Cool Companies: How The Best Businesses Boost Profits And Productivity By Cutting Greenhouse-Gas Emissions

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 a leading expert on hydrogen, fuel cells, and advanced transportation technologies. Romm is a principal with Capital E and Executive Director and founder of the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions. He is the principal investigator for the National Science Foundation project, “Future Directions for Hydrogen Energy Research and Education.”

Romm was Acting Assistant Secretary at DOE's billion-dollar Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary. He helped lead formulation of the Administration's climate change technology strategy.

Romm is author of the first book to benchmark corporate best practices for using advanced energy technologies including fuel cells to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: Cool Companies: How the Best Businesses Boost Profits and Productivity By Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions. He has written and lectured widely on advanced transportation technologies, hydrogen, fuel cells, distributed energy, business and environment issues.

He is co-author of "MidEast Oil Forever," the cover story of the April 1996 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, which predicted that the major oil-exporting nations would regain pricing control of oil within the decade and discussed alternative energy strategies.