It costs a lot of green to be “green,” as anyone involved in manufacturing can confirm. It isn’t just the expense of new controls and technologies to make plants and operations compliant with evolving regulations, nor the cost of investments to achieve “sustainability.” For companies like Alcoa, and many others, there are significant expenses for lobbying federal and various state legislators on issues relating to manufacturing’s energy costs and climate-change liabilities. They lobby on a range of other matters, too, of course, but Alcoa's 1.6 million reported in this AP item are tied specifically to "energy legislation, climate change, (and) aluminum tariffs."

Big corporations might be ready to pay for all their green-ness, but that doesn’t mean they’re buying it. General Motors Corp. chairman Bob Lutz stirred up some trouble for himself when he observed to a crowd of reporters last month that global warming is a “crock” — an opinion he offered along the way to discussing the cost of developing new fuel-cell technologies and other automotive products that satisfy elusive "green" standards. This week, Lutz used his blog to discuss the furor that followed: “My beliefs are mine and I have a right to them, just as you have a right to yours,” Lutz wrote with a tone of frustration, as though this shouldn’t need to be reasserted. “But among my strongest beliefs is that my job is to do what makes the most business sense for GM,” he continued. There’s more to it, and it’s worth reading.

A few other interesting, random ideas that have reached me in the past week, and ought to interest you, too:
•  When I learned last summer that the AFS planned to introduce a new quarterly magazine to publish research presented by metalcasters from around the world, I knew they were on to something. Every week I receive two or three such papers, from all over the world, and as interesting as they are we just don’t have the right venue to present them. Now that AFS has introduced the International Journal of Metalcasting, researchers, operators, students, and readers in general will benefit. The first issue proved that; the second issue is out now. If you haven’t checked into it, you should do so.

•  According to research by PricewaterhouseCoopers, mergers and acquisitions in the metals industry have not been slowed by recession concerns. In the last quarter of 2007, 37 deals were struck that have a disclosed value at or above $50 million. This compares to 35 deals of similar scale in the last quarter of 2006. High metal prices and strong demand worldwide are the drivers, according to the study.

•  The National Assn. of Manufacturers has taken a lot of criticism from smaller organizations in its membership (many of these may in fact be former members now), who complain that the group reflects too much the interests of multinational member companies. But, in a study NAM is co-presenting with our affiliate magazine Industry Week, it’s the smaller manufacturers who are showing greater confidence in their business outlook: 59% of large and 80% of the small manufacturing companies have a positive outlook, according to the quarterly report. Smaller companies, in fact, reversed their outlook from negative in the third quarter of 2007 to positive in the fourth, while the percent of large manufacturers reporting a lack of confidence continued to decline during the fourth quarter. It’s interesting reading.

•  Another indicator of business conditions is manufacturing technology purchases, ie., machine tools. The Assn. for Manufacturing Technology and American Machine Tool Distributors’ Assn. reported recently that heavy purchasing activity in this segment during December capped a strong year, pushing the year-end total volume of machine-tool purchases to more than $4.26 billion, up 8.0% over the 2006 purchasing total. Again, it’s interesting reading.