Tony Hayward, BP CEO Will Step Down In October

NEW ORLEANS — Tony Hayward, who became the face of BP's flailing efforts to contain the massive Gulf oil spill, will step down as chief executive in October and be offered a job with the company's joint venture in Russia, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been made by the British company's board, which was meeting Monday in London to decide Hayward's fate. The decision is the board's to make, and it was unclear if it had formally done so.

It's not yet clear what Hayward's role will be with TNK-BP. He left the board meeting Monday without speaking to reporters, climbing into a silver Lexus that sped off.

BP owns half of the oil firm, which is Russia's third-largest.

It was once run by American Bob Dudley, now the odds-on favorite to replace Hayward as BP CEO. After Hayward made a series of missteps, including telling reporters he wanted his life back as Gulf residents struggled to deal with the spill, Dudley took over as BP's point man in dealing with it. He was in London Monday with other board members.

Hayward was called back to London a month ago after a bruising encounter with a Congressional committee and has since kept a low profile.

"We're getting to the end of the situation," said David Battersby at Redmayne Bentley Stockbrokers. "To draw a line under it, they need a new chief executive."

In New York, BP shares rose almost 5 percent Monday as the stock market anticipated a formal announcement about Hayward. Shares of BP PLC rose $1.82, or 4.9 percent, to $38.68 in midday trading in New York. BP shares closed up 4.6 percent Monday at 416.95 pence in London.

The BP board would have to approve a change in company leadership, and there is persistent speculation that chairman Karl-Henric Svanberg, who moved into the post on Jan. 1, is also likely to lose his job later this year.

The one-day board meeting comes a day before BP announces earnings for the second quarter. That report is expected to include preliminary provisions for the cost of the Gulf disaster, with analysts saying that could be as high as $30 billion.


"BP notes the press speculation over the weekend regarding potential changes to management and the charge for the costs of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. BP confirms that no final decision has been made on these matters," the company said in a statement Monday to the London Stock Exchange before trading began.

Shares were up 2.6 percent at 408.95 pence ($6.33) in midafternoon trading in London.

Hayward, 53, who has a Ph.D in geology, had been a well-regarded chief executive. But his promise when he took the job in 2007 to focus on safety "like a laser" came back to haunt him after an April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and unleashed a deep-sea gusher of oil.

Hayward's early attempts to shift blame to the rig operator, Transocean, failed to take the heat off BP. Later remarks that the amount of oil pouring into the Gulf was "tiny" compared to its volume of water and Hayward's whining that he would "like my life back" made him an object of scorn. That emotion turned to fury when Gulf residents heard that Hayward spent a day at a fancy English sailing race in which his yacht was competing at the height of the disaster.

David Cumming, head of U.K. equities at Standard Life Investments, said the board's reported intention to remove Hayward is an act of "political appeasement."

"I think they have taken view that his departure will relieve some of the political and media pressure in the U.S. and help BP rebuild its U.S. reputation," Cumming told BBC radio.

Chief executives inevitably often are sacked for corporate failure, whether or not they had any direct responsibility for what happened, said Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at BGC Partners in London.

"Neither should we forget that Mr. Hayward has been master of his own downfall and that by those sometimes unfortunate remarks and attitude displayed in public he made his own situation all the more worse," Wheeldon said.

Dudley has so far avoided any gaffes. Currently BP's managing director, Dudley grew up partly in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He spent 20 years at Amoco Corp., which merged with BP in 1998, and lost out to Hayward on the CEO's slot three years ago.

BP says the cost of dealing with the spill had reached nearly $4 billion by July 19, but that it was too early to quantify the eventual total cost.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said BP's attitude about making things right was more important than who is running the company.

"BP, from I think everybody's perspective, made a very bad mistake," he said. "I think what the world expects from BP is an acknowledgment that something was done wrong. I think BP has a long way to go to gain the trust of the people."

Hayward makes 1.045 million pounds ($1.6 million) a year as the company's head, according to its annual report. In 2009, he received a performance bonus of more than 2 million pounds plus other remuneration, bringing his total pay package to over 4 million pounds.

