Corporate environmental strategy (CES) involves the tools, management programs, processes, and product development choices that allow a firm to pursue competitive advantage through environmental management strategies.
Management scholars such as Deming and Juran spent several decades after World War II making sure that quantity and quality processes entered the plans of corporate strategy, along with the classical concerns of price, technical quality, and distribution matters. In a similar but often more diffuse manner, the proponents of corporate environmental strategy began, in the l970s through the l990s, to alter the standard decision models of corporate strategy to include externalities that challenged the future growth of corporations, such as new environmental regulations or irregularities in energy markets and pricing. (more…)
As a reaction to these historical perspectives, the building industry has witnessed a certain rise in design responses to regional climatic conditions, as part of a powerful efficiency and energy conservation push since the 1970s. More recently, the zero green house gas emsission and office building has become a design concept as part of strategies to introduce urban renewable energy as an increasing contributor to managing urban energy supplies. (more…)
The age of industrialization came into full force through the modern exploration and use of fossil fuels. As one of its most striking phenomena, the rapid expansion of cities throughout the late 19th and the 20th centuries was a direct outcome of the fossil fuel energy economy as well. (more…)
Government expenditures on energy R&D, energy conservation have risen steadily over the past decade, but only two countries, Japan and the United States, are responsible for the bulk of expenditures in this area. Until the mid-1990s, global conservation expenditures were more or less split equally among the transportation, industrial, and residential sectors, but during the past few years, there has been a sharp rise in industrial conservation R&D efforts. (more…)
There are typically costs of adoption that are not included in simple cost-effectiveness energy calculations. It is by no means costless to learn how a technological improvement fits into a home or firm or to learn about reliable suppliers. Even after basic information about a technology has been disseminated, the purchase price of a new product is only a lower bound on its adoption cost. (more…)
Beginning at the end of the technological change process, research has consistently shown that diffusion of new, economically superior technologies is never instantaneous. A new technology is adopted at first gradually and then with increasing rapidity, until at some point its saturation in the economy is reached. The explanation for this typical path of diffusion that has most relevance for energy conservation investments is related to differences in the characteristics of adopters and potential adopters. This includes differences in the type and vintage of their existing equipment, other elements of the cost structure (such as access to and cost of labor, material, and energy), and their access to technical information. (more…)
