Many investors and business leaders are aware of management guru Peter Drucker, but don't take some of his wise words and philosophy seriously enough. Our modern age has been plagued by the rise of far more short-term managers than long-term leaders. We've all been the poorer for it.

Sustainability advocacy organization Ceres held its annual conference in San Francisco last week, and it was full of thought-provoking presentations and conversations about sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) opportunities and challenges.

Skoll Foundation's President and CEO Sally Osberg referenced Drucker's quote above while chatting to Sprint CEO Dan Hesse about the wireless industry and its role in the future, particularly in sustainability.

Let's talk about managing vs. truly leading a company into the future. One thing I'm thinking is the way corporate managers tend to cut costs and the need for investors to rethink the definition of reducing costs and adding value.

Read between the (top and bottom) lines
Investors look for reducing costs and boosting profits, but, sadly, the most brutal means to that end enjoy the most positive reinforcement. Have you ever seen a stock soar because management announced mass layoffs? These types of events do reduce costs, maybe, but they include non-tangible value destroyers such as loss of intellectual capital, trampled employee morale, and deteriorating customer service and product quality.

True leadership supports workers, long-term strong business, and reducing costs by innovating, not slashing workforces that managements may have allowed to become too bloated or badly utilized in the first place. There is no more short-term action than bidding up a company's shares on a layoff initiative. That's trader pathology, and it encourages pathological short-term thinking by managements, too.

Strangely, a more positive cost-reduction strategy rarely excites investors at all, even though it's a far better way to boost efficiency, lower costs, and avoid damages and liabilities.

Green initiatives are increasingly proving to be money-saving or even money-making opportunities, as well as value drivers that are less immediately recognizable. Many major companies are recognizing the opportunities, whether investors are reading the writing on the wall or not.

Hacking away at waste
Dan Hesse's address to Ceres' audience touched on the company's industry-leading sustainability initiatives. These initiatives have generated kudos for Sprint; it ranks No. 3 in the U.S. on Newsweek's annual list of green companies, and Frost & Sullivan gave it the 2012 North American Award for Green Excellence for 2012.

This isn't just award-winning, feel-good fluff, though. Sprint's efforts feed positively into its business. Since 2007, Sprint has realized upward of $60 million in savings from eco-friendly initiatives. Having reduced its packaging size by 60%, more products fit on planes and trucks. A recent white paper spells out Sprint's work on packaging efficiency and waste reduction.

Take Sprint's unique eco-envelope, which allows customers to receive and remit their bills in one handy, reusable envelope. That smart envelope saved an estimated 700 tons of paper in just under a year.

Sprint's industry-leading mobile phone buyback program is also a win-win. Spring will take back handsets back from customers, including those from other carriers, and by paying those trading them in, it incentivizes consumers not to throw them into landfills. Sprint then refurbishes or remanufactures, so it can offer lower-cost phones to consumers as pre-owned, certified devices.

Positive practice makes perfect
Although Hesse did discuss lower bills attributed to cutting energy, water, and paper usage, he also pointed out sustainability's strong intangible assets that build over time. Such initiatives make employees feel good about working for Sprint. When recruiting on college campuses, young people get jazzed by the idea of working for a green company. It's a talent attractor.

Meanwhile, Sprint is not the only company that discusses the bottom-line benefits of sustainability, whether they're tangible or not.

One of Ceres' panels on water usage included Molson Coors' Michael Glade, who pointed out a factor investors might miss. The company's efforts to "demonstrate positive practice," as Glade put it, have improved its water usage. Better water, energy, and waste practices stacked up to $10 million in savings for the beer manufacturer since 2008, and will represent another $16 million in savings through 2012. That's another example of sustainability's bottom-line boosting capabilities that accompany the feel-good component.

"Demonstrating positive practice" was one of the themes at the conference. For example, Hesse also discussed the ability to influence the competition by leading the pack.

For example of moves by another industry player, several weeks ago, Verizon announced big plans of its own. It will invest $100 million in solar panels and fuel cells provided by SunPower and ClearEdge Power, respectively. These will represent up to 70 million kilowatt hours of electricity, the equivalent of the power needed for 6,000 homes per year. Verizon also said it will cut its carbon emissions footprint by 50% by 2020. Its increasing initiatives are expected to significantly reduce fuel and energy costs, as well as green up its operations.

