US govt as green 'test bed'

The Defense Department and General Services Administration (GSA), which control three-fourths of the government's office space, say they want to use those facilities to test the latest green technologies, reports FederalTimes.

"We hope to be a test bed for new technologies and take advantage of our long-standing role as an early adopter and help to create a market," said Dorothy Robyn, deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations and environment.

Likewise, GSA Administrator Martha Johnson wants to reduce her agency's carbon footprint to zero - not just in the facilities GSA builds and manages, but in all of the goods and services agencies purchase through GSA.

Businesses are notoriously bad at ignoring warnings from NGOs that the currently unprecedented rate of biodiversity loss could cripple the global economy, states Computing.co.uk.

Global consultancy giant PricewaterhouseCoopers has released a major report warning that the vast majority of the world's largest companies are ignoring the threat to their operations posed by biodiversity loss. This despite estimates that the economic cost of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss is estimated to range from $2 trillion to $4.5 trillion.

The report analysed public disclosures from the world's largest 100 companies and found only two had identified biodiversity as a strategic risk.

Panasonic aims to catapult sales by more than a third in three years in an aggressive bid to become the dominant electronics company in green technologies, says Hindustan Times.

The Japanese electronics giant is targeting revenue of $101.7 billion in the fiscal year ending March 2013, up from the $74.9 billion it estimates this year.

In the year through March 2019, it wants to expand sales above $110.8 billion, with its battery and energy systems operations accounting for a third.