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World leaders have agreed to double the clean energy research funding they pledged in December as part of an international push to reduce carbon emissions, the White House announced on Thursday.  During the first meeting of the 21 countries involved in the Mission Innovation project this week, international members said they would increase the clean energy research and development funding the project is designed to facilitate.  According to the White House, member countries will now spend $30 billion per year by 2021 on clean energy research. 

A dozen major retailers have joined a push for tougher restrictions on trucking emissions and are asking regulators to push for swifter and steeper reductions in fuel use by the freight sector. The firms, which include General Mills, Ben & Jerry's, Stonyfield Farm, and Patagonia, say stronger standards would help reduce their operating costs and make it easier to pass savings along to consumers.

Lawmakers in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont aim to introduce carbon pricing legislation, including carbon taxes and market-based carbon cap-and-trade measures,

Developer FivePoint has a new plan to reduce carbon emissions at its proposed $12.7 billion master-planned community in California's Los Angeles County after a court blocked the project on environmental grounds. The company hopes to begin construction in 2018 and will implement zero-net-energy construction when it builds the 21,500 homes, each of which will have a charging station for electric vehicle.

The Minnesota National Guard installed solar panels and geothermal systems at its Camp Ripley base in an effort to reach zero emissions. The Guard earned a silver LEED rating for its readiness center and hopes to achieve a similar rating for all of its federally funded buildings.

Corporations and governments intensified the renewable energy push last week. Six global companies joined RE100 with commitments to 100 percent renewable energy across their operations, coinciding with a government-led Corporate Sourcing of Renewables campaign that launched at the Seventh Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM7) in San Francisco.

Consumer demand, advances in material technology and legislation will push sustainable packaging to a $244 billion market by 2018, according to report by Smithers Para. The "Future of Sustainable Packaging to 2018" report found awareness among consumers is driving demand for sustainability, particularly packaging that has a smaller environmental footprint.

The paper industry is pushing back against the "paperless" workplace and trying to persuade corporate decision-makers that paper can be greener than you'd think. Sustainably produced paper doesn't harm the planet and is arguably better than technologies that produce electronic waste, industry reps say. "We have to be careful when we pin one product against the other and say it's better. It's a tricky thing to do if you don't have all the data to back it up," says Phil Riebel, president of industry group Two Sides U.S

Greenpeace today reveals the result of a yearlong investigation showing P&G is sourcing palm oil from companies connected to widespread forest devastation. Its sourcing policies also expose its supply chain to forest fires and habitat destruction that is further pushing the Sumatran tiger to the edge of extinction.

H&M has negotiated agreements this year that make the Sweden-based fast-fashion retailer the sole customer of two factories in Bangladesh and a third in Cambodia, a move designed to give the retailer more control over working conditions and wages for the people who make its clothes. "We see these a little like test centers where we can try out different things that we can then push out on a larger scale in the entire supply chain," said social sustainability manager Anna Gedda

Unilever has today launched its biggest consumer-facing brand campaign to date, called 'Project Sunlight, a multi-million pound initiative that pushes the FMCG giant's sustainability message in all its global markets.

President Barack Obama is pushing American companies to abandon the use of a chemical coolant called R-134a in refrigerators, air conditioning systems and other industrial applications. R-134a is in a class of chemicals that can be up to 10,000 times as powerful a greenhouse gas per ounce as carbon dioxide.

One year after Superstorm Sandy devastated the East Coast, 20 major U.S. brands including Starbucks, Unilever and Mars, Inc. are calling for the White House to follow through on climate change preparedness efforts outlined in the Climate Action Plan announced by President Obama on June 25.

Just as it was being called out for using the dirtiest mix of energy among Internet giants, Amazon Web Services  announced this week a deal to build an 80-megawatt solar farm to power its east coast data centers. It will invest $150 million towards construction of a solar farm in Virginia where the majority of its data centers exist - and where the incumbent utility Dominion Virginia relies on fossil fuels for all but 2 percent of its generation. 

Today, Rainforest Action Network released a new progress report ranking the relative strength of palm oil commitments made since the launch of its Snack Food 20 campaign two years ago. The 2015 progress report shines a spotlight on the laggards in the Snack Food 20 and outlines the actions that these companies - as well as the frontrunners who are pushing ahead on their commitments - can and must take to rapidly cut Conflict Palm Oil from our food system.

Some 252 food producers and restaurants have committed to reduce food waste. Along with green giants such asUnilever, they include 7-Eleven Stores and the Milwaukee Brewers. 

The 17 Global Goals (also known as the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs) launched late last month by the United Nations (UN) aim to achieve three main objectives in the next 15 years: end extreme poverty; fight inequality and injustice; and tackle climate change. Since the launch, various companies and leaders have pledged to do their part to achieve the goals; now, the latest push is to build worldwide public awareness of the goals through various efforts to "tell everyone" (#TellEveryone), including support from scores of celebrities:

Good news on a technology that could revolutionize geothermal energy made waves at the American Geophysical Union meeting last week. Anyone who understands that the world's hunger for energy will push our planet beyond the point of no return without technological solutions will welcome the idea of CO2 plume geothermal power or CPG.

Big, boundary-pushing ideas - such as the Google founders' many varied tech endeavors - could help move the needle on sustainability in a more meaningful way.

California is pushing to make computers and monitors more energy-efficient, with the California Energy Commission proposing minimum power-consumption standards that could save 2,702 gigawatt hours of electricity per year. It's estimated that the rules would save consumers $430 million a year in energy costs.