Top Ten Enterprise Customers

2. The Tata Group

In the U.S. many people only know the Tata Group though its $2,500 Nano car. But in Asia, the sprawling conglomerate might as well be its own nation. The $60 billion group, still run by family member R.N. Tata, includes Tata Steel, Tata Chemicals, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Motors, a cell phone company, a construction group, companies that make food ingredients, household flatware and ceramics, and even its own power company (Tata Power.). It also owns Jaguar, Eight o' Clock Coffee and a bottled water outfit.

India is notorious for a poor electricity grid, high demand, and a lack of liquid fuels it can call its own. As a result, Tata is on the forefront of energy conservation. Some of the things it is working on: powering cell phone towers with vanadium batteries or fuel cells; and installing thermal mass (i.e., ice) air conditioners from Calmac in its new Bangalore R&D facilities

Last November, the company said that all new green buildings would be green, even though the plan might add 15 percent to 20 percent to the cost. Corus, a company inside Tata Steel, has set a goal of reducing carbon dioxide by 2020. One of its big initiatives will be in exploiting the waste heat generated in its factories. Consultants, equipment providers, service companies will all be enlisted.

It also has an impact on the direction of R&D in India. The family founded the India Institute of Science, the grad school that's one notch above the famed India Institute of Technology, and regularly donates to Indian science.

Runner up: Samsung. Yes, the company makes TVs, but it also has heavy industry and construction divisions and the conglomerate is known for micro-managing waste. NEC, Toshiba and Hitachi are worth watching too. Like other Japanese conglomerates, the effort to reduce carbon began years ahead of the west.