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Posted on Wed, Nov. 07, 2007
By GREG HACK
The Kansas City Star

Corporate 'Green' is Goal

A partnership urging area businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was announced Wednesday by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.

Chamber officials said they already had signed up 32 businesses as founding members of the Climate Protection Partnership, patterned after an initiative they observed on a visit to Seattle.

As the price of energy has gone up, the chamber officials said, measures that conserve energy and reduce pollution make increased economic sense.

"Promoting sustainability is a top priority for the chamber," said Bob Regnier, the chamber's 2008 chairman and president of the Bank of Blue Valley. "The goals for our new business partnership are to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions and to increase economic competitiveness.

"We're asking members of the partnership to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and we're suggesting a number of ways to do that. We'll also provide technical assistance and a forum where members can share best practices."

The initiative came from the chamber's Energy Policy Task Force, led by William Downey, the president of Kansas City Power & Light.

Downey said the task force, which has been meeting for a year, was formed "as a response to growing environmental concerns" and "because we looked around and realized we have a tremendous concentration of energy-related businesses in the Kansas City region, many of them headquartered here."

Among the first partners are engineering firms Burns & McDonnell and Black & Veatch, trucking giant YRC, KCP&L, the Kansas City, Kan., Board of Public Utilities, BNIM Architects and the J.E. Dunn Construction Co.

Institutional members include the chamber, Kansas State University, the Mid-America Regional Council, Midwest Research Institute and the Kansas City Area Development Council.

Peter Levi, president of the 8,000-member chamber, said, "Through mobilizing and educating our thousands of member businesses, we can potentially have quite an impact."

He added that businesses did not have to be chamber members to sign up for the program, under which companies pledge to evaluate their practices and see what they can do to reduce greenhouse emissions.

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