Recycled Energy Development (RED) has acquired the combined heat and power (CHP) projects at Dean Foods' facilities in City of Industry, Calif., and Franklin, Mass. Each project will produce approximately 2.0 megawatts of electricity and 4.5 MMBtu/hr of thermal energy from clean natural gas.

Strength is returning to the market for mid-sized warehouses, though vacancies remain high for facilities of 100,000 to 200,000 square feet, says Rob Wheeler, vice president for industrial services at Cresa Chicago. Cresa Chicago is a real estate firm that works only with tenants. With 55 offices in North America, it is "the biggest real estate firm you've never heard of," Wheeler says.

More than 60 percent of surveyed companies view logistics as non-strategic, yet expectations for near-perfect performance are placing increasing stress on global logistics organizations, according to research and advisory firm Gartner Inc.

Forty-six percent of fleet managers cite cost savings as the primary focus of executive management as it relates to their company's fleet operations, according to a recent survey conducted by GE Capital, Fleet Services. This was followed by on-time delivery and service, driver safety and resource productivity (all 15 percent).

Supply management professionals are uniquely positioned to influence a company's environmental sustainability efforts as well as the performance of supply base partners in this area. But where are the standards and metrics?

Some Apples will be green. Apple data centers, that is. The technology giant has announced that its new half-million-square-foot data center in Maiden, N.C., will only use electricity that has been generated by renewable energy. The company said that the Maiden facility will be "the most environmentally sound data center ever built."

The key supply chain challenge today is the juxtaposition of complex and extended supply networks with increasingly fast and volatile demand networks - and the increasingly ineffective role for inventory as a way to buffer cadence mismatches.

GE Capital Fleet Services has launched IntelliGauge, a mobile fuel and carbon-dioxide calculator which allows users to compare the fuel costs of their current vehicles against future models.

Ryder System Inc. has made a number of enhancements to its food-packaging and distribution center in Beaver Dam, Wis.

Natural gas prices are at a 10-year low, and this has increased industry interest in the feasibility of natural gas vehicles for transporting freight. While compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles are appropriate for "return-to-base" vehicles like school buses, garbage trucks and local delivery trucks, liquefied natural gas (LNG) vehicles, because of their increased range, are currently a better option for long-haul, heavy-duty trucking.