Look for leaders
More companies are evolving, going green, and investing in long-term initiatives that will cut costs, create value, and go easier on the planet and endangered resources. Hopefully, more investors will realize that short-term "solutions" like layoffs are, for the most part, resulting from bad decisions, if not complete managerial failures.

We're still in the first innings of the sustainability megatrend, and as more and more corporations embark on these initiatives, more and more will engage in "good competition," which is good for all of us. Competing to do the -- right -- things, instead of the damaging ones, would put our investments -- and our world -- in much better positions for the future.

Leaders indeed do the right thing, even if it's going to take a while. That takes vision and courage. Are your companies' managers up to the challenge? Your investment returns really could suffer if they aren't.

The idea that this cacophony could be harmonized — never mind quieted — has long been an unattainable dream for companies. This week, that dream moves one small step toward reality.

The nearly two years, a nonprofit called GISR — the Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings — has been working to create a standard for company-level sustainability ratings. It is doing this, it says, “to accelerate the integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and indicators in investment decision-making” by “building a new standard that equips investors, companies and other stakeholders with the tools to recognize true excellence in corporate sustainability.”

That is, to get Wall Street and its counterparts around the world singing from the same hymnal on sustainability.

GISR does not intend to rate companies on sustainability. Instead, it will accredit other sustainability ratings, rankings or indices that new to its principles, issues and indicators.

GISR, like the Global Reporting Initiative and Ceres, take an investor-centric perspective, with eye on how shareholder interest can move management and markets. Indeed, all three organizations are linked to the Tellus Institute, a Boston-based nonprofit research and policy organization. GISR is a joint program of Ceres and Tellus, as was GRI, which the two groups spun off as a separate organization, now based in Amsterdam.

At the center of both GRI and GISR is Allen White, vice president and senior fellow at Tellus, who directs the institute’s program on "corporate redesign." White is credited with co-founding GRI and served as its acting CEO until 2002. In 2004, he co-founded and now directs of Corporation 2020, an initiative focused on “designing future corporations to create and sustain social mission.”

This week, at the Ceres conference in San Francisco, White and Mark Tulay, the GISR program manager (and former program director at Ceres) are unveiling GISR’s first major initiative: a beta version of GISR’s 12 principles, the core attributes of a ratings framework required to achieve credibility among key stakeholders. The principles are the first step in a multi-year process of building an accreditation process that ratings organizations can begin to use.

This week, GISR also will announce that UPS and McDonald’s have committed to participate in its Supporting Stakeholder program. They join other companies that already are playing an active role in GISR's standard development process, including Bloomberg, Deloitte, Intel, Pax World, TIAA-CREF, and UBS.

Relief from survey fatigue

The ratings system GISR envisions could be a boon to companies suffering from survey fatigue from the dozens of organizations currently rating companies, both multi-issue ratings organizations — such as Dow Jones/SAM, FTSE, MSCI, Oekom, Sustainalytics, Thomson Reuters, and Vigeo — and issue-specific raters — CDP, Climate Counts, Newsweek, Oxfam, Trucost and many others.

According to White, early company response to GISR has been largely positive. “We haven’t had almost a single negative comment or skepticism,” White told me last week. “Ratings are a fact of life for CEOs, who have to get up in the morning and see that they’ve been shoved off the Dow Jones Sustainability Index or dropped down from the Iris score or some other scorecard, and they don’t like it.”

On the other hand, says White, “They feel disempowered because they are the rated entity. They’re asked to fill surveys out, sometimes dozens of surveys every year. And then the scores are published via Newsweek or Corporate Knights or others. The outcomes can be wildly volatile: on a list one year, off the next year; a leader by one rater in the same year, a laggered by another rater in the same year.”

Moreover, he says, companies’ ability to seek recourse for erroneous data or misperceptions can be challenging. “More than occasionally they’ll be met with a black box. They’ll be told that ‘This is intellectual property and we can’t disclose of any of it,’ or in some cases, ‘We can disclose, but it’ll cost you.’”

“Every single company that we’ve spoken to said there’s extreme volatility in these ratings outcomes, coupled with too many surveys and too many indicators,” says Tulay. “They also express concerns about how to engage with these raters. Sometimes there’s a fee associated with getting information on why a company achieved a certain score.”

GISR's principles aim to address such challenges. For example, one them, “Value Chain,” states that “a rating should apply to all portions of a rated company’s value chain over which the company exercises control or significant influence.” The principle  "Transparency" states that “A rating should be transparent to those whose decisions are affected by the application of such rating.” (All 12 principles can be viewed at the end of this article.)

