Day: June 16, 2017

Weaving clean energy into low-income communities

Read the full story in GreenBiz.

Late last year, 135 stakeholders of Rocky Mountain Institute’s Electricity Innovation Lab (e–Lab) gathered for an inaugural e–Lab Summit. Many are involved with Leap, an ongoing RMI initiative dedicated to empowering and improving low-income communities and households through a clean energy future.

Across America, one in three people have incomes that put them below 200 percent of the official poverty line (about $45,000 for a family of four), and many more have problems making ends meet. Any real transition requires solutions that work for the many Americans who are financially challenged.

The intense work at the summit provided a strong sense of the challenges and opportunities in this rapidly evolving field. Two of Leap’s staff explained what is happening, and what we can expect.

Consumers (Especially Millennials) Still Significantly Suspicious of CSR Motives: Harris Poll

Read the full story in Environmental Leader.

With reputation a top concern among companies in terms of maintaining and increasing market share, it may come as an unpleasant surprise to find that a large portion of consumers say that when companies develop corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, they only do so to bolster their image. According to the recently released results of the Harris Poll Reputation Quotient, 40% of consumers say companies are primarily motivated by the publicity possibilities of their environmental and social initiatives and are not truly focused on the actual effectiveness of their efforts. And millennials seem to be the most suspicious of an organization’s motives.