BP is the process of selling assets to raise $10 billion toward a $20 billion fund that will finance the clean up of the mess in the Gulf. BP announced last week that it had sold properties in the United States, Canada and Egypt to Apache Corp. for $7 billion.

Under pressure from President Barack Obama, BP has also announced that it will pay no more dividends to shareholders this year. That move disappointed some 18 million Britons, many of them retirees, who hold stock in what used to be the country's largest company.


Barr reported from London.

Tailpipe fumes are five times worse for bikers than for drivers, study finds

by Jonathan Hiskes
Well this is a bummer: A Belgian study finds that bicyclists on urban streets inhale tens of millions of toxic nanoparticles with each breath, taking in five times as much as drivers and pedestrians on the same streets.


The U.K. Times reports on the new research:

Because they are exerting themselves, cyclists breathe harder and faster than other road users. The study found that they suck in about 1,000 cubic cm with each breath, meaning they may inhale tens of millions of the particles each time they fill their lungs, and billions during a whole journey.

"This is the first time anyone has counted the particles while also measuring people's breathing during city commuting. It showed that cyclists can inhale an astonishing number of pollutant particles in one journey," said Luc Int Panis of the transport research institute at Hasselt University in Belgium, who led the study.

Researchers fitted bikers with devices that counted the particles -- mostly emitted by car tailpipes -- in the air they breathed. Research on the long-term effects of inhaling these particles is murky, though they've been linked to heart disease and respiratory problems. "Other studies have shown that exposure to particulate pollution can have rapid short-term effects too -- such as provoking asthma attacks," says the Times.

As an occasional bike commuter, my expert opinion is that this news blows. Biking (along with walking) is the most helpful commuting method for the planet and for fellow citizens, so I'd like it to have even more benefits for bikers themselves. Int Panis' study complicates the picture, although it doesn't really change the long-term solutions -- fewer internal-combustion vehicles, more electric vehicles, much more mass transit, land use that reduces the need for daily travel, and streets that are safe for bikers and walkers as well as autos.

In the short term, nanoparticles are so small that wearing a mask doesn't help (which is a relief in its own way -- who wants to wear a mask?). The research instead suggests finding ways to separate bikes from cars and trucks. Cyclists can choose routes away from arterials and heavily trafficked streets. Diesel fumes are especially important to avoid: on an equal horsepower basis, diesel exhaust is 100 times more toxic than exhaust from automobiles, according to Robert W. Derlet of UC-Davis.

Avoiding traffic gets tough, though, when you're trying to go where everyone else is trying to go (say, downtown) at the same time (say, rush hour). And for the public-health and environmental benefits of biking to be fully realized, it's got to be more than weekend recreation. Sticking to bike paths and country roads doesn't get most people where they need to be in their daily lives.

Parked cars separate this Montreal cycletrack from cars -- and, researchers hope, from their tailpipe fumes.

Joel Mann via Flickr.Planners can help by creating cycle tracks that give bikers a buffer of trees, sidewalks, or parked cars so that they're not breathing directly behind auto tailpipes. (Seattle just announced plans for its first cycle track.) But does a few feet of separation do any good? Anne Lusk, a cycling advocate and research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, is applying for funding to study just that, since there's no definitive research on whether cycle tracks help bikers avoid significant levels of road pollution, she said. A 2005 study of busy central London streets found that air on sidewalks was cleaner than in the road, suggesting a small separation makes a difference.

"What you clearly should do as a bicyclist is to avoid busy arterial roads," said Lusk.

Compared to drivers, she said, cyclists have shorter commutes and use fewer busy roadways (you don't see many of them on interstates), which limits their exposure to tailpipe pollution.

Lusk said Int Panis' nanoparticle research is sound and accurate, but that bikers still get a net health benefit, given the exercise their hearts, lungs, and muscles are getting. "Bikers are still coming out ahead," she said.

Making biking safer and more commonplace will only make that more true.

