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Former RNC chairman helps companies clean up their carbon footprint
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Ken Mehlman is now overseeing global external affairs at Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts’ Green Portfolio Program.
The program, created in 2008 in conjunction with the Environmental Defense Fund, calls attention to corporations and organizations that have increased profits by reducing their carbon footprint. The first three companies to participate in the program – Primedia, Sealy and the U.S. Food Service – saw profits increase by $16.4 million. A dozen companies are participating in or are slated to begin KKR’s program.
"None of this is rocket science. You just need to be more thoughtful about what you are doing," Gwen Ruta, EDF’s vice president of corporate partnerships, told journalist Marc Gunther, acknowledging that most of the changes the companies made were not a result of advanced technology or engineering. The U.S. Food Service, for example, cut $8.2 million in fuels by implementing gas-saving measures such as turning off trucks when idling or treading more lightly on brake pedals when coming to a stop.
Earlier this year, KKR announced that it would be expanding the Green Portfolio Program to cover 20 percent of the company’s global private equity portfolio, including Oriental Brewery in Seoul, Korea and Tarkett, based in Nanterre, France.
Since being launched in May 2008, the program has "never been stronger," Henry Kravis, co-founder of KKR, said. He added that the program has proven that "environmental performance and business performance can go hand-in-hand."
The Green Portfolio Program was developed after KKR partnered with San Francisco’s Texas Pacific Group to buy the Texas utility TXU. The two firms worked with the EDF, agreeing to dump TXU’s permit applications for new coal-fired plants and commit to lowering greenhouse gas emissions, the San Francisco Chronicle writes.
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