MBA students drive projects for Climate Summit

5:16 pm | Green | No comment

“Going green” is the focus of the climate summit in Denmark, concentrating on global methods in reducing future greenhouse gases and assure businesses that becoming green will be good in the end.

Proposed projects could lessen energy use by 160 million kilowatt hours a year (fit to power 14,000 homes) and get rid of the 100,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas secretions annually.

The 2009 class of 26 Climate Corps fellows identified energy efficiency opportunities at 23 companies.

The members are also MBA students even though they have environmental experiences to understand the bottom line.

Seven interns have seen $35million and $120million possible energy effectiveness in the first year of the project. Projects that have 97% possible energy savings have been finished or are being implemented.

An intern at an IT services firm in Philadelphia fixed a problem by putting timers on the lights on one floor of a building. The cost: $ 0. The savings:  $20,000 a year.

Ian Lavery, a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management was dared to dig a lot deeper because EMC has been committed to energy effectiveness for the past 20 years.

Lavery, 29, an Arlington native, gave EMC seven suggestions. However, Lavery’s analysis of how to enhance the cooling system of company’s technology labs was the idea that caught the attention of EMC.

It is an inspiration to see people who are going to run corporate America in the next few years who are so focused on the environment. It really pays to be green.