'The Quest To Address Climate Change Is a Long Journey'

ARTHUR MAX
BONN, Germany — Delegates to the first U.N. climate talks after Copenhagen have agreed to intensify their negotiations on curbing greenhouse gases before this year's decisive ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico.


The agreement – itself a tacit acknowledgment of the slow progress in reaching a global climate pact – followed three days of at-times rancorous discussions that nearly ground to a halt.

It was an early warning that the split between industrial countries and the developing world will likely continue characterizing the talks.

Bolivian delegate Pablo Solon said Monday he was pleased Sunday's agreement made no mention of the Copenhagen Agreement – a political deal hastily cobbled together by President Barack Obama and a handful of other national leaders at the end of the U.N. talks in December.

"Despite continual attempts by the U.S. to make the completely unacceptable Copenhagen Accord the basis for future negotiations, I am glad to say they failed," Solon said in a statement.

Many other countries – even among the 120 countries that supported the Copenhagen Accord – denounced the closed-door manner in which it was negotiated, and voiced disappointment that its emissions requirements were only voluntary.

The delegates from 175 parties spent most of their time in Bonn squabbling over seemingly minor procedural issues surrounding how to conduct the negotiations for the rest of the year, including the authorization of a committee chairwoman to prepare a draft text for the next meeting in June, also in Bonn.

The delegates approved two previously unscheduled meetings after the June session, each lasting at least a week. They are meant as working sessions for delegates to refine the draft text before the final Cancun conference Nov. 29-Dec. 10. Each round of talks will cost between $3.5 million and $7 million, depending on where they are held. Locations have yet to be decided.

After the letdown of Copenhagen, officials downplayed expectations of a final deal being reached this year.

"We should not be striving to get answers to each and every question in Cancun," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. climate secretariat, said Sunday. "The quest to address climate change is a long journey, and achieving perfection takes practice."

The final agreement is meant to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which has provisions capping greenhouse gas emissions by industrial countries that expire in 2012. The new accord would be expanded to curtail emissions by swiftly developing countries like China, which already has surpassed the United States as the world's biggest polluter.

At a final session on Sunday, delegates wrangled over wording that implied a lesser status for the Copenhagen Accord. Also on the table was a draft treaty painstakingly negotiated among more than 190 countries over the last two years, but which leaves many core issues unresolved.

"This is not even a negotiating decision," chairwoman Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe said in frustration, trying to cut off the debate. "If we can't agree on this, then we may have problems when we really start negotiating."

The Copenhagen Accord sets a goal of limiting the increase in the Earth's average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels, but does not specify how that should be done.

It asks industrial countries to set targets for reducing carbon dioxide and other polluting gases causing global warming, while asking developing countries to submit national plans for slowing their emissions growth. It also calls for international monitoring to ensure those goals are met, but does not set any penalties.

U.S. chief delegate Jonathan Pershing said the accord was a package deal, and rejected suggestions "in which certain elements are cherry picked."

Pershing also confirmed Washington opposed granting financial help to countries that refused to sign onto the Copenhagen deal, which included a $30 billion three-year package of aid for handling climate emergencies and helping poor countries turn to low-carbon growth.

"Countries that are not part of the accord would not be given substantial funding under the accord," Pershing told reporters. "It's not a free rider process."

On Saturday, Bolivia's Solon, an ambassador to the United Nations, protested the cutoff of funds from the U.S. Global Climate Change initiative as "a very bad practice" and an attempt to put pressure countries to support the agreement.

Bolivia is holding a grass-roots World Peoples Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth on April 19-22, with the aim of presenting an alternative agenda for consideration by U.N. climate delegates.

Wood Clad Pavilion Designed by Cirque du Soleil

 

by Bridgette Meinhold

The 2010 World Expo in Shanghai is set to kick off in May and construction is nearly completed on the water-harvesting wood-clad Canada Pavilion. The famous acrobatic troupe Cirque du Soleil had a part in the design of the pavilion and will also be performing throughout the Expo. Many interesting pavilions have been designed for the expo around the theme of “Better Life, Better City” and Canada’s contribution includes a great set of sustainable design elements to compliment that.