Some of this may seem like common sense, but creating such principles isn’t easy. Take Transparency. There’s a natural tension between raters, who want to maintain their intellectual property, and the rated, who want visibility into what’s behind the ratings. Or Comprehensiveness: While ratings systems themselves need not be comprehensive — many look at just one issue, like greenhouse gas emissions — they need to be comprehensive in the way they look at things.

50 shades of green?

For example, White explains, “If you’re rated on carbon emissions and all that the carbon rater does is to say your emissions went up or your down, or are more or less per dollar of revenue than some other company, that’s actually a very narrowly defined concept of disclosure of carbon emission. There are many, many ways to reduce carbon, some of which have very favorable or positive effects on society, on the economy, on communities, on labor practices relative to others. What about all the aspects of those impacts, positive and negative, quite apart from the absolute up and down numbers?” GISR will require that raters address such issues.

GISR joins an emerging ecosystem of players working to provide investors and others with reliable information on companies’ sustainability performance. It includes

• SASB, which is establishing a methodology for understanding of material sustainability issues facing industries and creating sustainability accounting standards suitable for reporting and disclosure.
• GRI, which established a framework for how companies should report their sustainability information.
• IIRC, which is promoting integrated reporting of both sustainability and financial data

While each of these organizations has a distinct mission and methodology, they share the goal of elevating sustainability among investors by creating a set of relevant tools for measuring, reporting and comparing companies’ sustainability performance. The theory is that once this is possible, investors will reward leaders and punish laggards, moving companies further and faster than regulations and other policy mechanisms.

This week’s release of the 12 principles will precede a public comment period during June and July, followed by the creation of a public registry of sustainability ratings, including the indicators used by each, eventually contained in a searchable database. After that, GISR will produce a guide for asset managers and asset owners to use to assess the suitability of different sustainability ratings for their purposes. GISR also plans to look into developing a sustainability questionnaire app “to help companies address survey fatigue by automating the information pipeline of sustainability information with raters.”

A number of sustainability executives are no doubt panting expectantly right about now.

GISR, for its part, isn’t short of high expectations. I asked White where he sees his organization’s impact five years from now. “Our big vision is that we are a major market mover, equivalent to the way financial ratings have an enormous impact on who raises capital, at what cost, and who gets boxed out of the market because of poor credit standings.”

Will companies eventually be boxed out of markets because of poor sustainability ratings? It’s a pipe dream, at least for now. But if corporate sustainability performance can’t eventually affect markets, the idea of companies collectively moving the needle on sustainability issues is essentially a pipe dream, too.

The 12 GISR Principles

1. Balance: A rating should utilize a mix of sources, issues and indicators that depict both past performance of the company in relation to internally and externally defined targets as well as prospects of future performance based on leading and forward-looking indicators.
2. Comparability: A rating should allow users to compare performance of the same company over time, and different companies in the same industry within the same period.
3. Comprehensiveness: Rating the sustainability performance of a company is a multi-dimensional concept that encompasses impacts on of all forms of capital, including human, intellectual, natural and social.
4. Sustainability Context: A rating should assess performance within the wider context of the company’s impacts at various geographic scales, incorporating scientifically based and/or widely-accepted normative thresholds and limits, applicable to such impacts.
5. Long-term Horizon: By definition, sustainability can only be measured using a long-term perspective. A rating should enable the evaluation of the long-term prospects of the rated company while simultaneously providing insights into short- and medium-term outcomes that lie on the critical path toward positive long-term outcomes.
6. Materiality: A rating should assess performance based on sustainability issues and indicators relevant to the decision-making of investors, and companies, consumers and other stakeholders for which a rating is designed.
7. Value Chain: A rating should apply to all portions of a rated company’s value chain over which the company exercises control or significant influence.
8. Assurability: A rating should be designed to allow for independent, third-party assurance of its application in accordance with the GISR standard by qualified parties.
9. Continuous Improvement: Through periodic update, a rating should track and integrate the best-available science and measurement techniques, issues, and indicators.
10. Impartiality: The design and application of a rating, whose primary users are external to the rated organization, should be protected from undue influence by the rated company.
11. Inclusiveness: Development and stewardship of a rating should identify and systematically engage those stakeholders whose decisions are influenced by the application of the rating.
12. Transparency: A rating should be transparent to those whose decisions are affected by the application of such rating.

“Given projected sharp increases” in the production of oil and gas by the technique commonly known as fracking, the report from the group Ceres said, “and the intense nature of local water demands, competition and conflicts over water should be a growing concern for companies, policy makers and investors.”

