Green Leaf Report

  Dr. James Hansen originally spoke in front of a Congressional committee on global warming in 1988.  He’s updated his warning with an eye-opening report on the current risks facing our planet.  The part that keeps running through my mind is where he suggests the heads of fossil fuel companies should be tried for their campaigns of disinformation:

Special interests have blocked the transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil fuel companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, just as tobacco companies discredited the link between smoking and cancer. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of the long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

Certainly there have been plenty of warnings and our population is also to  blame for believing those who stand to profit from fossil fuel consumption.  But tobacco companies never actually forced lit cigarettes into anyone’s mouth and they were still found liable for deliberately spreading misinformation and incomplete information.

The biggest thing I have to wonder, though, is whether our civilization is following the WWII example of Germany: As long as my family isn’t harmed, I’ll do what the leaders say.  It doesn’t matter if later reflection shows the murderous immorality of the holocaust; at the time, people followed because they didn’t question, didn’t want to be isolated or separated from the society they knew, and maybe, deep down, believed it must be the correct thing because it was what they heard from leadership.

Maybe this is what is happening now: Our western civilization is continuing down a path of pollution and over-consumption that we know will leave the world in dire straits.  But, maybe if the sea levels rise, maybe it will only affect the poor who don’t have the means to relocate.  Maybe droughts will impact those at the bottom of society, those in undeveloped nations and not the rest of us…Maybe we need to look more closely at ourselves and our capacity to behave morally in the face of needed change.

I’m a little surprised at some of comments I’ve received on my recent wind energy posts.  The engineer in me cringes at the description of the technology as “useless.”  In the past decade or two I’ve seen some pretty lame applications of technology, and wind energy just doesn’t fall into that category in my mind. Anything that’s designed to kill a person more efficiently - well, yuck.  Anything that’s intensively designed to give a better Superbowl viewing experience - pretty lame. Anything that’s designed to specifically not pollute the air we all breathe - not so lame.  And anything that’s designed to to try help keep our economy from a significant breakdown - keep on trying, maybe we can make it work.

Against the ideas that companies are only in the wind power market because of tax credits and subsidies, well, I can’t speak to the comments from other countries, but I can say that in America, to get the effects of a tax credit (such as the PTC), the company must first have a revenue stream related to the technology.  I don’t see a government give-away of money; I see the recipient of the revenue not having to pay quite as many taxes.  This isn’t a welfare industry- it’s a developing marketplace that deserves government support.  The alternatives of remaining dependent on fossil fuels are just too dangerous.

We can ask - why should renewable energy get this special treatment?  But it isn’t special- various other industries are already getting plenty of tax credits.  From the R&D credits that multi-billion dollar technology companies get to the various tax credits across the oil and gas industry.  We’re a rich nation; we can afford to offer tax incentives to alternative energy producers.  There’s no good alternative to alternative energy.

Recently a senior executive I interviewed went on a long spiel about a study that showed telecommuting could cause job dissatisfaction among the employees not telecommuting.  The idea he stressed was that employees don’t like feeling that they’re covering for other employees and having all of their meetings pushed onto a certain day when the telecommuters are in the office.

I think this sounds like a study based on a poorly managed telecommuting program.  The study the executive referred is the one by Timothy Golden examining 240 employees at a single company. Certainly including other companies in the study could provide different results, but either way, telecommuters should strive to make it seem as if they are one row away in the office, even when working from home.  Companies must support this through fast connections and possibly cool Cisco webcam setups, but the meetings should not be pushed onto one day and shouldn’t require drives into the office to be effective.

Overall, though, the comments reminded me of an old joke:

Three men were trapped on a desert island.  One day a bottle washed onto the shore and when opened, out came a Genie who said: “I will grant you three wishes for freeing me from the bottle.” The first man immediately wished he was home, and *poof*, he was gone.  The second man also wished he was home, and *poof* he was gone.  The third man looked around for a little while and said, “Man it’s lonely here without the other two guys. I wish they were back.”

My point is that just because some people want to be in the office surrounded by colleagues, it doesn’t mean telecommuting programs should be cut.  The telecommuting programs must be managed effectively to minimize disruptions to the normal workflow.

Today for the first time, US gas prices reached an average of $4/gallon.

Over the past 15 years, many companies have been moving more of their content onto web platforms and secure electronic processes.  The companies that have embraced these developments are well positioned now to reduce operational costs and employee out-of-pocket expenses by minimizing their exposure to rising oil prices.  A well thought out telecommuting process can now be a competitive advantage.

