The World’s Top Sustainable Business Stocks

My new company, Accsys Technologies PLC, made this year’s Top 20 list at SustainableBusiness.com:

SB20: The World’s Top Sustainable Business Stocks

2008 marks the seventh year for the SB20, which is presented in our sustainable investing newsletter, Progressive Investor. Each year, we work with a group of judges who are leading sustainability stock analysts to select the companies.

The purpose of the SB20 – the Sustainable Business 20 – is to showcase the most innovative, model companies that have the potential to greatly impact our ultimate goal of reaching a sustainable society.

The challenge we give our judges is to nominate, discuss and then vote on 20 companies that, through their products or initiatives, are contributing substantially to the advance of a sustainable economy.

To be on the list, companies must be strong on both the sustainable and financial sides. It is not a “buy” list, but because the companies are strong financially, their stock may well be worth be buying at some point based on stock market positioning.

About Accsys, they write:

Accsys Technologies Plc

England-based Accsys has developed a unique, important process that gives softwoods the same quality and durability prized in hardwoods – partly the cause for the destruction of the world’s forests. Replacing hardwoods with Accsys’s Accoya Wood enables windows, doors and many other construction materials and furnishings to be made from easily available, cheaper sources instead of from endangered, primary forests. The company’s decentralized business model is based on licensing the technology to local operators.

At some point I intend to write a detailed post on exactly what it is that we are doing. That’s pretty far down the ‘to do’ list, though.

The World’s Top Sustainable Business Stocks

My new company, Accsys Technologies PLC, made this year’s Top 20 list at SustainableBusiness.com:

SB20: The World’s Top Sustainable Business Stocks

2008 marks the seventh year for the SB20, which is presented in our sustainable investing newsletter, Progressive Investor. Each year, we work with a group of judges who are leading sustainability stock analysts to select the companies.

The purpose of the SB20 – the Sustainable Business 20 – is to showcase the most innovative, model companies that have the potential to greatly impact our ultimate goal of reaching a sustainable society.

The challenge we give our judges is to nominate, discuss and then vote on 20 companies that, through their products or initiatives, are contributing substantially to the advance of a sustainable economy.

To be on the list, companies must be strong on both the sustainable and financial sides. It is not a “buy” list, but because the companies are strong financially, their stock may well be worth be buying at some point based on stock market positioning.

About Accsys, they write:

Accsys Technologies Plc

England-based Accsys has developed a unique, important process that gives softwoods the same quality and durability prized in hardwoods – partly the cause for the destruction of the world’s forests. Replacing hardwoods with Accsys’s Accoya Wood enables windows, doors and many other construction materials and furnishings to be made from easily available, cheaper sources instead of from endangered, primary forests. The company’s decentralized business model is based on licensing the technology to local operators.

At some point I intend to write a detailed post on exactly what it is that we are doing. That’s pretty far down the ‘to do’ list, though.

More Signs of Demand Destruction

This time, the news comes from the API:

U.S. oil demand drops in first half of 2008

WASHINGTON – U.S. oil demand was significantly down for the first six months of 2008, API said today in its Monthly Statistical Report. While U.S. refiners churned out record and near-record amounts of oil products, imports – especially product imports — fell substantially.

Deliveries of all oil products – a measure of demand – fell 3.0 percent compared with the same first-half-year period in 2007, with gasoline deliveries slipping 1.7 percent. For the preceding three years, oil demand had essentially held steady.

API statistics manager Ron Planting said, “At 20.08 million barrels per day, total demand was the lowest in five years. And the decline in gasoline demand was the first significant one recorded in 17 years. Higher pump prices and a slowing economy were undoubtedly factors.”

Those are significant numbers. This should not be lost on those who think we should tap the SPR to push prices back down.

The Consensus on Global Warming Weakens?

Update: Or maybe not. There is a lot of controversy surrounding this story. Climate Progress reports on the controversy:

Physicists forced to reaffirm that human-caused global warming is “incontrovertible”

First off, I like Joseph Romm, who wrote the article above. But he is guilty of what I think is too common any time global warming is the subject. He uses inflammatory and leading language to frame the issue:

Now you can be just as sure that any denier talk point is wrong without studying it in detail…a denier website…rich man’s (failed) James Inhofe

I think Romm makes a good argument that there is a lot more to the story than all of the headlines yesterday indicated. There is no need to paint opponents with a broad brush as “deniers” or say to call this a “conservative” issue (see – “The right’s misguided frenzy over the American Physical Society“).

As for me, my position is the same: I lean toward the viewpoint that humans are contributing to global warming. I am, however, interested to see the debate play out and I am strongly opposed to intimidation tactics from both sides that attempt to influence the issue.

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I have often said that my position on global warming is based on the scientific consensus (just as it is in other fields where I lack specific expertise). The consensus weakened today, when the American Physical Society – a major association of physicists – issued a statement that suggested that many of the members are skeptics:

Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,”There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton’s paper an “expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and “extensive errors”

This was an interesting development. I will however continue to withhold judgment and let the debate play out.