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Google has announced a plan to develop sources of renewable energy that will be cheaper than coal. The new initiative, RE<C, (renewable energy is cheaper than coal) will begin by focusing on solar power technology, and will also encompass geothermal energy production.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the greenest of them all? Well, if you're in the retail sector the obvious answer to that is Wal-Mart. There was much skepticism initially of Wal-Mart's attempts to go green. Many believed its quest to reduce energy consumption, embrace rooftop solar systems and clean up its transport fleet was yet another attempt at feel-good marketing -- a bid to win over consumers who believed Wal-Mart was an evil retail monster aimed at taking over every small town in America. At the recent Cleantech Forum in Toronto, Rand Waddoups, senior director of corporate strategy and sustainability at Wal-Mart, admitted that the retailer's green strategy was initially adopted from a defensive posture. "We started by saying 'this could be a real problem for us, we need to understand how big of a problem this could be.' Over time, we realized this wasn't a problem, it was a real opportunity for us."

A recent post entitled ‘Why build Sustainability into your business’ highlighted some great profit centred arguments for building sustainability into business strategies. The basic premise behind them being that “greed got us into this mess and greed will get us out”… “being green means making more profit”. Piers Fawkes illustrated this paradigm with some exciting contemporary examples of win-win scenarios arising from corporate responses to the sustainability agenda. Yet there seems to be something rather unsettling about the notion that our last hope should be greed. Einstein once said that you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that gave rise to it. Was this to be the exception?

A solar electricity system adds tremendous value to the homes we build. By providing homeowners with attractive solar systems that generate electricity right on their rooftops and incorporating other energy efficiency features, we're enabling them to save 50 percent or more on their utility bills," said John Suppes, president of Clarum Homes and Byldan Corporation.

Global Resource Corporation (GRC) (OTC: GBRC.PK) claims that its HAWK 10 high-frequency microwave recycling process can recover oil and gases from oil shale, residual oil, drill cuttings, tar sands oil, contaminated dredge/sediments, tires and  plastics with significantly greater yields and lower costs than are available utilizing existing known technologies.

Okay, let’s say you are not impressed with these guys’ opinion. Think about the following in response to a question “why should industry care?”

Unilever, maker of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, is pondering how to make an ice cream that is made, shipped and sold warm, with the consumer taking the final step of actually freezing the product.

PricewaterhouseCoopers and the SAM Group chose Endesa as the most sustainable electricity company in their Sustainability Yearbook, based on the company's economic, environmental and social responsibility. Endesa scored 78%, compared to an average for the sector of 60%.