The Canadian Government and Cirque du Soleil have partnered to provide a cultural pavilion that will host shows by Cirque du Soleil as well as other public performances and cultural programs throughout the duration of the Expo. The 6,000 square meter pavilion features an inner courtyard as well as an exhibition named ‘The Living City: Inclusive, Sustainable, Creative.’

Designed by Cirqud du Soleil and built by Canadian firm, SNC-Lavalin Inc, the Canada Pavilion is one of the largest pavilions of the Expo. The exterior of the pavilion is clad in wood slats and features a special collection system to harvest rainwater, which will then be used inside the building. Inside the courtyard, the walls will be covered with a special kind of greenery. Prime Minister of Canada says of the Pavilion, “It will present Canada as the modern, democratic, bilingual, diversified and environmentally responsive country that it is. A country with successful, sustainable cities that are innovative, creative and prosperous places.”

TD Bank going "Carbon Neutral"

TD Bank says it’s carbon neutral, will focus on building green branches
by Jeff Blumenthal


TD Bank said Thursday that it is the largest U.S.-based bank to go carbon neutral. It also unveiled a new “green” design for its future branches.

TD, a subsidiary of Toronto-based TD Bank Financial Group, said it reached its carbon neutral goal by building greener buildings, lowering its energy consumption, and making a significant investment in renewable energy from sources like wind, solar and low-impact hydro power. TD Bank has bought a block of wind energy large enough to power its network of 2,600 ATMs. TD Bank said it has also purchased 31,000 metric tons of carbon offset credits to eliminate its remaining emissions.

The bank, which has dual headquarters in Portland, Maine, and Cherry Hill, N.J., has pledged to develop LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified stores with its first planned prototype green branch set to open this spring in Queens Village, N.Y. The bank expects to open up to 10 new green branches in 2010.

In 2011, the vast majority of new TD Bank branches built will be LEED certified and all stores after that. The bank has opened a LEED office in Boston, and in 2010 plans to open a LEED call center in Auburn, Maine.

LEED evaluates buildings for their overall environmental performance in five areas: sustainable sites, water use, energy efficiency, materials and resource use, and indoor environmental quality

TD Bank's new 3,800 square-feet prototype branches will reduce energy consumption by 50 percent compared with previous designs, with nearly 20 percent of the store's energy being produced onsite through solar panels and solar drive-thru canopies. The branches will feature: wood from sustainably managed forests, products that emit little-to-no volatile organic compounds; walk-off mats and air filters that trap particles of dirt, dust and pollen for improved indoor air quality; insulated glass with a low-E coating to help keep a balanced, temperate environment; and sensors to control lighting. Stores will be maintained with green cleaning products, and will recycle paper, cardboard, glass, metal, plastics and disposable batteries.

The new branches will feature exterior walls and glazing that keep the site cool in the summer and warm in the winter, water-efficient plumbing fixtures, environmentally friendly materials and finishes made of recycled materials, secure bicycle parking and landscaping designed with drought-tolerant plants and shrubs that do not need to be watered regularly.

PNC Bank says it has 21 LEED-certified branches. On Saturday, PNC will open a green branch in Williamstown, N.J. PNC said more than 50 percent of the materials used to build the branch were locally manufactured or made from recycled or green materials. PNC said it is the first U.S. bank to design and build environmentally friendly LEED certified bank branches and has more newly constructed LEED-certified green buildings than any other company in the world.

A powerhouse duo on the green front

Aman Desouza, director of innovation and sustainability at CertainTeed Corp., of Valley Forge PA, visits a project in Broomall PA where his company is testing a yet-to-be-released photovoltaic roof able to generate solar power.

Wal-Mart and the U.S. government are driving the movement toward less-wasteful business ways.

By Diane Mastrull

President Obama is not expected to be there. Nor is the head of Wal-Mart, Mike Duke.

But when Valley Forge building-products manufacturer CertainTeed Corp. unveils its "very, very first baby step" into the world of photovoltaic roofing next week at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas, Obama and Duke presumably will be pleased.

