Contemporary Business 14th Edition by Louis Boone, David Kurtz

تمرين 13

"Time is not our friend with respect to global climate change. . . . the usual approach-doing too much, too late-will not work." So says John Rowe, CEO of the utility company Exelon, a recent winner of the National Safety Council's Green Cross for Safety. Exelon is betting on the world's growing demand for renewable energy sources to create a sound financial future for the company and its stakeholders while minimizing its environmental impact.Created in 2000 from a merger between utility companies in Chicago and Philadelphia, Exelon sold most of its underperforming coal plants to focus on nuclear power generation. Its fleet of 17 reactors is the world's third-largest, topped only by utilities in France and Russia. Exelon earns $17 billion in sales and close to $3 billion in profits a year, returning more than twice as much to shareholders as other utilities. Its nuclear plants produce about 130 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year and have reduced greenhouse gas emissions more than 5 percent from rlier levels. That's equivalent to taking a million passenger cars off the road.Legislation to cap or more heavily regulate carbon emissions will force Exelon's carbon-dependent competitors to raise prices. "I thought climate legislation would come sooner or later and tat I'd rather have my money in the nuke fleet," says Rowe. The company plans to further shrink its carbon footprint by 2020 by eliminating more than 15 million metric tons of potential greenhouse gas emissions every year.
-Exelon is the most valuable U.S. utility company in terms of market value and derives 92 percent of its power from nuclear plants. Do you think being environmentally aware and being profitable are compatible goals for a business? Why or why not?