"U.S. Is Falling Behind in the Business of 'Green'"

"LEICESTER, England — The Mark Group started hunting for a new untapped market when it realized that its core business — insulating old homes using innovative technology — would drop off in coming years. Based in this rust-belt city, the company had grown rapidly over the last decade largely because of generous and mandatory government subsidies for energy conservation that impelled the British to treat their homes.

But as a result of those incentives, market saturation was nearly complete — more than 80 percent of the country’s older homes had been at least partly retrofitted by 2010, the company estimated. So the Mark Group recently opened its newest office in another country, one with a relative paucity of expertise in the company’s specialty of cutting home energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions.

The office is in Philadelphia."

Elisabeth Rosenthal reports for the New York Times June 8, 2011.