DealBook: Seeking Answers From Green Mountain Coffee

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Wealth Matters: Seeking Investments That Are Profitable and a Little Bit Green

SARAH KUPFERBERG’S youthful rebellion was slightly unconventional — she wanted to invest in green companies, not the big industrials her parents had preferred. But like most novice investors, she stumbled along the way, once putting money into a company that was trying to use buoys to turn ocean waves into electricity.

“When I started investing in companies on my own, I made a lot of bad choices,” Ms. Kupferberg, an ecologist who works on issues related to energy and power. “These were companies at the leading edge of technology. They weren’t great investments.”

Today, Ms. Kupferberg, 50, said she has taken a more pragmatic approach to investing. She is no longer looking for companies at the vanguard of the green movement. Instead, she’s interested in those that are making a profit while also acting in a way that takes into account sound environmental, social and governance practices.

A focus on these factors — known by the shorthand E.S.G. — is a distance from the pure green investments that had less to do with returns. She has invested in Starbucks (even though she prefers to drink Peet’s Coffee) because of its policies toward its employees, like health benefits for part-time workers.

Applying an E.S.G. screen in this instance is a way to look at how companies in similar sectors compare, said Matthew W. Patsky, chief executive of Trillium Asset Management. He drew a contrast between Starbucks and McDonald’s, which does not offer health care benefits for part-time workers. Ms. Kupferberg’s view of looking for the best-behaved companies in a sector is consistent with others who are using their investment dollars to try to push companies toward more socially responsible policies. Rebekah Helzel, a retired proprietary trader for an investment bank, for example, said her focus was on eliminating “carbon-based business models” from her investment portfolio. Yet she has invested in United Parcel Service, which, of course, moves packages around the world in planes and trucks.

“They have a lot of carbon in their business model but they have done remarkable things to reduce it,” Ms. Helzel said. She mentioned their use of new technologies to reduce their carbon footprint but also the company’s oft-cited mapping technology to allow drivers to make as many right-hand turns as possible on their routes.

And many of those who embrace green have distanced themselves from the view that to be environmentally conscious is to lack investment rigor.

“This doing good while doing well thing is getting to be a bit out of date,” said Garvin Jabusch, co-founder and chief investment officer at Shelton Green Alpha Fund. “We’re looking past mere tree-huggery.”

He said E.S.G. investors needed to focus on ways to generate electricity and recycle existing products that could save resources, make a profit and be widely used.

While most E.S.G. investors are not ready to give up on tree-hugging altogether, they are taking an approach that has come a long way from simply screening out certain companies — like oil and gas, military and tobacco. They are moving toward companies that are just as focused on being profitable businesses as operating in a way that is generally better all around.

But this approach lends itself to questions — at least it did for me.

First, let’s talk returns. Are they as good as a portfolio without an E.S.G. screen? The short answer is yes. But that does not mean the returns are always spectacular.

Joseph F. Keefe, president and chief executive of Pax World Management, a mutual fund company focused on E.S.G. investments, said there was no evidence that managers focused on companies committed to improving environmental, social and governance factors were at a disadvantage.

He said that the company’s Global Environmental Markets Fund has outperformed the MSCI World Index since the fund was started in March 2008. A newer fund that invests in exchange-traded funds with the same screen has also outperformed a broader index.

“Do we have funds that are underperforming?” Mr. Keefe asked. “We sure do. We’re in the stock-picking business.”

Advisers who have been taking E.S.G. factors into consideration for years bristle at the suggestion that their process is somehow less rigorous or still based on excluding certain sectors.

New Tools Pinpoint Natural Gas Leaks, Maximizing a Fuel’s Green Qualities

WASHINGTON — Natural gas is hailed as green and safe, but its environmental benefits and ability to temper climate change are reduced by its tendency to leak into the air undetected. Now, laser technology, some of it borrowed from the telecommunications industry, is giving engineers and scientists crucial new tools to measure leaks and track them to their source.

Pacific Gas & Electric, which operates in northern and central California, has begun training employees to use the technology, a portable gas detector that was recently used in a car driven 785 miles through the streets of Boston.

Natural gas escapes into the atmosphere from two basic sources: natural ones, like swamps and marshes, and human activity, like leaking gas wells and pipelines. The boom in natural gas production, including hydraulic fracturing, has raised concerns about a subsequent boom in leaks, although how much gas escapes remains a mystery. The Environmental Protection Agency has been working on the question for years and “is still operating with guesses,” said John C. Bosch, who specialized in that issue before he retired from that agency four years ago.

