Category: Sustainability

  • Electrification Comes to Trucks

    At least when they’re parked. According to the Daily Journal of Commerce, we now have one of the first electrified truck stops in the nation in Aurora. Drivers, stop your engines.

  • Local Governments Acknowledge Inconvenient Truths

    Two interesting new reports out that deal with our energy and climate future. First, Metro has released a draft background paper as part of the Regional Transportation Plan update: Key Environmental Issues and Metro’s Mitigation-Related Activities in the Portland Metropolitan Region. It’s not online yet, but here are a couple of key paragraphs from the…

  • Driving is Expensive

    Over at the BTA Blog, Scott Bricker has a post derived from background research for the RTP (Regional Transportation Plan) update about how expensive driving really is. Read and comment over there.

  • Sustainability at the Oregon Business Plan Summit

    The Business Journal has a nice summary article on the presentation on sustainability, so I won’t detail it myself, other than an analogy made by Allen Alley, chair of the plan’s steering committee. He likened sustainability to the quality movement in business in the ’80s. People initially thought quality would just be an added expense.…

  • Sustainable Advantage: Sort of

    It seems that the leaders of the Oregon Business Plan took Harvard Professor Michael Porter’s advice from last year to heart: they have provided an overarching focus for the Business Plan: Sustainability. The ‘play book‘ (PDF, 869K), released in advance of Thursday’s Business Plan Summit, sets this out on the first page: As last year’s…