NOVEMBER 2007: COVER
THE
GREEN DREAM
Oregon gets serious about sustainable business
By Christina Williams
JUST GREEN IT.
OK, so maybe it’s not the right marketing slogan for a
sustainable success story.
But across a state retooling itself for the next millennium,
the words green, renewable, sustainable, responsible and
natural are becoming more than just feel-good adjectives.
They’re becoming a brand. A brand that many business
leaders and politicians hope to hitch Oregon’s economy to
in order to compete on a global scale.
But what exactly are we signing up for? Because what
sustainability means in Lakeview or Sherman County is a whole
lot different than what it means in cities such as Corvallis
and Portland.
In the
neighborhoods of Oregon’s largest cities, recycling is
ingrained, composting is common and even urban chickens are
going mainstream. Portland’s Office of Sustainable
Development has been around for seven years but similar offices
are springing up in other Oregon cities vying for green
business. And up and down the I-5 corridor and east to Bend,
green building is the default choice for new developments.
While the cities try to reach beyond their reputations as
recycling nirvanas, Oregon’s rural areas are developing a
sustainability niche by reaching into their backyards and
exploiting their natural assets. In south central Oregon the
communities of Lakeview and Klamath Falls are getting attention
for their proximity to geothermal heat and plethora of
high-desert, solar-friendly days, making the region an
attractive choice for industrial companies looking to tap into
alternative energy sources. In the wind-swept fields of Eastern
Oregon, ranches are sprouting hundreds of megawatt-churning
turbines. The coastline is experimenting with wave-energy
generation. And the semi-rural counties that surround Portland
are embracing their roles as the city’s foodshed by
getting serious about preserving their agricultural lands and
identities.
“All communities need to be looking at what their
resources are and where the world is headed,” says Darcy
Hitchcock, president of Axis Performance Advisers, a
sustainability consulting practice based in Portland.
“They should all be looking at the next industry, not the
last industry.”
For example, Silicon Forest is working hard to lure solar
industry manufacturers such as Solar World, which in March
purchased a dormant silicon plant and announced plans to hire
as many as 1,000 workers. Solacix announced a similar operation
in June.
WHILE IT SOUNDS LIKE A PUNCHLINE of a bad joke to think of
rainy Portland as a center for solar energy, Ron Penrick, a
Portland-based analyst and author of The Clean Tech Revolution, says
there’s a potential for the world to do just that.
“A region has to initially assess what its assets
are,” says Penrick. “Then it has to look at how it
can further its business development activities.”
We may look back on 2007 as the year Oregon got serious about
sustainable business. Two years after Harvard international
competitiveness guru Michael Porter spoke to the Oregon
Business Plan Leadership Summit and told the state to find a
niche or forget it, a year after the same group put a tentative
stake in the ground on sustainability (and made it again the
hot topic for the 2008 summit next month), the business
community is finally showing off its green side.
Oregon lawmakers passed a bumper crop of green-friendly laws
this year (after getting exactly nowhere with them in the
previous session) prompting the Oregon League of Conservation
Voters to declare it the greenest Legislature in 30 years.
Penrick, who nods to the Legislature’s actions when
calling Oregon an attractive spot for renewable industries, has
a theory that what he calls the clean-tech economic revolution
will happen in more than one place. While the high-tech boom
was centered in Silicon Valley, clean tech will have multiple
epicenters. He has Portland on a list of 10 clean-tech cities
to watch but says Stumptown will have to keep moving ahead in
terms of innovative policies and business innovation.
And
marketing. This month, the breathy, ultra-hip world of the PDX
Lounge opens its doors in Chicago in conjunction with the
annual Greenbuild conference. It’s the second time
Portland has showcased itself at the tradeshow in a clubby
after-hours atmosphere. Last year 32 PDX Lounge partners made
it happen and trotted out all things green and Portland —
from the furnishings to the liquor. This year more than 50
businesses are in on the act and the lounge bills itself as a
living showcase of a sustainable economy.
