Going Green Brings In the Green

By Sen. Alan Lowenthal

For more than a decade I have been arguing that business success and environmental responsibility are not mutually exclusive.
   So it is refreshing to hear of a UC Berkeley and UC Davis research team that recently found it actually pays to be green.
   The academic study discovered that companies that voluntarily disclose their greenhouse gas emissions enjoy a small spike in their stock value and positive returns to shareholders.
  The bottom line of the study is that the investment community wants to invest in companies that are environmentally responsible.
  This should come as no surprise to anyone; unfortunately, I still hear all too often that being green means going broke.
  The truth is, more and more companies are proactively focusing on corporate social responsibility, of which environmental responsibility, sustainability and the creation of green jobs are all part.
  When I first ran for elected office in 1992, I was questioned by Long Beach residents about the fine black powder that covered their window sills, cars, boats and patios. It turned out to be petroleum coke dust blown from open storage piles at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
   It took ten years of fighting the notion that environmental responsibility would somehow destroy jobs to get the piles covered.
   Today, ten years further on, the same ports that fought to enclose those piles are now the leaders of a growing green movement in ports around the nation.
   The Long Beach and Los Angeles ports, in less than ten years, have changed their entire corporate structure to one that emphasizes their roles as environmental stewards and good neighbors. This has led to programs that have drastically cut, in some cases more than 90 percent, diesel emissions from marine terminal equipment and the truck fleet servicing the ports.
   At the same time, the ports have grown and continue to be successful. The sky-is-falling crowd that said that going green would kill jobs was on the wrong side of history.
   In addition to a new sense of environmental responsibility, the ports have also become investors and incubators for new clean technologies. They have become backers of some of the thousands of green entrepreneurs which we can proudly say have put California at the forefront of the green economy.
   We can boast more than 500,000 green jobs in our state, with the number growing about 5 percent each year. We also have nearly 300 training programs at 130 public and private institutions statewide that are preparing workers for the green economy.
  And investors are paying attention also. Nearly 40 percent of all venture capital being directed at green technology in the U.S. comes to California--nearly $12 billion over the last five years.
   Many of the reasons for California’s leadership in the green economy are the ambitious goals California has set to promote energy efficiency and the development of renewable energy sources. The state’s renewable electricity standard requires that 33 percent of the electricity consumed in the state in 2020 come from renewable sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal. Pending vehicle standards in the state would see that up to 14 percent of new vehicles sold in California in 2025 are electric vehicles and up to 68 percent are hybrids. In addition, new automobile fuel standards will gradually replace gasoline and by 2020, up to 3.5 million cars could operate on 85 percent non-corn ethanol fuel.
   Conditions like these are what attract the green investment dollars to our state and create green jobs.
   California’s continued leadership in the green economy, however, is not guaranteed. We have made amazing progress and we are on the right track, but we need to stay the course.
   Maintaining our commitment to the state’s green policies is an imperative, because the alternative is a future where the only green will be our envy at the state who takes our place.