Oil prices and gas prices

By Michael [This is a comment on a prior post – John M.] I agree with Tom (original post and response here) that natural gas and oil prices have been decoupled for some time. Indeed, it is remarkable how decoupled energy feedstocks are from each other. This highlights how oil really is the best example […]

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Airbnb & Nest Partnership – A Huge Win for Google, Airbnb and Hosts, but is it Good for Guests?

By Scott Kirk We recently discussed Airbnb’s partnership with Nest (acquired by Google in January 2014 for $3.2B). The nuts and bolts of the partnership include Airbnb providing selected hosts with the Nest Learning Thermostat free of charge ($250 retail value) and access to Nest’s MyEnergy platform that allows hosts to track energy consumption, learn […]

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Velib’s Bicycle Sharing Program

By Hai I think the program has a bright future because it addresses a mega trend in the world. Bicycle sharing is the solution for congestion, pollution, and high density transportation. In fact, bicycle sharing is one of the most important components in the entire transportation system. In the foreseeable future, the more cities we […]

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Is Zipcar really that good for the environment?

By Katie P. Many people hail the car sharing company Zipcar as a great environmental innovation. Zipcar themselves tout their own horn on their Green Benefits page. At first glance, this sounds intuitive: carsharing = less cars per person = less gas and energy used = good for the environment. Right? Not necessarily. Do people […]

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IB2E Current Events December 2, 2014

By John Macomber The slides from today’s discussion about current events are here: IBEE Current Events 2014.12.02 The post that underscored the meaning of lower oil prices is here. By the way, natural gas prices have not dropped along with oil prices (below).  It could be argued that natural gas is a better benchmark for […]

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Keystone XL: Politicians’ inability to balance social, environmental, and economic implications of decisions

By Samantha T. Given the senate’s ruling against the Keystone pipeline last month, I thought it would be an appropriate topic to discuss. While the entire continent is crisscrossed with oil and gas pipelines, none has drawn more attention than Keystone XL which hopes to connect the oil sands of Alberta, Canada to the oil […]

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Energy Storage: A Potential Disruptive Force in Residential Solar

By Anonymous Early in the semester the class discussed the rapidly growing residential solar industry in relation to the case Verengo Solar Plus! The case noted that the U.S. had a total of 1,370 MW of installed residential solar capacity in 2010, representing an increase of 615 MW since 2009. This growth has been driven […]

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Why I wouldn’t put my money in stocks in the clean tech space.

By Anonymous Upon reading the Dow and Nestle cases, I had the exact same response as Kayley – wondering if there is a link between investing in sustainability and financial outperformance. Her research points to the fact that investing in sustainable initiatives may be a proxy for other company practices that drive strong performance, but […]

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Food and Contamination

By Kat M. A year after the infamous ‘horsemeat scandal’ the UK is in the midst of another food health scare, chickens contaminated with the food bug campylobacter. The Food Standards Agency will publish rates of contamination for each supermarket chain. The industry is bracing itself for the results to be significantly worse than those […]

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Poverty vs Global Warming

By Anonymous A comment made by the protagonist in our Aspen case got me thinking: in countries like India that don’t have the existing infrastructure, we have a chance to do it right the first time. It got me thinking about two directly opposing dilemmas: global warming vs global poverty. How do we reconcile the […]

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