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.

I approached my own boss with these ideas and received a chuckle in response. Its an uphill fight out there, hopefully the more people become informed, the easier it will be. This book is a great one to hand to a nay sayer. (I plan on sending a copy to both my boss and President Bush for Christmas)
July 24, 2001

Cool Companies offers insights into the detailed processes by which all company sites-from industrial giants like DuPont and 3M all the way down to individual apartment owners-have used greenhouse gas emission reduction to drive many more dollars to their bottom line.

The only question one is left with after Romm so effectively makes his case is why the coal and oil companies are playing Chicken Little and screaming that reducing greenhouse gases will hurt American business. Obviously, the only American businesses they are referring to must be their own. The Wall Street Journal and the American Chamber of Commerce would be well served to get the true picture and start representing the needs and interests of the majority of their customers-whose interests, at this point, are often diametrically opposed to those of the fossil fuel industry.
June 13, 2000

If you work anywhere in corporate management -- Whether you are the Chief Operating Officer, The Chief Financial Officer, the Plant Manager, or the Environmental Manager, you need to run out and buy this book, and then read it, before your competitors do.

You'll find case study after case study of how the best companies cut carbon. From building design, to the office environment, to industrial processes on the plant floor, this book tells -- often in the words of the managers themselves -- how they did what they did. Not only the technologies they chose, but how they sold other managers, developed creative financing strategies(often getting projects financed off ledger, out of future savings for example), and obtained credit for cutting other emissions.

If you are an environmentalist or a regulator facing the prospect of a climate treaty, the examples Romm outlines show why the arcane debate about the cost of cutting greenhouse gasses is flat out irrelevant. Cool Companies save money by becoming more efficent.

Bottom line? If you read only one book on cutting greenhouse gasses -- make it this one.
October 16, 1999