PACE Presentation to Space Coast Energy Symposium

Last week I presented at the Space Coast Energy Symposium over in Cocoa, FL.  Their group put on an excellent event and I enjoyed my panel on PACE and energy finance.  I wanted to give a quick recap on what I discussed.

EcoAsset Solutions formed a new company in Florida called Ygrene Energy Fund Florida which is headquartered in Tampa.  Our company provides a turnkey third party administration service for local governments in Florida that want to design, implement, finance and administer a PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) program in their commmunity.

PACE is an important financing tool for critical property improvements with significant financial benefit .  Our solution makes PACE affordable and convenient and it's ready to go and fully funded on Day 1.  That's the Ygrene difference.

If your community is interested in a Ygrene PACE program, one general action step you can take is to convene your local property owners (commercial and/or residential), contractors, and government staff and officials and engage them in a dialgoue about PACE that Ygrene facilitates in what we call a PACE workshop.

Ultimately, the benefit is simple.  First, FAMILIES that benefit from the JOBS that are created are the clear winners with PACE.  In addition to that, there are enormous environmental benefits, energy savings benefits and the local government will generate new revenues from taxes on product and service sales as well as other revenue.

Finally, if you'd like to learn more about the Miami Green Corridor PACE program that we are launching, please post a comment that I can respond to.  You can also visit www.cleanenergymiami.com. 

If you'd like to know what the best practices are for launching PACE in Florida and you need to have a plan of action on what to do next, please post a comment or contact me directly at jwakefield@ecoassetsolutions.com.

All the best,

JW

Countdown to the 2012 Sustainable Business Awards

After a year of planning, my co-chair, Herb Goetschius, and I have reached the one week countdown to the 2012 Sustainable Business Awards on February 24^th.  Since 2008, Earth Charter US has teamed up with MBA students at The University of Tampa College of Business to honor the most sustainably-focused corporations operating in the Tampa Bay area.  They range in size from global corporations to firms with just a few employees, but their approach to sustainability- as a business practice- is their guiding principle and common foundation.

This year we will have a few special guests, including City of Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn , City of Tampa Green Officer, Thom Snelling, and our emcee, Terry Tomalin, Outdoor/Fitness Editor of The Tampa Bay Times.

When I first met with Terry about the luncheon, he gave me an interesting perspective on sustainability in our area: If you don’t participate in activities based in our natural resources (fishing, swimming, etc) you can’t appreciate the fragility of those resources. He is an avid paddle boarder and founder of the Tampa Bay Frogman, an annual swim across Tampa Bay held in January benefitting the Navy SEAL Foundation.  While swimming and paddling in our surrounding waters, Terry sees first-hand the effects of litter and pollutants in our water.  As economically focused as I personally tend to be, I am glad to have Terry’s perspective and hope this leads to some cross bay paddles with our area business leaders - just not in January!

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter (@ecoassets, @janet_harrison) and check out Terry’s new book, Everyday Adventures, A Florida Outdoors Guide.  

Janet Harrison

Engage Your Employees In Sustainability With SuMo

A recent Ernst & Young survey found that Employees were ranked as the 2nd most important stakeholder group (customers being #1) for a company's sustainability programs and reporting efforts.Yet, we continue to hear from organizations that they struggle with effectively involving their entire employee base beyond the typical Green Team volunteers. So, we are very excited to introduce what we believe is a simple yet powerful solution - SuMo !

SuMo, short for Sustainability Momentum, is a desktop application (widget) that connects your employees with your organization's sustainability goals. Sitting on every employee's desktop, SuMo allows your employees to:

• learn about your organization's sustainability vision and goals

• see their up-to-the-minute individual and group carbon performance

• receive practical suggestions for improvement

• communicate their feedback via the power of "crowdsourcing" or more specifically "crowdvoting"  to promote or demote ideas created by others in the organization. 

Take a few minutes to watch this introductory video on SuMo and let us know if you would like to see a live demo.

John Ferrari
EcoAsset Solutions
jferrari@ecoassetsolutions.com

Each year, I attempt to gain a new skill or certification, so for this year I recently began a permaculture design certification (PDC) course through the Permaculture Guild in Clearwater, Florida. My passion has always been related to sustainable living and I am fortunate to have a career that is directly related to that passion. As I sat in my first class last weekend, I was amazed how someone so involved with and interested in sustainability could know so little about this amazing solution. It became clear to me rather quickly that permaculture hits on all issues such as energy, water, waste, land use, community, food production, and transportation (food related transportation and food miles), human health, and more.

