Sustainability spells opportunity for Colorado business: fourth annual summit gathers business, government and environmental leaders.

• Author: Neff, Todd

Amid declining sales, widespread layoffs and retrenchment, the 2009 Sustainable Opportunities Summit will offer welcome reminders of Colorado's bright future in a global economy transitioning to renewable energy and producing more with less of the planet's oversubscribed resources.

The fourth annual summit, themed "Global Sustainability: The New Bottom Line," moves to the Colorado Convention Center this year, and will from March 17-19 host a litany of speakers and moderators from business, government--Gov. Bill Ritter and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper being the public-sector headliners--and academia (visit www.sosummit.org for a list of speakers and the agenda.)

They will touch upon virtually all things pertaining to the business of sustainability: from product development to clean technologies, carbon markets, green chemistry and macro- and microfinancing. To take the pulse of the conference's goals and key ideas, ColoradoBiz touched base with several of those scheduled to speak at the three-day event. A recurring theme was that sustainability is good for business, and that good businesses will increasingly be sustainable.

First, a definition. The word "sustainable," flag bearer for an entire societal movement, can be slippery. Diana Wall, director of Colorado State University's School of Global Environmental Sustainability, offers some semantic footing.

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"Sustainability is about maintaining Earth's resources for future generations," she said.

Given the state of the planet--warming climate, polluted air, tainted rivers, oceanic dead zones, nagging droughts, the list goes on--Americans are facing a profound challenge in which business will have an "absolutely huge" role in helping solve, Wall said.

"Business leaders are adept at acting fast, finding new solutions, seeing what's marketable," she said. "They'll be just as adept at finding new products and markets for things that lead us forward in sustainability."

Graham Russell, executive director of the summit's organizer, CORE Colorado, said it's not just about businesses specializing in green tech or renewable energy.

"Those things are facilitating and enabling technologies," Russell said. "In the end, we're going to achieve a more sustainable economy by getting the overwhelming majority of mainstream business to make their operations more sustainable, whether it's an ad agency or a clean tech company or a manufacturer."

Russell and other experts said focusing on...