build PV In

Carbon emissions related to buildings – already a nightmare – are expected to double by 2050 if action at scale doesn’t occur.

But what if skyscrapers could be turned into full-scale solar farms?

Humanity has the materials and the technology to do this. Does it have the will?

Danone Commits €2B to Climate Change Programs

While all companies have climate footprints, some have much bigger feet. Which is why having the heavyweights on board is necessary.

One of these, Danone, has now committed to putting €2 billion-plus into a “climate acceleration plan.”

Any realistic chance of reaching the IPCC’s deadline for carbon will require more – many more – initiatives like this.

Even so, every company that jumps on the pile is helpful