But whether from man-made or natural causes, methane — the main component in natural gas — is a major contributor to global warming when released in the atmosphere. According to the E.P.A., over a 100-year period, a pound of methane is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in warming the climate. It can also be dangerous: In 2010, one of Pacific Gas & Electric’s pipelines leaked in San Bruno, south of San Francisco, and the ensuing explosion killed eight people.

“Leaking methane is becoming increasingly relevant from a greenhouse gas standpoint,” said Joseph T. Hodges, a scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the Commerce Department, who helped develop the laser technology used in the new portable gas detector.

The detector, built by Picarro, a manufacturer of scientific instruments that has recently moved into the field of portable methane detection, is able to determine whether the gas originated from wells or was produced by the bacteria in swamps, landfills and sewers. Distinguishing between the two can prevent industrial polluters from plausibly denying that they have leaks.

The system was demonstrated in 2011, when researchers bolted it in the trunk of a car that drove through the streets of Boston, a city with a labyrinth of aging underground gas pipelines. In a peer-reviewed scientific journal last year, the researchers said they had found 3,356 leaks of methane, and some with concentrations 15 times normal methane levels in the atmosphere.

Robert B. Jackson, a professor of global environmental change at Duke and an author of the paper, said Picarro was “pushing the envelope on portability.”

The Picarro detector works like this: An inlet tube takes in air samples, which are sent to a chamber in the trunk of the car. The chamber, about the size of a drum major’s baton with mirrors at either end, bounces a laser back and forth between the two mirrors thousands of times, like a fold-up yardstick. The laser’s path is ultimately several miles long and so is able to precisely measure concentrations of methane in the range of parts per billion.

An anemometer, an instrument for measuring wind speed and direction, is mounted on top of the car, as is a GPS device. In some models, an inlet pipe samples air from various elevations. The system uses an onboard computer to turn the readings into a three-dimensional model of a gas plume — a funnel-shaped flow of contamination — and calculates the location and size of the origin. Methane molecules incorporate a carbon atom of two different types, one more commonly found in gas from wells and the other in gas from landfills and sewers. Studying the ratio, the instrument can say where the gas came from.

Michael R. Woelk, president and chief executive of Picarro, said the advantage of the detector was that it could be used on public roads to locate leaks on private property.

Pacific Gas & Electric has bought six Picarro systems.

“I see it as a game-changer,” said Nick Stavropoulos, the utility’s executive vice president for gas operations. “It’s amazing how much more effective it is in finding gas leaks on our system than traditional technology.” Previously when gas was detected, he said, the utility had to stay on the site until it was determined by a distant laboratory whether the gas was from its pipes or a landfill. Now that determination can be made almost immediately.

Other companies use different techniques for gas detection. Physical Sciences of Andover, Mass., has an instrument like a lantern that projects a laser beam and measures what bounces back. About 2,000 are in use worldwide, according to Michael B. Frish, a manager there.

LI-COR Bio-Sciences, of Lincoln, Neb., makes an “open path” model in which air flows naturally through a chamber. The company has deployed instruments at several landfills to measure their emissions, said Dayle K. McDermitt, vice president for research and development for environmental products. Measurement technology is advancing, he said, but modeling plumes is “still a work in progress.”

The Environmental Protection Agency, which has a history of requiring new controls as technology improves, intermittently hints that it might regulate methane emissions. It already counts on the presence of large amounts of methane to help spot smaller quantities of toxic gases that are currently regulated. Remote detection is outside the norm for the agency, said Eben D. Thoma, an E.P.A. researcher. More often the agency requires measurements at known sources, like tailpipes and smokestacks. Measuring plumes is easiest in wide-open spaces, and harder in “urban canyons” and wooded areas, where the plume is distorted, he said.

Mr. Bosch, the retired E.P.A. official, who now consults for Picarro, said that the agency had had more success in reducing emissions from smokestacks and vent pipes than from “fugitive” sources like leaky pipes and valves.

But Mr. Woelk, of Picarro, said his technology could locate leaks and prioritize them, and that the majority of the gas was generally escaping from a small fraction of the sources.

“Natural gas is the new green energy, supposedly,” he said, but finding and fixing the leaks would make it greener.

Race, Age Bias Suit Against Prison Gets Green Light

A federal judge in Scranton has applied equitable tolling to a case brought by a 62-year-old black pastor alleging that the prison in Lackawanna County fired him because of his race and age.

Green Column: Attitudes on Crops Are Modifying

But recently, a few fissures have appeared on both sides of the Atlantic.

In pockets of the United States, momentum is building behind the concept of labeling genetically modified foods (crops whose genetic makeup is altered to increase yields and to more effectively resist problems like pests and drought). Such labels are already required in the European Union and Australia.

