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

by Joseph J. Romm

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 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 energyIn 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.

287 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

Dr. Joseph Romm is the editor of Climate Progress and a Senior Fellow at the American Progress. In 2009, Time magazine named him one of the “Heroes of the Environment″ and “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger.”

Romm was Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy during the Clinton Administration where he directed $1 billion in research, development, demonstration, and deployment of clean energy and carbon-mitigating technology. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. In 2008, Romm was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “distinguished service toward a sustainable energy future and for persuasive discourse on why citizens, corporations, and governments should adopt sustainable technologies.”

In 2007, TIME named Climate Progress one of the “Top 15 Green Websites,” writing that “Romm occupies the intersection of climate science, economics and policy…. On his blog and in his most recent book, Hell and High Water, you can find some of the most cogent, memorable, and deployable arguments for immediate and overwhelming action to confront global warming.” In 2009, Rolling Stone named Romm #88 on its list of The 100 “people who are reinventing America” calling him “America’s fiercest climate-change activist-blogger.”

In March 2009, The New York Times‘ Tom Friedman wrote that Romm is “a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org.” In April, U.S. News & World Report named Romm one of the 8 “most influential energy and environmental policymakers in the Obama era,” writing, “In terms of his cachet in the blogosphere, Joe Romm is something like the climate change equivalent of economist (and New York Times columnist) Paul Krugman.”