While some might ask what a temporary bar at a tradeshow has
to do with a sustainable economy, furthering the city’s
reputation as a place where green equates to hip is a valuable
marketing move.
Eugene gets that making that green name for itself is
important. In fact, city officials are quick to point out that
the Southern Willamette Valley city bested Portland in a 2006
National
Geographic ranking of
green cities. (The top three: Eugene, Austin, Texas, and
Portland.)
“We want to be the mid-sized city that kicks butt when
it comes to sustainability,” says Eugene mayor Kitty
Piercy.
In 2005, the city assembled a task force, which last year
presented a report titled Eugene’s Sustainable Business
Initiative, calling for an office of sustainability
similar to Portland’s and ambitious goals for carbon
neutrality.
In Corvallis, city officials have been working on
sustainability with measures such as buying hybrids for
official city use and employing bio-swales to capture rainwater
runoff since 2003. Linda Lovett, the city’s
sustainability supervisor, has been in the job for a year and
is focused on making city operations more sustainable.
Meanwhile, a group of 60 business leaders and organizations
came together in January to form the Corvallis Sustainability
Coalition with goals to involve the community, including its
businesses, in establishing an eco-friendly municipality.
OTHER PARTS OF THE STATE have marched into the sustainable
economy without help from citizen coalitions.
When cash-strapped local governments and farmers were offered
a new income stream, embracing renewable energy became a
no-brainer. The Klondike Phase Two wind farm in Sherman County
and the Leaning Juniper wind farm in Gilliam County generate as
much as $1 million annually in county taxes and pay between
$370,000 and $585,000 to local landowners each year, according
to Portland-based Renewable Northwest Project, a clean energy
nonprofit.
RNP points out that the economic benefits to the state go
beyond the county lines. Thanks to the windy fields in the
east, the Port of Vancouver, Wash., has seen an increase in
shipments of wind turbines coming through its terminals.
Vestas, a large wind turbine manufacturer, established its
North American headquarters five years ago in Portland.
In Lakeview and Klamath Falls, buildings — and even
sidewalks — have long been heated with geothermal energy,
but a new focus on renewable energy, and emerging technology
that can convert geothermal heat into electricity, have pushed
the region into the spotlight.
A recent report by Icelandic energy research firm Glitnir
named Oregon among five Western states with a hefty potential
for geothermal energy and forecasted that geothermal could add
between 10% and 15% to the state’s total electricity
generation in a matter of years. Government and business
leaders are waking up to the potential of renewable energy.
Perhaps the best approach to a sustainable economic plan is
one that marries a region’s assets to a thoughtful plan
for economic competitiveness. Last year the Clackamas County
Board of Commissioners established a Green Ribbon Committee, a
group of business and government leaders charged with
developing a sustainability-based economic plan.
The committee looked first at its county’s natural
assets. Clackamas County has more organic farms than any other
in the state. Its forestry and wood products industries have a
$169 million annual payroll. The committee saw all this
and decided the county’s sustainable stake in the ground
would be preserving and supporting those industries.
The county established a sustainability office in July and is
implementing a plan for nurturing its sustainable industry
clusters — basically maintaining its role as the
metropolitan region’s agricultural food shed, its role as
a value-added wood products center and renewable energy
industries including biofuels and wood-waste biomass energy
generation. The plan also calls for a Green Economy Center, a
clearinghouse for expert advice and technical support for the
target clusters.
One could argue that each of these community’s efforts
smacks of green washing. Let’s face it, many Oregonians
would be hard-pressed to define sustainability and can be
distrustful of environmentalists. But savvy economic developers
can be forgiven for trying to align themselves with the
increasingly cash-driven trend toward green business.
Because in the end, sustainability is about a lot more than
recycled milk cartons, solar panels or urban chickens.
It’s about having something to pass on to the next
generation. A pretty state with nowhere to work wouldn’t
do anyone much good.
Have an opinion? E-mail feedback@oregonbusiness.com
Go
to...