In Europe, concern about genetically modified foods remains entrenched, but the British government has recently signaled a new openness. In a forceful speech last month, Owen Paterson, the secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs, said that the government was prepared to “roll out the red carpet” for research and development of new agricultural technologies, including genetically modified crops, so that Britain could contribute to bolstering of global food supplies.

“When it comes to developing and benefiting from G.M. technology, I want the U.K. to be at the forefront of the global race, not watching from the sidelines,” said Mr. Paterson, whose speech indeed incited a vigorous debate in Britain. (Another member of Parliament told The Independent newspaper that Mr. Paterson had “swallowed the industry line hook, line and sinker without talking to anyone with a different view.”)

Whether these developments will be followed by a narrowing of trans- Atlantic policy differences relating to genetically modified products remains to be seen. This week, U.S. and E.U. officials have been meeting in Washington to begin work on a far-reaching trade agreement. Genetically modified crops are one of the most complicated issues under discussion, according to William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a U.S. group that advocates for lower trade barriers.

“Because it will be such a deeply felt issue on both sides, it will probably be one of the last things to be resolved,” Mr. Reinsch said.

More substantive discussion of issues involving genetically modified foods will probably be deferred until the next round of trade talks, in the autumn, he said.

American farmers, a politically powerful group, want more access to European markets for genetically modified crops. But Europe, where genetic modification is common in animal feeds but not in supermarket foods, is certain to resist. The E.U. has approved only one genetically modified crop for cultivation over the past 14 years, according to Mr. Paterson, the British official.

The E.U.’s strict labeling requirements, enacted in 1997, are among the frustrations for American farmers, who say labels discourage consumers from buying a product that is safe and has been in the U.S. food system for decades. Partly for that reason, according to Richard Wilkins, the treasurer of the American Soybean Association, soybean exports from the United States to E.U. member states fell by 82 percent between 1998 and 2012.

“The G.M.O. labeling requirements in the E.U. are egregious,” Mr. Wilkins said — a statement that would elicit sharp disagreements from opponents of genetically modified organisms, who are concerned about matters like allergens, potential cross-contamination of other species and overuse of pesticides and weed-killing herbicides.

Yet even as the labeling debate resurfaces in the trade talks, the practice is starting to take root within the United States.

Whole Foods, a national supermarket chain based in Austin, plans to begin requiring labels for foodstuffs containing genetically modified organisms by 2018. Connecticut recently became the first state to approve a provisional labeling law, though it will take effect only if four other states do the same. The Legislature in Maine passed a similar bill (it awaits the governor’s signature), and a number of other states, including Massachusetts and Illinois, are also considering labeling requirements.

“Activists have been working on this labeling issue for a long time because they see it as a way to influence industry behavior,” said Rachel A. Schurman, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota. “And they haven’t had a lot of success in the United States otherwise.”

The labeling initiatives, Ms. Schurman said, have grown out of a rising general interest in food and dietary issues in the United States, thanks to a number of movies on the topic, as well as popular writers like Michael Pollan, who focuses on responsible eating.

“Now food is really on the agenda in the U.S. in the way it wasn’t before, so I think there’s a lot more momentum around labeling,” Ms. Schurman said.

The labeling initiatives will increase Americans’ awareness of genetically modified foods, said Brian Wynne, a professor of sociology at Lancaster University in Britain.

“It is going to be interesting to see where this leads,” Mr. Wynne wrote in an e-mail. “I think that U.S. attitudes are typically less cleanly positive than they are assumed to be from surveys, and the same goes for E.U. ones, in the other direction.”

Still, others said Europe’s longstanding hostility to genetically modified foods would prove tough to overcome.

“Europe is extremely cautious — even irrationally cautious,” said Louise Fresco, a professor at the University of Amsterdam and a former assistant director general for agriculture at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

It will be interesting to see, she said, whether the new moves by officials in Britain will result in “breaking through the deadlock, perhaps, in Europe.”

Advertising: Green Works Aims to Get Out of the Niche

The brand — introduced in 2008 with a controversial endorsement by the Sierra Club — has carried prices at least 20 percent higher than traditional housecleaning products and has been promoted with retailers’ natural and organic products.

In January, however, Green Works recommended that retailers eliminate its price premium and promote its products with traditional housecleaning products. The new policies will be phased in starting this summer.

Clorox’s contract with the Sierra Club, which involved a $1.3 million payment to the environmental organization, will expire this December; the Sierra Club logo, which has appeared on all Green Works packaging, will be eliminated from new, bolder packaging that will begin appearing this summer as part of the overhauled marketing strategy.