The overall amount of water used for fracking, even in states like Colorado and Texas that have been through severe droughts in recent years, is still small: in many cases 1 percent or even as little as a tenth of 1 percent of overall consumption, far less than agricultural or municipal uses.

But those figures mask more significant local effects, the report’s author, Monika Freyman, said in an interview. “You have to look at a county-by-county scale to capture the intense and short-term impact on water supplies,” she said.

“The whole drilling and fracking process is a well-orchestrated, moment-by-moment process” requiring that one million to five million gallons of water are available for a brief period, she added. “They need an intense amount of water for a few days, and that’s it.”

One of the options that oil and gas drillers have is recycling the water that comes back out of wells, which is called “produced water.” But the water injected into wells is laced with a proprietary mixture of chemicals and sand, and the water returning from thousands of feet below the surface can also contain natural pollutants or even radioactivity. Recycled water must therefore be treated, which can be expensive.

An earlier report done by engineers at the University of Texas, Austin, showed that 8,800 acre-feet — nearly 2.9 billion gallons — were used for fracking in 2011 in Tarrant County in North Texas, where Fort Worth is located and which has gone to the Supreme Court to get access to Oklahoma’s water.

And in the Eagle Ford shale formation in South Texas, particularly in Webb County, some researchers estimate that the amount of water used for fracking represents as much as one-third of the area’s annual groundwater recharge, the amount of surface water that percolates back to the underground aquifer supplying the region.

But the Ceres report notes that drillers in the Eagle Ford formation are also expanding their use of brackish, undrinkable water in place of fresh water.

While the local effects in Texas have been sufficient to spur the state’s Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry there, to encourage recycling by loosening rules governing that process, it is Colorado that faces the most widespread potential conflicts between fracking and other water uses, according to Ceres’s new report.

Kenneth H. Carlson, an engineering professor at Colorado State University, saw little difference between drillers buying needed water and cities buying water from farmers. “It’s a private commodity that people can do with what they want,” he said. “We’re not going to go thirsty. We’re just going to have to pay more.”

A new Ceres research paper on water use in hydraulic fracturing operations shows that a significant portion of this activity is happening in water stressed regions of the United States, most prominently Texas and Colorado, which are both in the midst of prolonged drought conditions. It concludes that industry efforts underway, such as expanded use of recycled water and non-freshwater resources, need to be scaled up along with better water management planning if shale energy production is to grow as projected.

The report, announced today, is based on well drilling and water use data from FracFocus.org and water stress indicator maps developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI). The research shows that nearly 47 percent of the wells were developed in water basins with high or extremely high water stress. The research was based on FracFocus data collected on 25,450 wells in operation from January 2011 through September 2012.

“These findings highlight emerging tensions in many U.S. regions between growing hydraulic fracturing activity and localized water supply needs,” said Ceres president Mindy Lubber, in announcing the report, Hydraulic Fracturing & Water Stress: Growing Competitive Pressures for Water, at Ceres’ annual conference in San Francisco.

FracFocus.org was launched in 2011 as a voluntary national hydraulic fracturing chemical registry. The database provides the location and date that each oil and gas well was developed and the chemical additives and total volume of water injected down each well.

WRI’s water stress indicator maps are part of a recently launched Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, which provides a comprehensive, high-resolution picture of water-related risks worldwide. The baseline water stress indicator maps show the level of competition for water in different U.S. regions by measuring total annual water withdrawals against the percentage of water that is available.  Extremely high water stress means over 80 percent of available water is already being allocated for municipal, industrial and agricultural uses.

By linking the two datasets together through matching latitude and longitude coordinates, the report provides valuable insights about the extent and distribution of well production activity in regions with water competition challenges.

Colorado and Texas showed the highest  exposure to water stress. In Colorado, 92 percent of the wells were in extremely high water stress regions. In Texas, which accounts for nearly half of the total wells analyzed, 51 percent of the wells were in high or extremely high water stress regions. In some Texas counties, water use for hydraulic fracturing accounted for more than 20 percent of the region’s total water use. In Pennsylvania, 70 percent of the wells were in medium to high water stress water basins and only 2 percent were in high water stress basins.

“Given projected sharp increases in shale oil and gas production in the coming years, competition over water should be a growing concern to energy companies, policymakers and investors,” the report concludes, noting a projected doubling of oil and gas fracturing production in the coming years. “Shale energy development cannot grow without water, but in order to do so the industry’s water needs and impacts need to be better understood, measured and managed.”

