June 18, 2022

Weekend Reads: A Second Life For Old EV Batteries; Building a Corporate Culture of Sustainability

It's the weekend! Kick back and catch up with these must-read articles from around the web.

Old Electric-Vehicle Batteries Are Getting a Second Life (The Wall Street Journal) Millions of electric vehicles will be scrapped in the coming years. For the batteries that power them, that won’t be the end of the road. Eventually, auto makers and recycling companies want to harvest valuable materials from old EV batteries to make new ones. But before they are recycled, used batteries could be given a second life on the electricity grid.

A Conversation With Bridgette McAdoo: Sustainability as a Matter of Corporate Strategy (Entrepreneur) ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and sustainability became a critical part of the corporate strategy conversation over the past few years. While many companies are taking action, much of this activity is often siloed and disconnected from the broader organizational contexts. When this happens, companies miss out on tremendous opportunities that can come from ESG supporting and strengthening their business models, market positioning and strategic direction.

Carbon Management Platform nZero Joins Forces with Global Climate Solutions Provider 3Degrees to Offer Comprehensive Net Zero Solutions (nZero) nZero, the 24/7 carbon management platform that tracks and operationalizes energy, financial and greenhouse gas emissions data to help organizations reach climate change goals, today announced a partnership with 3Degrees, a global renewable energy and climate consulting firm and certified B Corp. Organizations that engage with both services will benefit from this comprehensive partnership that provides accurate emissions data measured on a 24/7 basis and consulting on the best corresponding action to take, helping them to reach their critical net zero goals more efficiently.

NextEra’s Plan to Ditch Carbon Is a Huge Bet on Hydrogen (Bloomberg) NextEra Energy Inc.’s plan to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 without relying on carbon-capture systems or offsets marks one of the biggest bets yet to make hydrogen a central piece of the energy landscape. The company, which operates Florida Power & Light and owns one of the world’s largest developers of wind and solar power, wants to convert more than two-thirds of its natural gas power plants to run on hydrogen. The fuel, in this case, would be produced by renewable energy with devices called electrolyzers. In addition, NextEra is looking to become a leader in producing hydrogen and developing infrastructure so it can be used to decarbonize power plants, transportation and heavy industry across the country.

How To Create A Sustainability Culture (Forbes) As business leaders, we’re all feeling the internal and external pressure to deliver on our corporate sustainability strategies. I’ve been in business long enough to know that these kinds of organizational shifts rarely happen without culture change. Take safety for example, not that many years ago it was viewed as a departmental role, something that was done to people rather than for or with them. In many ways, sustainability is the new safety; everyone’s talking about it, we know we need to do something about it, we want to do something about it—we’re just not always sure what that something is.

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