In the fall, each took action to inspire greater commitment to protecting natural resources and working less wastefully, known in the green vernacular as sustainability.

Obama signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to practice what the administration is urging all Americans to do to aid the environment and help build a thriving clean-energy economy: Use less energy, recycle more, and build and buy in a way that doesn't waste resources and tax the planet.

Duke, Wal-Mart's president and chief executive officer, announced a sustainability-index initiative to influence suppliers to produce and deliver their products more efficiently and with an environmental sensitivity.

Though Obama and Duke acted independently, what they did has the collective potential to significantly advance what has been a slowly evolving movement - one that draws skepticism from those who wonder whether the payoff is worth the expense.

"What you have is the 500-pound gorillas in the private sector and the public sector making these [sustainability] decisions . . . and they're going to drive the rest of the market," said Joshua M. Kaplowitz, an environmental and commercial lawyer at Drinker, Biddle & Reath L.L.P. and head of an in-house task force charged with improving the firm's sustainability efforts.

The U.S. government is the nation's single largest user of energy. It owns nearly half-a-million buildings and more than 600,000 fleet vehicles, and it buys more than half a trillion dollars' worth of goods and services each year.

Wal-Mart offers equally colossal credentials: It reported $401 billion in sales and 2.1 million employees worldwide last year.

With the federal government and one of the world's largest retailers putting their substantial heft behind the cause, the results could be a real game changer, said Shari Shapiro, an environmental law associate at Obermayer, Rebmann, Maxwell & Hippel L.L.P. in Center City.

Shapiro couched her comment by saying that other steps - such as passage of a climate-change bill - are important to achieving a national embrace of sustainability. But she acknowledged that "there are no two bigger forces in our society."

The order Obama signed Oct. 5 requires federal agencies to, among other things, increase energy efficiency; measure, report, and reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions; conserve and protect water resources; and leverage acquisitions to foster markets for sustainable technologies and environmentally preferable materials.

It also calls for federal buildings to be green and for 95 percent of federal purchases to meet sustainability requirements. That it does not require 100 percent compliance is an acknowledgment that sustainability provisions might not be applicable for such purchases as military weapons systems, said Michelle Moore, Obama's federal environmental executive.

Under the order, each federal agency must appoint a sustainability officer. Every six months, the Office of Management and Budget will issue a public scorecard grading each agency on its sustainability performance.

In April, recommendations are due on which sustainability criteria to require of federal contractors, Moore said.

Wal-Mart's sustainability index also is a work in progress, expected to be rolled out in three phases.

First, the company is sending out surveys to its more than 100,000 global suppliers to evaluate their sustainability. Questions focus on four areas: energy and climate; material efficiency; natural resources; and people and community, according to Wal-Mart's Web site.

The second phase involves creation of a consortium of universities to help build a database of product life cycles. Arizona State University and the University of Arkansas will administer the consortium, which Wal-Mart is encouraging other retailers and suppliers to join.

The last step is determining how to provide customers with that information so they can make purchases in a more sustainable way.

Critics note that Wal-Mart - because of its size and influence - is known for driving down wages and putting out of business smaller competitors that cannot keep pace on pricing. Those same people are hoping its power and scope can make Wal-Mart a sustainability inspiration.

"We have already seen the type of change Wal-Mart can have on our economy," said Shapiro, who also writes the blog www.greenbuildinglaw.com. "So if it has the same impact on sustainability, it will be major."

That assessment was echoed by Aman Desouza, director of innovation and sustainability at CertainTeed.

In recent years, the company has worked to develop more environmentally sensitive, higher-performing products to meet consumers' green demands. That effort yielded the new EnerGen solar system that CertainTeed will debut next week in Las Vegas.

The system consists of lightweight, thin-film photovoltaic laminates that integrate with roofing shingles, and its installation does not require asphalt-rooftop penetration, as traditional solar panels do.

Though expanding the company's line of sustainable products is important to CertainTeed, so is improving its commitment to operating more efficiently and at minimal impact to the environment, Desouza said. It has been working with a consultant, Sustainable Solutions Corp., of Royersford, to find ways to do so.

