Expert Columns

In his annual letter to CEOs, Larry Fink noted that the pandemic has presented such an existential crisis that it has driven us to confront the global threat of climate change more forcefully and to consider how, like the pandemic, it will alter our lives. Read the letter to find out why there is no company whose business model won’t be profoundly affected by the transition to a net zero economy and how sustainability and deeper connections to stakeholders will drive better returns.

Inspired by a desire to help accelerate the energy transition and the principles espoused by Jigar Shah in his book, "Creating Climate Wealth," five years ago today on Friday, February 19, 2016, we published the first issue of our newsletter with this welcome message: “Each issue of our weekly newsletter, created exclusively for Fortune 1000 commercial and industrial energy executives just like you, will feature news, expert columns, and research. Here's to your success!" 

A historic freeze plunged every county in Texas into a winter weather advisory and caused the state’s electricity system to fail, with 4 million customers facing outages, many that lasted hours and hours. For some naysayers, the failure of the grid operator in Texas to prepare for severe weather is yet another chance to try and blame clean wind and solar energy, the very technologies we need to address climate change. However, says John Moore of NRDC in this column, that dog won't hunt.

Amazon has unveiled a proposed design for the second phase of its Arlington, Virginia headquarters. In this column, John Schoettler, Vice President of Amazon's Global Real Estate and Facilities team, offers highlights of the plan, which blends architectural and ecological elements for the new PenPlace to meet LEED Platinum certification, run all-electric central heating and cooling systems on 100% renewable energy, and align with Amazon's Climate Pledge to be net-zero carbon by 2040 and advance Arlington and Amazon’s shared commitment to be leaders in the fight against climate change.

LBA Realty (LBA, a full-service real estate investment and management company with a diverse portfolio of industrial and office properties in major markets throughout the United States, needed to implement an actionable climate risk assessment process to address concerns at a property-specific level. This column from Better Buildings shows how a new process was created to identify, validate, and mitigate confirmed climate risk factors during the acquisition process.