L Hunter Lovins: Sustainability pays

Source: Technology Digital

Date :28/11/2007 15:36:02

The business case for going green hardly needs to be rehearsed any more. One of the most eloquent advocates of sustainability is L Hunter Lovins.

By John O’Hanlon

Companies who embrace sustainable practices are gaining huge economic rewards and represent real 'drivers for change', a US champion of sustainable development argued in a lecture given at Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing this month.

Hunter Lovins, Professor of Sustainable Management at the Presidio School of Management in the US, said that there is a real business case for sustainability which companies ignore at their peril. The successful companies of the future will be those who recognize the need to protect the environment and seize the opportunities this offers their business.

Companies are already saving billions of dollars by reducing their energy consumption, improving their productivity and redesigning products along more sustainable lines, she said. Environmentally enlightened companies in a range of sectors, including oil and gas, US electric utilities, and forest and paper products have consistently outperformed 'environmental laggards' in terms of total return and growth in share price.

A passion for the environment

Hunter Lovins is a renowned author and champion of sustainable development for over 30 years, is the founder and President of Natural Capitalism Inc and Natural Capitalism Solutions, a non-profit company in Eldorado Springs, Colorado.

A professor at Presidio School of Management's MBA in Sustainable Management program, she has taught at major universities, consulted for citizens' groups, governments and corporations. She co-founded Rocky Mountain Institute and led it for 20 years. In great demand as an inspirational speaker and effective consultant, she has addressed the World Economic Forum, the US Congress, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and hundreds of major conferences.

Named millennium Hero for the Planet by Time Magazine, she has received the Right Livelihood Award, the Leadership in Business Award and dozens of other honors. Hunter believes that citizens, communities and companies, working together within the market context, are the most dynamic problem-solving force on the planet. She has devoted herself to building teams that can create and implement practical and affordable solutions to the problems facing us in creating a sustainable future.

Hunter spent 2006 travelling the world. She keynoted conferences, taught MBA and high school students, and met with business and government leaders. She also took time to write a major paper, The Business Case for Climate Protection and to work with the NCS staff to produce the Climate Protection Manual for Cities. Often Hunter speaks about the forces that are driving companies and communities to innovate.

These drivers should not come as a surprise: they include global warming, the erosion of the major ecosystems on earth that underpin the capacity of the planet to sustain life, high and rising energy prices, the vulnerability of our large centralized infrastructure in a time of turmoil and finally what she is calling the ‘Sustainability Imperative’...

To read the full article, click here