There is a degree of vindication in that, Desouza said, since Wal-Mart is making sustainability such a priority for itself and the companies it does business with.

"The more companies like Wal-Mart start doing things like that . . . the easier it becomes for everyone."

Is Whole Foods Bad for the Planet?

By Kate Sheppard

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has probably brought more people to organic foods than anyone else in the United States. And many of the folks shopping at his markets undoubtedly consider themselves to be environmentally aware. They might even believe that by purchasing their groceries at Whole Foods outlets they are doing their part to help the planet. But certainly many of them would probably be startled to learn of of Mackey's position on climate change: he's a global warming denier.

In a recent New Yorker profile of Mackey, the Whole Foods chief argues that there is no scientific consensus regarding the causes of climate change. He lists Heaven and Earth: Global Warming--the Missing Science, a skeptical take on warming, as one of his recent favorite reads. He frets that the "hysteria about global warming" will cause the United States "to raise taxes and increase regulation, and in turn lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty." He adds: "Historically, prosperity tends to correlate to warmer temperatures."

Mackey, of course, is wrong about the absence of a scientific consensus, and his theory that warmer temperatures produce prosperity is, to say the least, wacky. But his embrace of climate change denial is not truly a surprise, for Mackey is an unabashed libertarian, opposed to the very idea of "regulation" and "taxes," no matter their purpose. He may be the vegan CEO of the country's largest natural market chain, but he voted for Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr last year--because Ron Paul wasn't on the ballot. There's long been a debate over whether Mackey is a do-gooder or a simply a profiteer in disguise. (The whole sock-puppeting incident made him seem more of a bizarre egomaniac than anything else).

Though many of his shoppers are concerned about personal and planetary health, his latest revelation so far has gotten scant attention. But when Mackey penned an anti-health care reform op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last August, it spurred a swift call for boycott from progressives. "Whole Foods has built its brand with the dollars of deceived progressives," proclaimed the the "Boycott Whole Foods" Facebook page, which had 33,829 members at last count. "Let them know your money will no longer go to support Whole Foods' anti-union, anti-health insurance reform, right-wing activities." A website promoting the boycott also sprang up. Mackey's anti-labor positions have also triggered considerable ire, after he compared having a union to "having herpes." But there's yet no virtual call to eschew Whole Foods because of Mackey's global warming position.

But that doesn't mean there's no potential problem here for Whole Foods. The company, which pulls in $4 billion a year, does try to promote itself as a firm that cares about the environment. Its official blog touts climate-related causes like rainforest preservation, waste reduction, and the awareness about carbon footprint of food. During my last visit to the store, I was urged to sign up to receive my shopping receipts via email, to save paper. But their focus is on what customers can do to reduce their impact—including in one post an admonition to "vote with your dollars" by shopping at local and at socially-conscious businesses.

The company ranked among the biggest purchasers of green power last year, but neither the company nor its CEO has advocated for environmental policies in line with the views held by their customer base. Meanwhile, companies widely scorned by progressives have stepped up efforts to deal with climate change by both implementing sustainable practices and advocating for sound policy. Chief among them is Walmart, which recently joined with a number of other retailers, universities, suppliers, and the EPA to form the Sustainability Consortium. Its goal is to create an industry-wide sustainability index for the lifecycle of products. And a number of consumer-oriented businesses, such as Nike, Gap, and Starbucks, are working through Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy to pass climate change legislation. Whole Foods, despite its image, is not part of that coalition. And with Mackey its most visible officer, Whole Foods essentially can be counted as part of the corporate opposition to the pending legislation.

Mackey did step down as chairman of Whole Foods' board last week, but he remains both the CEO and a board member. He says that the move was more ceremonial. There's yet no indication whether this shift will lead to any changes in the company's climate-related policies.

Last year, Mackey penned a book touting the "power of conscious capitalism." He may not want his customers who care about global warming to use that power when they are deciding where to buy their organic arugula.