As the report outlines, the industry has made progress in boosting the use of recycled water and other alternative water sources for fracturing wells. Operators are starting to use non-freshwater alternatives such as wastewater, saline water, seawater and acid-mine drainage. “Overall water recycling and the use of non-freshwater sources must increase considerably to have a significant impact,” the report says.

The report includes key recommendations for companies and regulators, among those:

• Comprehensive mandatory disclosure by companies of how much freshwater, non-freshwater and recycled water they are using region by region as well as how much water is returning to the surface and where it is ending up.
• Requirements for companies to set quantifiable water use targets, including recycling and non-freshwater use targets.
• Ensure that both companies and local regulators are conducting sufficient water management planning.
• Ensure that companies have a local stakeholder engagement process in place on water issues.

Other investor focused initiatives, such as the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility and the Investor Environmental Health Network's Extracting the Facts (see their goal 6) have been pushing for better water sourcing disclosure along with other engagement recommendations on mitigating environmental and community impacts.

Today’s report is part of a larger, more comprehensive study Ceres is undertaking to analyze water risks across the entire hydraulic fracturing lifecycle – from water sourcing to final treatment and disposal of wastewater – across different regional basins in North America. The research is aimed primarily at investors who have financial stakes in operators and support services in these regions.

About Ceres

Ceres is an advocate for sustainability leadership. Ceres mobilizes a powerful coalition of investors, companies and public interest groups to accelerate and expand the adoption of sustainable business practices and solutions to build a healthy global economy. Ceres also directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $11 trillion. For more information, visit http://www.ceres.org

Angelides is currently President of Riverview Capital Investments, a real estate investment firm which focuses on clean energy projects and sustainable urban development. From 1999 to 2007, he served as California’s State Treasurer. During his eight years in elected office, Angelides called for a renewed push in shareholder activism and launched the Green Wave Initiative, encouraging investment in green technologies and urging companies to address the financial risks of climate change and reduce their energy consumption.

The Bavaria Award is presented by Ceres and Trillium Asset Management each year to honor an inspiring leader working to move capital markets toward a system that balances economic prosperity with social and environmental concerns. The award honors Joan Bavaria, a pioneer of social investing who founded Ceres and Trillium Asset Management. Joan Bavaria passed away in 2008.

“Phil’s actions were bold and transformational, given that at the time, no other state pension fund had taken steps to incorporate environmental impact into their investments.” said Trillium’s CEO Matt Patsky.

“Phil Angelides has worked tirelessly to push investors and the business community toward a sustainable economy. As California State Treasurer, he helped spur investments that increased returns, created jobs and addressed the financial risks caused by the changing environment,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR). “Phil embodies the spirit of the Joan Bavaria Award and we are honored to acknowledge his contribution to the sustainable investing community.”

Angelides also served as Chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a bipartisan panel charged with conducting the nation’s official inquiry into the causes of the financial and economic crisis and presenting findings and recommendations to the President and Congress.  Since 2007, Angelides has served as Chairman of the Apollo Alliance, a national coalition of business, labor, environmental and community leaders committed to creating green jobs and building a clean energy economy.

A founding member of the Ceres-led Investor Network on Climate Risk, Mr. Angelides served on the INCR Steering Committee and was a motivating force behind the first Investor Summit on Climate Risk at the United Nations in New York. Over the course of his career, he has helped mobilize financial leaders to act on climate and sustainability issues.

“The enduring strength of our economy and society is inextricably tied to our willingness to embrace investments and business practices that create sustainable enterprises, broaden economic opportunity, and protect our environment,” said Mr. Angelides. “I am deeply honored to receive the Joan Bavaria Award and remain committed to supporting the critical efforts needed to confront the enormous economic and environmental risks posed by climate change.”

About Ceres

Ceres is an advocate for sustainability leadership. Ceres mobilizes a powerful coalition of investors, companies and public interest groups to accelerate and expand the adoption of sustainable business practices and solutions to build a healthy global economy. Ceres also directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of more than100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $11 trillion. For more information, visit http://www.ceres.org

About Trillium Asset Management
With a history spanning three decades, Trillium is the oldest independent investment advisor focused exclusively on sustainable and responsible investing. Trillium manages over $1 billion in assets for clients including high net worth individuals, foundations, endowments, religious institutions, and other non-profits. To learn more about Trillium, please visit http://trilliuminvest.com.

