Through Mennonite Retirement Trust (MRT), MMA has investments in eight cleantech companies:

Consumer Powerline http://www.consumerpowerline.com/default.asp
Assists customers (inc. Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, and others) in energy asset management, particularly through increasing efficiency; the company collects no fees - it shares in the incremental savings or revenue it generates through efficiency measures.

Element Labs http://www.elementlabs.com/company
Provides LED lighting for the entertainment industry, which mostly uses inefficient incandescent lighting.

Powerit Solutions http://www.poweritsolutions.com/
Helps industrial customers manage their peak load demand to significantly lower energy costs.

SensorTran http://www.sensortran.com/
This company does distributed temperature sensing using fiber optics in many different industries including oil and gas (monitoring of down hole activity and pipeline integrity).

Agile Systems
Specialty electronic motor drives - more efficient, quieter, and longer lasting than conventional

Biroem
Biofilters for odor and volatile organic compounds

Orion
Efficient lighting systems and ancillary services for high-bay warehouse environments

Tiger Optics
Chemical sensors used in industries from medical diagnostics to environmental monitoring

These companies are not startups; rather, they are mature companies on the cutting edge of their fields and in the expansion stage of their operations. They are part of Expansion Capital’s CleanTech II fund, which MRT invests in through its alternative investment portfolio.

Forty-six leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have signed on to a statement that urges greater acknowledgment and action on global warming. Stories can be viewed here and here. This is a monumental shift among the Southern Baptist leadership from just a year or two ago. To be clear, the statement is not representative of all Southern Baptists, but it is still signed by significant part of its leadership, including three of the denomination’s last four presidents.

This is good news, as the Southern Baptist Convention is one of the largest denominations in the US, and has been one of the last few to disregard climate change.

On Feb. 8th, I participated in a shareholder meeting in New York with Hormel Foods, along with representatives of a number of other socially concerned institutions. Hormel is one of the largest meatpacking companies in the US. Our main intent was to engage the company about the environmental sustainability of their operations and discuss their 2007 corporate responsibility report. The Hormel team included their VP of communications, their plant operations manager, and an outside consultant. We covered topics including antibiotics, animal cloning, water use, contract farms, employee benefits and diversity, and developing a GHG emissions inventory.

Probably the most positive part of the meeting was our discussion of water and energy efficiency in their processing plants. Hormel has come to recognize the importance of conservation, and is looking at new ways to improve their operational efficiency. In fact, their newest factory will be a LEED certified green building. Part of Hormel’s focus on greener processing facilities stems from the recent Southeast drought. The company has a plant in Atlanta and the record drought there forced them to conserve water. The techniques they used to achieve water efficiency can now be used in their other plants.

Hormel has largely followed the agribusiness industry in supporting the use of antibiotics, and it is not against the use of cloned animals for food. However, they are putting these issues on the table for discussion. One of the worst environmental problems of the meat industry involves concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO). These are the feedlots and factory farms that supply the meat industry with animals for slaughter. Unfortunately, we are unable to address CAFOs because Hormel does not own or control them – contracted farmers do. We are looking at ways to address this situation.

Overall, Hormel has come a long way in a few short years – from ignoring shareholders’ environmental and social concerns to addressing some of them in their business plan – and we will encourage them to continue pursuing sustainable operations.