On the employee side, a telecommuting option can be a strong recruiting and retaining tool. In the last decade, inexpensive housing built further from the city centers has enticed many employees into longer commutes.  Now many are stuck with houses that they cannot sell, and gas bills that are devouring larger portions of their budgets.  Add in the increasing costs of food and other staples due to the rising fuel costs, and the sum could be employees that are becoming so stressed about meeting bills that they are distracted from their jobs.

On the employer side, allowing employees to telecommute to meetings instead of paying for flights for face-to-face meetings can save on increasing plane fares.  Letting employees work from home can reduce energy and rental expenses in building costs, if less space is needed.  Retaining the best employees with flexible working practices can save on search costs for replacing experienced employees.

When times are tight, the companies that emerge the strongest are the ones that retain talent, reduce costs, add efficiencies and continue to grow.  This could be the first recession where telecommuting can be used as a tool to meet all of these initiatives in savvy companies, and I’m interested to see what happens.

At the WindPower 2008 conference I spoke with a University student from North Carolina manning the North Carolina Renewable Energy booth.  He was part of a community outreach program for solar and wind; when I asked him how that was going for him, he said people in North Carolina tended to complain in the community meetings that the wind turbines would kill birds.

I’ve written about this bird/wind energy issue in the past, and we should also mention the cat/building comparison - where in the US cats are estimated to kill one billion birds annually, and buildings are estimated to kill 100 million to one billion birds annually.  Wind turbines are estimated to kill around 10,000 birds annually, with much of that effect from older turbines, and much due to the fact that birds tend to crash into any physical structure.

But since this student was from North Carolina, I asked him if anyone compared the possible risk of bird deaths to the effects of mountaintop mining for coal in the Appalachian mountains.  I was alerted by a fellow blogger recently that North Carolina was considering a ban on this practice of removing the topography of a mountain to acquire the coal below the surface.  Certainly the wind turbines are preferable to coal, with every stage of the coal process extracting such an environmental cost. 

If the North Carolina birds are quivering in fear over anything, I doubt it’s the possible addition of wind turbines near the coast.  I imagine the loss of habitat from the disappearing mountains and the plumes of pollution released from coal plants hurt a little bit more. 

Sign the petition to end mountaintop mining today, and write your congressperson.

One of the things that surprised me about the WindPower 2008 show was that so many of the exhibitors primarily serve the oil and gas industry, and are now moving into wind.  I expected to see a lot of pretty serious environmentalists- I’m not sure if I thought everyone would have long hair, beards, and Birkenstocks but I only saw about 2 people out of the 12,000 that fit that image.  Mostly it was a sea of business people in suits.

We spoke with Cinco at length about this- Cinco is an land acquisition company in Houston that normally serves the oil industry.  After decades of experience in this area, they’ve been moving into wind and geothermal- according to their representative at the booth, land acquisition for oil and gas vs. wind or geothermal is almost the same game.  This same mantra was repeated over and over at multiple booths- some vendors told us the turbines in the wind industry weren’t so different to sell into than oil and gas turbines.  Others told us the control panels were similar designs, still others talked to the legal issues, the environmental issues, the logistical issues and other power issues as very similar among the different types of energy generation.

I definitely got the feeling that the conference this year was so large for this very reason: It’s not that so many wind companies are being formed from scratch, it’s that so many traditional fossil fuel companies are now salivating over this market.  Perhaps renewables have had a marginalized, outsider reputation, but now many serious, traditional companies are taking a hard look at this growing market.  With 29 states now required to provide some portion of their power with renewable energy, the market should only continue to grow.

We’re surrounded by big and small wind companies at the WindPower 2008 show, but many of the exhibitors at the show are also from the non-profit, educational and government realms.  This huge cross-section of the industry really inspires hope that a lot of very intelligent people together will help break some of the dependencies on fossil fuels. The national is combining with the local to make large investments: NREL, the DOE and the University of Houston announced the opening of a Blade Research and Test Facility on the Gulf Coast today.  U 0f H will lead the private sector consortium, and hopefully will continue to create local jobs.

