单选题
There is no question that some "greenwashing" is going on
in the corporate world. Bayern-werk, a Bavarian utility, began selling "Aqua
Power" last year when Germany began to let customers choose their electricity
supplier. Bayern-werk markets Aqua Power as 100 percent green, renewable,
hydroelectric energy. But any customer who signs up gets power from the same mix
of sources as before: hydro, gas, coal and nuclear. Nothing changes except some
accounting, and there is no net benefit to the environment. There is a benefit,
though, to Bayernwerk, which charges more for Aqua Power and has been swamped
with orders for it. Greenwashing takes many forms. "Companies
often advertise themselves as environmentally friendly even though they might
have some pretty hideous environment records," says Jill Johnson of the group
Earth Day 2002. California's PG＆E, the utility that settled out of court after
the real Erin Brockovich accused it of polluting groundwater, runs
pro-environmental ads. But PG＆E is due in court in November on charges of
polluting wells in a second California town. "PG＆E has a very good environmental
track record," says spokesman Greg Pruett, citing recycling and waste reduction.
Weyerhaeuser, the timber company, cuts old-growth trees in Canada but trumpets
the 100 million tree seedlings it will plant this year.
Overall, the greening of corporate America is real and has not been as hard to
achieve as some environmental activists imagined. That is especially true for
greenhouse gases and climate change, the focus of Earth Day 2000. "Now there is
more recognition by companies that there may be an economic advantage to
reducing emissions of greenhouse gases," says Paul Portney, president of the
think tank Resources for the Future. More and more companies are changing the
way they heat and light their buildings and design their factories to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions as well as their energy bills. (Energy-efficiency
upgrades can save a company roughly $1 per square foot of office or factory
space every year.) The reductions often exceed those called for in the 1997
international agreement on greenhouse warming called Kyoto Treaty,
whose goal of reducing greenhouse emissions 7 percent from their 2000 levels is
deemed so threatening to the economy by many oil, coal and chemical companies
that the White House does not dare to submit to the Senate for
ratification.
单选题
The "Aqua Power", sold by the Germany utility Bayernwerk, is ______.