Though Congress failed to renew the tax credit, clouding the future of America's wind power industry, businesses are again working to revive the PTC before it expires in December.

A new business voice is emerging in Washington to reshape America's energy future along a cleaner path. With more aggressive lobbying, nitty-gritty involvement in drafting legislation and bucking the business status quo represented by the US Chamber of Commerce, these companies are engaged in Herculean effort to turn the nation away from fossil fuels embedded in the economy and politics.

The strong business case for expanded renewable energy production is only part of what motivates Starbucks, Levi Strauss and others. All see a larger picture: we cannot build the healthy, sustainable global economy that powers their businesses long-term without addressing major economic threats such as climate change and natural resource scarcity. Success will require comprehensive state and national policies that encourage clean energy and drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions. In the US, these policies are sorely lacking.

Most of the signatories to the PTC letter are members of Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), an initiative formed to give business a voice on 'green' issues in Washington. Its members range from well-known food and apparel companies such as Clif Bar and Nike to the Portland Trail Blazers professional basketball team, eBay and many others.

Corporate involvement in the policy arena is nothing new, of course. Businesses have always been quite adept at pursuing their self-interests through the political process, as the oil and gas industries - current beneficiaries of billions in tax breaks - clearly show.

What is new is that so many companies now believe sustainability goals such as environmental protection, reduced reliance on fossil fuels and development of renewable energy are good for the planet and for business. Polar opposites, in other words, from the US Chamber of Commerce and others who see virtually all regulations that impact corporate behaviour as bad for business.

"We reject the notion that climate and energy legislation is going to be costly," said Stonyfield Farm founder Gary Hirschberg, one of BICEP's earliest supporters who joined 500 business executives in Washington to support climate legislation in 2010. "Climate action offers economic opportunity rather than economic penalty."

More than ever, the voices of businesses like these are being heard.

Last year, a senior executive at apparel company Timberland testified before Congress on efforts by House Republicans to limit the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) authority to curb greenhouse gases and other air pollutants. "Preventing EPA from exercising its authority, or rolling back any of its actions, would cost the economy in human health, in terms of illness that often results in lost work days, and more," she told the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The rollback effort subsequently failed.

Corporate sustainability activism is also reaching beyond Washington to the state level. BICEP companies played a leading role in fending off a repeal of California's landmark climate law. They also led in advocating for stronger national automobile fuel economy standards - now set to go into effect this fall.

In other regions, corporations are working hand-in-hand with lawmakers to encourage clean energy development. When BICEP member company eBay wanted to use clean solar energy to power an expanded data centre facility in the state of Utah, it required a change in state law. Together with Rocky Mountain Power, the state's largest electric utility, other high-tech companies such as Google and Oracle, and a Republican state senator, they crafted legislation this spring to make renewable energy available to large energy users and create a real alternative to coal-fired generation. That legislation is now law.

"I'm looking for choice in a state, and if I want clean power I want to be able to get it. That's what this law does," said eBay's global data centre strategy director Dean Nelson, who is already planning to build a second data centre and add nearly 2,200 new jobs in the state. The law will also help eBay diversify its energy portfolio, providing a hedge against volatile fossil fuel prices.

Other businesses are flexing their muscles in different ways. Aspen Ski Company, a major ski area operator facing shorter ski seasons as global temperatures rise, is taking on the US Chamber for its resistance to climate change policies. Last month, it led a successful effort to have the Aspen Chamber of Commerce disassociate itself from the national organisation.

Although many companies are disheartened by the current dysfunction in Washington, one former US Department of Energy official recently appealed for businesses interested in clean energy policies not to disengage.

"Please do not abandon Washington," former US Department of Energy official Cathy Zoi recently told an audience convened by Fortune magazine. "This is important…because you guys are thinking about reliable, affordable electricity, and Washington needs to know that you care about it."

Even today, with a presidential race slowing national policy-making to a crawl, companies like Levi Strauss see opportunities for positive action.

"In an election year…companies should use this time to create a foundation of support for when the policy environment is more ripe for action," Anna Walker, senior manager of government affairs and public policy at Levi Strauss, told an audience in Boston last week.

"Like the Chinese proverb of a thousand cups of tea, this is an opportunity to build relationships with policymakers, to tell your story, and strengthen alliances with like-minded companies and organisations," Walker added. "In a time when big action won't happen, those smaller actions - those cups of tea - can help secure change for the future."