Many states have sent representation to pitch their availability as a great location for wind turbines- it’s a great strategy for continuing to attract jobs from a growing industry.  At the “Texas Wind” booth, we spoke with a gentleman from Texas A&M who also explained the University’s credit program for wind, and gradual entrance to the market.  While he pitched their current engineering programs as good bases for wind careers, he did believe that a degree curriculum specifically in Wind and Renewable Energy might be coming, just as Petroleum Engineering was a popular degree path in the past.  I’d like to see this conversion happen.

Today, on the first full day of the WindPower 2008 conference, we attended press conferences and worked the exhibition floor some more.  The expiring federal production tax credit (PTC) is getting a lot of attention and a lot of press.  If this tax credit does not get extended this year, the wind energy industry is expected to shed 70,000 to 125,000 jobs, depending on which estimate we use.

Alexander Karsner, the Assistant Secretary at the US Department of Energy, was very animated on his panels today that the time to change the entire PTC structure is now.  He argued that it is an archaic accounting set that is too unpredictably available.   Executives from GE, Vestas, Horizon Energy, Babcock and Brown, and FPL also spoke to this issue.  The erratic nature of US public policy on renewable technologies and rebates is causing a lot of concern- an actionable solution is missing, though.  The best solutions the large companies have to offer to prevent massive layoffs appears to be diversification of their portfolios into markets outside of the US.  But all of the executives claimed that the US had the best wind resources available.

Walking the exhibition hall, I spoke with multiple companies that are hiring.  After hearing all of the executive concern about the expiring tax rebates, I asked recruiter after recruiter if they were also concerned about the tax rebate and upcoming layoffs.  Across the board I was told, “No.”  The demand seems to be so high - maybe they feel a little less business wouldn’t be noticed for a while.  A lot of people are asking for resumes here.  I was actually surprised- I expected the recruiters to be flooded with people looking for a job in a recession market, but most of the recruiters looked a little desperate to talk to more people.  The hiring section of the exhibition floor was almost barren compared to the crowds around other booths. I take it as a good sign:  Many people are already employed in the industry and are not looking for jobs or job changes.  That leaves room for more people to hire in as the industry continues to grow.  The conference has attracted over 12,000 people already in 2008, blowing out the earlier estimate of 10,000, and more people are showing up every day.

I arrived today at the WindPower 2008 conference in Houston - I’m so excited to attend!  So far we’ve only attended for one partial day, but I’ve already met some great new people and learned things about wind that I didn’t know I didn’t know.

After our registration, we headed over to the poster exhibit- this was the most technical display I’ve seen in a long time.  It was a very well laid out exhibit- grouped by Operations & Maintenance, Project Development, and many other categories: exhibitors showed both theoretical and practical wind applications on their posters.  I learned about the reasonable hurricane risks for on-shore Texas coastal wind towers, as well as the Delaware perceived tourism risk for off-shore wind development. 

I liked the dampening controls dreamed up by Clipper engineer Khanh Nguyen to reduce wear on the wind turbines, and I also enjoyed hearing an Engineering Professor for Milwaukee give me an esoteric explanation of his on poster, and then tell me that the poster of the gentleman across the aisle was ‘impossible.’  Maybe we’ll see fists flying tomorrow.

In the exhibition hall, Vestas has a two story booth that I might like to live in- they also have a truck out front of the convention center holding an enormous single wind blade.  This convention is just huge, with over 10,000 listed attendees.  there’s a separate job fair area also- I’m building a list of skills under demand.  I’ve also asked multiple vendors their feelings on the political risk associated with tax rebates for the industry.  More will be coming tomorrow…

Unfortunately, the Exxon Mobil shareholders meeting in Dallas yesterday was unsuccessful in splitting the chairman and CEO roles, achieving only 39.5% of the vote.  Several shareholders groups are angry at Exxon Mobil’s lack of investment in alternative fuels, and think Exxon Mobil is short-sighted in its reliance on oil.  Shareholders - including members of the Rockefeller family, whose ancestor John  D. Rockefeller founded what later became Exxon Mobil -  were trying to bring in a new chairman that would concentrate more on alternative fuels. Rex Tillerson will now continue to hold the roles of Exxon Mobil CEO and chairman.

So it was close, but no cigar.  Now we’ll see if the next attempt gets a greater percentage of the vote, or if shareholder lawsuits begin.  It’s great to see that shareholders are trying to protect the environment, whether or not Exxon Mobil’s internal management agrees.  I’m impressed this initiative already managed to get 39.5% of shareholder vote - perhaps this will also send a message to Mr. CEO that he may well be evicted sooner than he’d like if he doesn’t listen to the shareholders now.