The new strategy — which Green Works’ brand manager, Shekinah Eliassen, said was meant to promote its products as being “affordable, effective, accessible and approachable” — no doubt stems from a precipitous decline in sales.

An August 2012 report on environmentally friendly cleaning products in the United States by Packaged Facts, a market research company, said that although Green Works’ dollar sales jumped more than 50 percent in 2009 to $53 million, they had fallen to $32 million for the year ending May 13, 2012, based on data from the IRI Group.

Similarly, Packaged Facts estimated that although Green Works generated about 20 percent of all dollar sales in the green household cleaner category in 2009, that figure had fallen to 13 percent in May last year, according to IRI Group data.

“When Green Works was first launched, it came out of the gate with a lot of investment by Clorox,” said Jason Gere, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “Initially it started to do well, but then the macroeconomic environment took over. Clorox realized that in this consumer-led recession, having products even as environmentally friendly as Green Works’ are, but charging a 20 percent-plus premium to conventional cleaners, was not working.”

The line’s association with Clorox also may have been detrimental, said Ali Dibadj, a senior analyst at Sanford Bernstein. He said the connection meant Green Works “did not appeal to the classic green consumer. So they’re deciding to go after conventional consumers at a lower price point.”

Mr. Gere, who estimated that Green Works likely generates about 5 percent of Clorox’s total sales, said the company had “done themselves a favor by adjusting the price gaps, and with Green Works sold in the cleaning section with traditional products, consumers probably will be willing to try it to see if they like it.”

According to Kantar Media, Clorox spent more than $25 million a year on advertising by DDB, part of the Omnicom Group, for Green Works in 2008 and 2009, the vast majority on television and magazine advertising. Kantar Media said that figure dropped to almost $600,000 — spent mostly on Internet advertising — in 2011, a figure that doubled to $1.2 million last year.

Rebecca Boston, Green Works’ public relations and digital strategist, said the brand decided last year to aim its marketing at “digitally savvy” mothers, ages 18 to 49, “who spend a lot of time online. That’s where we needed to reach them.”

To that end, Green Works hired Calgary, Alberta-based Critical Mass, a digital agency controlled by the Omnicom Group, to develop an advertising strategy driven primarily by social media; officials said Clorox would spend $10 million on the campaign through mid-2014.

Green Works is celebrating Earth Day on Monday with a program that will let Twitter users post a joke to Green Works’ Twitter account. For every Twitter post through the end of May, Green Works will donate a dollar, up to $20,000, to the Environmental Media Association’s school gardens project. The tagline of the initiative is, “You don’t have to be serious to be green.”

In January, Green Works introduced a YouTube series called “Green Housewives,” which parodies people who have made being environmentally correct a status symbol. In February, Green Works ran a “Tweethearts” campaign that allowed participants to send environmentally friendly, virtual Valentine’s Day cards via Twitter. The March social media initiative was a six-second game of charades on Vine, a video clip app, for St. Patrick’s Day; its message was, “You don’t have to put on a charade to be green.”

Chris Gokiert, president of Critical Mass, said the social media initiatives — which are being promoted with digital banner advertising — are intended to “help customers become owners of and advocates for the brand.”

The campaign also involves a new Green Works Web site, introduced in January, and magazine advertising in April, May and June issues of women’s magazines and People. One ad says, “You don’t have to be perfect to be green,” while another says, “You don’t have to be a trust fund baby to be green.”

Kevin Tuerff, president of EnviroMedia, an Austin-based environmental marketing company, said the new social media strategy could “enhance brand awareness, though it may not translate into sales.”

Wendy Nicholson, who follows Clorox for Citi, said organic personal care products generally have been more successful than organic household products. “People tend to care more about all-natural, organic products going into the body, as opposed to being used on their dishes or clothes,” she said.

Green: High Energy Costs Plaguing Europe

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Green: Progress in Fight to Keep Night Skies Dark

More than half a century after she wrote those words, it has become harder than ever to see the stars, as cities with their 24-hour lights continue to sprawl. Many children learn about the Milky Way only through books or films, a 2010 Council of Europe report warned.

A combination of economics and preservation efforts is slowing the trend toward excessive lighting in a few areas. A “dark skies” movement, aimed at increasing the public’s appreciation of stargazing, has gained strength in recent years, while cities are rediscovering that turning off streetlights can save money.

“Everywhere, light pollution is an increasing problem,” said Andrej Mohar, an amateur astronomer in Slovenia who has lobbied for lighting regulations there. A 2007 Slovenian law aimed at barring light fixtures from sending light upward has made the night sky above the capital, Ljubljana, about 20 percent darker, he said.

