Spring 2015
Where did winter go? My friends in the Northeast are pleased to see it move off, but for me it’s been a blur.

My main priority has been to push forward the creation of a narrative for an economy in service to life—one that works for 100% of humanity, as Bucky Fuller put it.

This is something I cannot do alone, so I have been pulling together a coalition of leaders from across the globe. After pitching the idea at the Club of Rome, I was asked to serve on their Executive Committee and help make it one of their three core-action pillars.

We made progress in February when the DeTao Academy in China invited core members of the coalition to Shanghai, chaired by Dr Robert Costanza, who is the one who got me into all this in the first place. In this meeting on the Future New Economy my colleagues, John Fullerton of Capital Institute, on whose advisory Board I serve, and Dr Robert Eccles, now overseeing the creation of the new Sustainability Accounting Standards Board here in the US, discussed transforming finance, accounting and all aspects of our economy. Today John is releasing the full version of his seminal Regenerative Capitalism paper: livestream at 4:30pm EDT. Follow the #RegenerativeCapitalism hashtag on twitter for real-time updates.

In two weeks I’ll join John and some of the biggest brains I know on an island off Stockholm to try to set out a strategy for how we go about getting to this new economy.

We can do it. Never thought I’d say this, but we’re winning. Whether it’s the news on China’s coal imports in the first three months of 2015 being 42% below a year ago, or talks with utilities trying to figure how to move rapidly toward renewable solutions, I’m more encouraged than I’ve been in years. This is the message I’ll give for my dear friend Anne Butterfield’s “Soiree” this Saturday in Boulder. Join me for a great evening of conversation.

It’s also what I said in March at Maui’s conference on the Future Utility Customer, as I urged the state to commit to 100% renewable energy.And again last week at my dear friend Bob King’s SPEER Summit on energy efficiency in Texas, when I warned that the thinking of the last century is changing fast: Eon and RWE the two biggest, previously fossil-based utilities in Europe, watched profits fall last year respectively 60% and 91% as Germany shifts rapidly to renewable energy. Both Eon and RWE are now divesting of their fossil assets. Citi Group’s Energy Darwinism report warns of the “alarming fall in the price of solar.” Alarming to whom? And Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg New Energy Finance wrote last week that Fossil fuel just lost the race against renewables, saying: “…there is going to be a substantial buildout of renewable energy that is likely to be an order of magnitude larger than the buildout of coal and gas.” Congratulate yourselves, all of you have  worked so long to bring about this transformation.  It’s happening.

The next couple months will be spent on an airplane. You can follow me on twitter @hlovins as I jet to Stockholm for my economy work and to London to work with the Guardian, for whom I am now writing: see my latest two “Life after divestment: how to spend the money saved from fossil fuel investments,” and “The climate denier’s guide to getting rich from fossil fuel divestment.”

Then back to NY to teach at Bard—finishing my class in political economy and overseeing student capstone projects, several of which will truly make a difference. Any of you who ever thought about taking an MBA in sustainable management with me, we’re forming up our class for next fall. Contact Katie Van Sant: [email protected] if you want to come play.

After a quick run to Morocco to keynote a conference for the King of Morocco on Doing Well and Doing Good, I’ll return to Colorado to keynote a summit on divesting from ownership of fossil fuels, and why, if you’ve just divested you should be moving your money from harm to healing (I have…have you?) I’m working on this with the new investment advisory service, Principium to build a set of portfolios that are genuinely fossil fuel free, focused on the best new economy companies as well as the blue-chips, like Unilever, that have embedded sustainability into the core of their operations.

So welcome to spring. That said, last week, on a five campus tour, crossing the Berkshires to keynote the “Strengthening Ties for Collective Impact: Campus Sustainability in the Northeast Region” conference at U Mass, it snowed on us. And tonight there’s 5 inches predicted for the ranch.

Not whining—we need the moisture. This was the hottest 3-month start of any year on record and will likely be the hottest year ever.  As always, there’s more work to be done! And as always I cannot do it without you. Thanks for making it possible.