2009 was a notable year – the year that two of the three top U.S. automakers declared bankruptcy. The untold story, however, was how Cap and Trade saved Ford from the fate of General Motors and Chrysler.

By 2009, all of the American auto manufacturers were in trouble. The companies had been posting losses for years. They had been around for almost a century. They made promises to their employees that they were having trouble keeping. And the debt they were taking on to try and meet cash negative operations and their pension, labor and other post employment benefit obligations was drowning the corporations. General Motors had over $100 billion in debt when the company declared bankruptcy.

Ford Motor Company is in the same boat. According to the third quarter earnings report, which was filed with the SEC on November 6, 2009, the company had long-term debt of $25 billion, “other liabilities” of $22 billion and “Financial Services Debt” of $105.8 billion. That’s quite a heft load for a company that lost $4 billion last year to carry.

So, how did Ford keep from going belly up, like Chrysler and General Motors? Largely through vision, which translated into sales and (so far) sustainability.

Ford was the first American auto manufacturer to promote fuel efficiency in a meaningful way, starting in 2002. The company was one of only 13 founding members of the Chicago Climate Exchange, making a commitment to voluntarily reducing green house gas emissions and to undergo third-party verification of GHG emissions data back in 2002. In May of 2008, Ford became the first automaker to join The Climate Registry (TCR), a non-profit organization established to measure and publicly report GHG emissions using a single reporting standard across industry sectors.

How did going green save Ford?


Read more by clicking over to the original article in Vol. 7, iss. 1 of the NataliePace.com ezine.

http://www.nataliepace.com/newsletters/members/news.php?np=yes&issue=701/701&article=01