An Arizona-based group called the International Dark-Sky Association has led advocacy efforts worldwide for preserving the night skies.

Since 2006, the group has designated 10 “dark sky” parks globally, as well as another four reserves. The idea is to single out areas that offer excellent stargazing and also work to keep night lighting minimal. One of the latest-certified areas, added in May, is the NamibRand Nature Reserve in Namibia, where the dry air and remote location make for clear skies and good nighttime viewing.

The site is the first dark-sky reserve in Africa — or in any developing country. Before receiving the designation, local officials worked to reduce lighting within the reserve’s bounds. That included requiring vehicles traveling on remote roads at night to dim their headlights if moonlight could be used instead.

Asia has no certified dark-sky areas yet, partly from a lack of awareness there, although that is starting to change, according to Scott Kardel, the managing director for the International Dark-Sky Association.

Three of the dark-sky areas are in Britain. The first, designated in 2009, was the Galloway Forest Park in Scotland. It got “massive media coverage” — far more than expected — which invigorated the movement, said Steve Owens, a dark-sky consultant in Scotland. Since then, Exmoor National Park in England and the Isle of Sark in the Channel Islands have also received dark-sky designations, and representatives of a number of other British parks and communities have expressed interest in applying for the status, Mr. Owens said.

In Britain, the dark-sky cause has been aided by fiscal problems. Local governments, like the Somerset County Council, have begun turning off or dimming some streetlights late at night as a money-saving measure. By doing so, they can also earn credits for greenhouse gas reduction.

However, change can be slow, not least because switching off lights may cause the public to worry about crime and roadway accidents. The Somerset government notes on its Web site that such concerns have not been borne out.

Technology is making some changes easier. The importance of minimizing light pollution is “one of many attributes that we think about” nowadays when designing products, said Cheryl English, the vice president of government and industry relations at Acuity Brands, a lighting company. She is also a member of the International Dark-Sky Association.

However, even though the industry follows light-pollution issues, “if it hurts their sales, of course they’re not going to be very happy with that,” said Terry McGowan, a consultant to the American Lighting Association who also serves on a technical committee of the dark-sky group.

In addition to better fixtures, Mr. McGowan said, a key technological improvement is the rise of so-called smart grid systems, which can turn the lights off when sensors indicate no one is around, saving energy as well as light.

The biggest battle of all, of course, involves getting enough people to care, especially because new fixtures and sensors can be costly. That requires intensive campaigns by observatories and stargazing advocates.

“What keeps me going is I see the effort to raise public awareness succeeding,” said Bill Wren, an astronomer and special assistant to the superintendent at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas. Recently, he said, a gas station about 30 miles, or 48 kilometers, from the observatory had planned to use “just awful” globe-style light fixtures. But after discussing their plans with him, they changed to a design that emits half the amount of light.

Last year, despite some concerns from private-property advocates, Texas passed a law that required new subdivisions being built within 57 miles of the McDonald Observatory to minimize the effects of their lighting on the observatory’s operations.

Most dark-sky advocates recognize that they are fighting a tough battle. “Everywhere on our planet is more or less the Wild West” for lighting, Mr. Mohar said, though he argued that Slovenia was an exception.

On the positive side, excessive lighting, unlike many environmental problems, is ultimately reversible, at least in theory.

Light pollution is “not destroying the nighttime sky,” said Ms. English, the Acuity Brands executive. “We can recover it.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 17, 2012

An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Mr. Gowan’s affiliation with the American Lighting Association. Mr. McGowan serves on a technical committee of the International Dark-Sky Association, not of the American Lighting Association.

Green Blog: Obama-Backed Battery Maker Files for Bankruptcy

Stephen McGee for The New York TimesWorkers loaded finished batteries for 2013 all-electric vehicles in June at the A123 Systems plant in Livonia, Mich.

An electric car battery maker that President Obama touted as part of a vanguard of a new American electric car industry has filed for bankruptcy and is selling its major assets, the company announced on Tuesday.

A123 Systems, which produces lithium ion batteries for the electric car maker Fisker and the truck manufacturer Navistar, received a $249 million Department of Energy grant that was financed by Mr. Obama’s stimulus program. The company has been struggling as electric vehicles have failed to gain a foothold in the American domestic car market. Another battery maker that received federal support, Ener1, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.

The company’s troubles could provide new ammunition for Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, who has criticized the Obama administration’s green energy grant and loan programs as a distortion of the marketplace and rife with political favoritism.

