Erin Craig, of the environmental consultancy 3Degrees, is getting businesses to work together to reduce the effects of climate change. Last year, Craig secured the funding to develop a solar array in Virginia and a wind project in Illinois by wrangling a joint agreement from four corporations—Apple, cloud-services provider Akamai, Etsy, and insurance giant Swiss Re—to finance and purchase energy from these sites. The deal established a model that makes renewable-energy procurement cost-effective for companies both large and small. (Until now, tech titans with large energy loads, like Google, have dominated the growing field.) “Not everybody is a giant energy user. Not everybody has a big bucket of money,” Craig says. Partnerships can bridge the gap. By the end of 2019, the Apple-Akamai-Etsy-Swiss Re sites will have brought 290 megawatts of renewable energy online, enough to power 74,000 homes. Craig already has a pipeline of future deals involving five companies, with more expected. “There’s recognition that climate change is an actor in the world economy,” she says. “[It’s something] that companies are grappling with across the board.”
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