Permaculture means permanent agriculture or permanent culture. It is the science and art of designing systems to be regenerative, not just sustainable. Sustainable is not necessarily all that great. Since we as a species are involved with so many degenerative activities, we need to become dedicated to regenerative efforts. Designing permaculture gardens or food forests goes beyond organic which only requires that no chemicals such as fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides are used. Organic farming can still be a water intensive operation of row crops. Permaculture design integrates primarily edible plants that serve many different purposes such as nitrogen fixation that removes the need for fertilizer, plants that attract the right type of insects and repel the unwanted ones. The main point is to have a vertically stacked, multipurpose, and biodiverse “forest” of food that is stable within a short time meaning no water (besides rainfall), or chemicals need to be brought into the system. Similarly, no energy, water or waste should leave the system, meaning composting and rain harvesting are essential. In an established forest (about 3 years), a general rule of thumb is that if you are spending more than 3 days in your garden, something is wrong. That time is usually spent harvesting your yield.

With the average food in the grocery store traveling 1,500 miles, by the time it reaches your plate it is full of harmful chemicals and most of its nutrients and biological enzymes dead. With permaculture, communities can become self sufficient and produce many other benefits:

• ·         food security
• ·         chemical use
• ·         energy production through
• ·         removal of organic waste from the waste stream
• ·         energy production from anaerobic digestion
• ·         hot water production from compost heat
• ·         rebuilding of soil

These are just to name a few. The best part is this solution is scalable, applicable to any environment or location, and can be part of other operations such as aquaculture, energy generation, and hot water production. Although there is too much to write about in this one blog, I encourage everyone to look beyond xeriscaping and integrate even simple parts of permaculture into your life, even if it is just beginning to compost properly or beginning a worm bin! 

Resham Shirsat

Sustainability Manager, EcoAsset Solutions

Join us in our pursuit of doing the right thing for those that have a stake in the future of how we do business today.

Happy New Year everyone!

Our team is really fired up for 2012 and our BLOG is going to be a big part of it. We will be posting regularly and encourage followers to post comments and help us keep the blog content fresh and cutting edge. Our team is specialized, passionate and dedicated and you will come to know that for yourself as you read blogs from all of our professionals.

As you can tell from my blog title, my prediction is that 2012 will be the Year of the EcoAsset.

What do I mean by that? It's rooted in the EcoAsset Solutions TradeMarked definition of SUSTAINABILITY.

sus•tain•a•bil•i•ty - noun - a business management practice that generates high performance and financial returns by placing managerial priority on natural resource impact, employee well-being and the communities served.

In the Year of the EcoAsset, organizations (both public and private) will recognize that EcoAssets are an untapped source of economic benefit.

BUT, it will require one very important, yet simple, action on the part of an organization's c-suite or executive management. Sustainability value starts and stops with DATA! and the implementation of a Sustainability Performance Management System. And folks, I am here to tell you that Excel spreadsheets will not do the trick.

Your Sustainability Performance Management System needs to be cloud-based so that it is dynamic enough to render valuable results. (...said another way,...your people need to be able to use the valuable data about your organization to generate value from it). I know, we think of everything.

Our cloud-based Sustainability Performance Management System allows your key people such as - sales and marketing representatives, operational managers and human resource staff - to leverage your investments in sustainability and the related data to their advantage. Excel is simply too limiting if you're looking for valuable results...and I know that's what everyone is after, especially these days.

Our approach is critical for achieving measurable results that make a difference for your organization, such as:

• Creating financial gains through competitive differentiation
• Reducing costs and increasing efficiencies
• Decreasing consumption of natural resources
• Accelerating stakeholder engagement
• Attracting and retaining top talent

Make a New Year's resolution. Move your Excel based sustainability data into the cloud. We will make it affordable, painless and convenient. All you will have to do is realize the value from sustainability.

Join us in our pursuit of doing the right thing for those that have a stake in the future of how we do business today.
All the best,



John Wakefield

President & COO

EcoAsset Solutions