Mr. Obama called A123’s chief executive, David Vieau, and Jennifer Granholm, then Michigan’s governor, in September 2010 to celebrate the opening of a battery manufacturing plant in Livonia, Mich., that was built partly with federal funds.

“This is about the birth of an entire new industry in America — an industry that’s going to be central to the next generation of cars,” Mr. Obama said. “And I want everybody to understand just a few years ago American businesses could only make two percent of the world’s advanced batteries for hybrids and electric vehicles – just two percent. But because of your extraordinary work, thanks to the Recovery Act, we’re going to get up to forty percent of the world’s capacity. And that means when folks lift up their hoods on the cars of the future, I want them to see engines and batteries that are stamped: Made in America.”

In a memo issued to reporters on Tuesday, the Energy Department said that the advanced battery market continues to grow in the United States and around the world despite the troubles of some domestic companies.

The memo said that the agency, with support from Republicans and Democrats, has awarded $2 billion in grants to 29 companies to build or retool 45 manufacturing facilities in 20 states to build advanced batteries, engines, drive trains and other key components for electric vehicles.

The department said that more than 30 of these plants are already in operation and that A123’s announcement that it is selling key assets means that it will continue to operate in the battery market. It noted that A123 received a $6 million grant from the Bush Administration as part of its efforts to promote a domestic electric car industry.

Green: Green Power on the Edge of Practicality

An offshore wind farm is an awesome sight that needs to be visited up close to be fully appreciated. Gunfleet, which is thought to derive from Viking words meaning Gunna’s Harbor, has 48 identical, white steel towers, each more than 200 feet, or 61 meters, high. They are planted in neat rows over 5.8 square miles, or 15 square kilometers, on a shoal so shallow that some of the foundations are out of the water at low tide. The three fiberglass blades of each turbine have a span of 150 feet and spin at close to 155 miles an hour, or 250 kilometers an hour, under the best wind conditions.

Already the sandbars off places like Brightlingsea, a seaside town with pastel-shaded bath houses northeast of London, bristle with massive turbines. On this crisp autumn day we could pick out three other wind farms in the distance from our vessel.

Having colonized the shallows, wind companies are drawing up new projects further offshore, where they will be out of sight of people who complain that they spoil the view.

“This is an industry that is creeping up on people; soon there will be thousands of turbines offshore,” said Jason Halsey, head of operations at the British installations of Dong Energy, the Danish company that is the largest offshore wind farm owner.

Harnessing ocean breezes has a certain logic for countries like Britain that want to replace fossil fuels with cleaner energy sources — countries where the winds howl around the rugged coasts much of the time. Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that offshore wind will surge in Britain, providing more than 10 percent of electric power in 2020 compared with a little less than 2 percent in 2011.

If countries like Britain and Germany are to meet their carbon reduction targets, “offshore wind is absolutely fundamental,” said Fraser Johnston, a Bloomberg New Energy analyst. “They don’t have enough space for solar and onshore.”

Utilities are just figuring out how to build and operate these monster projects. The machines are becoming more reliable, operators say, and they can be largely run from shore. Technicians from Dong Energy and Siemens, which builds the turbines, manage Gunfleet by computer from the comfort of a light-filled new building in Brightlingsea.

The turbines still require offshore visits for maintenance — and this will become tricky as they are placed further from shore. Dong is even considering emulating the oil industry by having overnight accommodation for workers at new farms.

Still, there is as yet no assurance that offshore wind will claim a prime spot in the energy mix of the future. In fact, the industry is at a crossroad. In the current economy, offshore energy operators — like other renewable energy producers — must show that they can bring sky-high costs down or risk hitting a wall.

At present, exploiting offshore wind to generate electricity is twice as expensive as using onshore wind and far more expensive than using fossil fuels, analysts say.

“Offshore wind is inherently expensive because it is offshore,” said Dieter Helm, a professor of energy policy at the University of Oxford. “The main reason we are building offshore wind is because people don’t like onshore wind.”

Offshore wind is feasible only because the governments of Britain and other countries provide generous price supports. Britain’s direct offshore wind subsidy amounted to £288 million, or $464 million, in the 2010-11 fiscal year. “The governments are not going to support this forever; over the next three years the industry needs to show it can stand up and deliver and be more cost effective than today,” said Tom Murley, who runs a $1 billion renewables fund at the private equity firm HgCapital in London.

Rounding up the money for projects like Gunfleet, which cost about £550 million, is growing increasingly difficult as banks reach their lending limits and utilities feel financial strain. People in the renewables business say the offshore industry’s reputation has been hurt by troubled projects like Greater Gabbard, a big wind farm in the Thames Estuary that has been plagued by construction problems that have led to legal disputes.

