Stunning fact #1: New England spends more than $12 per person encouraging energy efficiency. The Southeast spends less than $1.
Stunning fact #2: As a result, the Southeast, if it were a nation, would be the world's tenth largest emitter of carbon dioxide.
Stunning fact #3 -- More than half of the water used by desperately water-short Georgia is for cooling power plants -- mostly coal-fired. So Georgia's water crisis is really linked to its Neanderthal energy policies.
I picked these facts up at a briefing of our Board of Directors featuring Dennis Creech, the Executive Director of Atlanta' premier energy-solutions organization, Southface. But while the South lags, and the long shadow of the Southern Company makes the road to clean energy seem particularly brutal, the overall feeling of our meeting is almost exuberant -- because progress here is such low-hanging fruit.
And even though there is Southern Company, there is also leadership. Dennis and our Georgia Chapter exemplify it on the environmental non-profit side, but the briefing is being held in downtown Atlanta in the world's first "platinum" LEED-certified commercial building display space -- the showroom of Interface. Interface is the world's largest carpet manufacturer, and it has established what I think is the most ambitious corporate sustainability goal of any big company -- Mission Zero -- zero environmental harm by 2020.
Interface is led by Ray Anderson, a businessman who had an epiphany that turned him from "plunderer to protector" and for the past decade has made his company a model of how a huge corporation can put sustainability right at the center of its operational principles.
Tonight we are hosted by Interface's American CEO, John Wells -- and he has exciting evidence that this strategy works -- Interface has had consistent growth, both in sales and operating margins. It has expanded globally and has kept its standards high. It built the first LEED-certified building in Thailand, and the first LEED "gold" facility in China.
Interface has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent, and offset another 45 percent for a total reduction in impact of 90 percent. One of the main ways Interface offsets its carbon emissions is to capture methane that otherwise leaks from landfills as a greenhouse pollutant. I asked John how scalable this effort was, and he surprised me by saying, "Well most landfills are regulated, and you can only do this if you find a landfill that is unregulated." "You, mean," I asked, "that newer, regulated landfills, are harder to clean up?" "Yes," he said, "because it's just too hard to get the permits even to reduce the environmental impact."
Once again, we find the energy sector rife with governmental regulations that impede innovation. Working collaboratively with companies like Interface has to be a major focus of the Sierra Club's efforts. My guess -- Georgia may be the state where the climactic battle over clean energy is fought -- we can't overcome Southern Company's power yet, but the tides are shifting.