This archive collects stories about businesses — from startups and local enterprises to multinational corporations — taking meaningful action on social, environmental, and economic challenges. These reports highlight moments when commerce and accountability intersect in constructive ways.
Signatories of the pact include Maruha Nichiro Corporation and Nippon Suisan Kaish, the two largest fishing companies by revenues, as well as the world’s two largest tuna companies and the two largest aquafeed companies.
There are a record number of women who are CEOs of the Fortune 500, which was unveiled Wednesday morning, June 7, and Cleveland is well represented in those ranks.
ExxonMobil failed to fend off a shareholder rebellion over climate change, as investors with 62.3 percent of shares voted to instruct the oil giant to report on the impact of global measures.
Danish wind energy giant DONG Energy announced its plans to divest its upstream oil and gas business for $1.05 billion.
Berkeley Energy Group, the coal company behind the project, billed it as the first large-scale solar farm in the Appalachian region, which has been hit hard by the decades-long decline in the U.S. coal industry.
Tesla claims that by the end of 2018, the Nevada factory will assemble more lithium-ion batteries than what were produced globally in 2013.
Solar road tiles made their public debut in 2016, when 30 hexagonal glass panels lit up a town square in Sandpoint, Idaho. Built by Solar Roadways after a viral crowdfunding campaign, the tiles powered a fountain and restrooms, glowed in patterns, and melted snow. A modest proof that sidewalks might someday double as power plants.
America’s first offshore wind farm came to life in 2015, when construction began on five turbines in the Atlantic waters off Block Island, Rhode Island. A 21-mile submarine cable eventually linked the island to the mainland grid, replacing its diesel generators. Small in scale, it proved offshore wind was buildable in U.S. waters.
The iPhone launched on June 29, 2007, when Apple opened its stores to buyers who had waited hours, sometimes days, for a $499 glass rectangle with no keyboard and no instruction manual. Steve Jobs had unveiled it months earlier as “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator,” and the audience laughed, thinking he was joking. He wasn’t.
Offshore wind began quietly in 1991, when Danish workers planted 11 small turbines in the shallow waters off Vindeby, on the island of Lolland. Each one produced just 450 kilowatts, powering a few thousand homes and proving turbines could survive the sea. It was the first offshore wind farm ever built — a modest experiment that opened a door.