A key is going to be tapping into long-term, deep-pocketed investors like pension and sovereign wealth funds. Dong Energy sold a stake in Gunfleet to Marubeni of Japan and brought in the green energy company from Abu Dhabi, Masdar, as a partner on a $1.5 billion new wind farm called the London Array.

Graeme Walker, chief financial officer of Baryonyx, an Austin, Texas, company that wants to build offshore wind farms in the United States, says the vast scale possible for these projects will eventually bring down the price tag for the electricity they generate.

He says he also believes competition from Chinese and other non-Western manufacturers will eventually loosen the monopoly that European companies have on making the offshore turbines, leading to “more honest pricing.” There are, as yet, no offshore wind projects in U.S. waters.

An effort to reach greater scale and lower costs was visible at Gunfleet Sands.

A special boat from Denmark called the Svanen was preparing to ram the foundations for a new turbine. This turbine, the first of a planned 300, will have a capacity of six megawatts — nearly double that of the others at Gunfleet. A tugboat had just arrived from the Netherlands, towing the monopile, or foundation piece, which will be hammered deep into the seabed. On this day, at least, money was still flowing into offshore wind.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 3, 2012

An earlier version of this article stated that the wind turbine blades at Gunfleet Sands spin at close to 400 miles an hour, or 645 kilometers an hour, in optimal conditions. The figure should have been 155 miles an hour, or 250 kilometers an hour.

Green Blog: Ikea Switching to All-LED Lighting

Light-emitting diodes are tiny electronic devices that emit far more light per unit of electricity than incandescent lamps or even compact fluorescents. But in the move to replace energy-gobbling incandescents, LEDs face a steeper climb in the marketplace than compact fluorescents do because they are more expensive.

IkeaIkea’s Stranne LED table lamp.

On Monday, Ikea, not known as a retailer of pricey products, announced that beginning in 2016 all of the lighting products it sells will be LEDs, as will all of the lighting in its stores. The company phased out incandescents in 2010 (and plastic bags in 2007).

Congress passed a law in 2007 that mandates a phaseout of traditional incandescents, although House Republicans have intermittently sought to repeal it. The national phaseout begins with the larger-wattage bulbs, starting with the 100-watt variety this year.

Some of Ikea’s floor lamps and table lamps will be of a type that only accepts LED bulbs; others will have standard screw-base sockets that can accommodate compact fluorescents or incandescents.

Ikea said it had undertaken a global study and found that 43 percent of Americans have at least one LED lamp in their homes. In China, the figure is 80 percent, in Russia 65 percent, and in Sweden, 61 percent, the company said.

Willingness to spend at least $10 on a bulb hinges on consumers’ perceptions of energy costs. An Ikea survey found that 69 percent of Americans believe that “lighting accounts for up to 40 percent of their electric bill,” the company said. But according to the Energy Information Administration, lighting consumes about 18 percent of the energy used in the residential and commercial sectors, and 13 percent of total national electricity consumption.

At a national residential average price of 11 cents per kilowatt-hour, a 60-watt incandescent that burns for six hours a day would cost about $14.50 a year in consumed energy. LED manufacturers say they can produce the same amount of light for 9 watts. That would amount to savings of $12.20 a year.

“People need to understand what they’re buying,” said Mike Ward, the chief executive of Ikea in the United States. And prices will come down further, he predicted. The company now sells a lamp that is the equivalent of a 40-watt incandescent for $12.99, but “I wouldn’t be surprised to cut that in half in the next four years,” he said. Soon it will introduce an equivalent to the 60-watt incandescent, he said.

In switching to compact fluorescents, some consumers found that those bulbs did not always give good light or could not be used with a dimmer. “That kind of mind-set gets transferred automatically to another technology,” Mr. Ward said of the LEDs. But LEDs do not have those shortcomings, he said, and unlike compact fluorescents, they do not contain harmful mercury.

Ikea claims a 20-year lifetime for the LEDs, far longer than that of an incandescent or a compact fluorescent, although some people who have bought the lamps have reported that the bulbs did not always live up to that claim. But Mr. Ward said that nearly half the lamps that Ikea sells now are LEDs, and the company has not seen a trend of returns.

Ikea has 38 stores in the United States. Of those, 35 are topped by solar-power arrays, and so are some of its warehouses, he said. Soon it will have a combined 38 megawatts installed.

And recently the company found LED lights that it can use to replace the fluorescents in the back-lighted letters that spell “Ikea” on store exteriors, Mr. Ward said.

