Anthony Wright knows well how summer heat in Memphis, Tenn., can zap life out of even the hardiest souls, including the roughly 107,000 students and faculty who begin filling the city's roughly 7,200 classrooms each year in early August. As Memphis City Schools' coordinator for energy management and conservation, Wright also knows what the heat does to his district's bottom line, sucking tens of millions of dollars annually to keep buildings cool for up to 250 days a year. Squeezed by shrinking budgets, rising energy costs and aging infrastructure, America's schools are coming up with creative ways to squeeze every kilowatt and British thermal unit out of aging, often inefficient buildings that literally form the backbone of the U.S. education system. Go to story #1

On a Mongolian potato farm that supplies crops for Frito-Lay chips, parent company PepsiCo has reached water savings of 30 percent by installing pivot water systems, a transition from the flood watering that formerly hydrated the fields. The firm, which nets $65 billion annually, expects to convert again, this time to drip irrigation, using 50 percent less water than traditional farming methods. In the midst of some of the worst droughts in recent history, some of the world's biggest corporations are becoming more serious about the risks, but also the opportunities, climate change will bring to business. Go to story #2