Advertising: Green Mountain Coffee Begins Fair Trade Campaign - Advertising

In recognition of October being Fair Trade Month, the brand is seeking to educate coffee drinkers about fair-trade certification, which many people may vaguely associate with worthiness without quite understanding it.

“I think about fair trade sometimes like antioxidants,” said Jonathan Yohannan, executive vice president for corporate responsibility at Cone Communications, one of several agencies working on the campaign, referring to substances often praised for their health benefits. “You know it’s good for you, but you don’t really know what it means.”

Green Mountain Coffee will help explain what fair trade means with a campaign called “Great coffee, good vibes, pass it on.” Print and online ads will direct consumers to the brand’s Facebook page, which will feature videos with the musicians Grace Potter and Michael Franti visiting certified coffee farms in Colombia and Sumatra.

“The videos are all about showing an authentic experience with fair trade, with the celebrities seeing firsthand the impact that fair trade has,” said Derek Archambault, senior brand manager for Green Mountain Coffee.

The brand works with the nonprofit Fair Trade USA, which certifies that producers conform to labor and environmental standards, and links farmers directly to companies rather than enriching middlemen.

When companies buy fair-trade coffee, they pay a community-development premium in addition to the base price. For every pound of conventionally grown coffee, the premium is 20 cents; for organically grown coffee, it is 50 cents, with 20 cents going to community development and the remaining 30 cents to farmers.

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In 2011, when more than 138 million pounds of certified coffee was imported to the United States, fair-trade premiums totaled about $17 million. The money went to cooperatives of farmers, who voted to apply it to development projects like new schools, health care facilities and equipment to improve the productivity of farms and the quality of their coffee.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters — the parent company, which also produces brands like Tully’s Coffee and, under a licensing agreement, Newman’s Own Organics — is the largest purchaser of fair-trade coffee in the world. It imported about 50.3 million pounds in 2011, or 24 percent of its raw coffee purchases, according to the company and Fair Trade USA.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters also owns Keurig, which makes systems that brew single-serve pods called K-Cups. Green Mountain spent $22.9 million on advertising in 2011, compared with $100.5 million for Starbucks, $37.5 million for Folgers and $24.9 million for Maxwell House, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.

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One of the new online videos opens with Mr. Franti, the musician, who says, “I’m here in Sumatra teaming up with Green Mountain Coffee, where I’m going to learn about how fair trade makes a better cup of coffee and a better quality of life for farmers.”

In the video, a farmworker tells Mr. Franti that premiums from the fair-trade program enable him to send his children to school.

An on-site Green Mountain employee in the video adds that through such direct relationships with small farmers, the brand can help pinpoint the locations on a farm, like the side of a mountain with a certain amount of sun exposure, that yield the most drinkable coffee.

The videos with Mr. Franti and Ms. Potter — which are by Y&R New York, part of Young & Rubicam Group, owned by WPP — will be featured on Green Mountain’s Facebook page, which has more than 656,000 followers, and on YouTube.

Print ads for the campaign, also by Y&R, begin appearing Friday in publications like People, Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly. Digital ads will be introduced Monday on Web sites like YouTube, Hulu and Oprah.com.

Ms. Potter will perform live exclusively on the brand’s Facebook page on Oct. 9, and Mr. Franti on Oct. 24.

In 2011, Fair Trade USA helped farmers and farmworkers earn $22 million in premiums beyond the base price for their products.

While a wide range of products can receive fair-trade certification, including cocoa, nuts, wine and flowers, coffee is by far the most dominant. In 2011, the $17 million in coffee community-development premiums accounted for 77 percent of all premiums.

For Fair Trade Month, which the nonprofit organization is spearheading, other companies will also be promoting the cause. Whole Foods, for example, will hold sampling events with a range of certified products at more than 100 of its stores.

Mary Jo Cook, who calls herself the chief impact officer at Fair Trade USA, said she could recall no other marketing campaign devoted to fair-trade practices by a brand with the scope of the Green Mountain Coffee campaign.

“It’s a giant step in going out and engaging consumers so that they understand what fair trade is,” Ms. Cook said, adding that the campaign would have the effect of promoting fair-trade goods in categories besides coffee.

“We believe this will have a halo effect for fair trade as a movement, which is what we’re here to support,” she said.

Andrew Hetzel, founder of CafeMakers, which provides strategic planning and brand development for coffee businesses, said the coffee industry tended to focus more on social and environmental issues than other industries.

“You don’t see an Apple campaign for how well they treat workers in factories,” Mr. Hetzel said, referring to reports of poor working conditions at factories owned by some of the technology giant’s subcontractors. “But the coffee industry in particular seems to be especially sensitive to the environment and to workers.”