Future Energy

How to Create a Safety Culture - Not

2011-05-19T22:24:09-07:00

Source: bnet

Back in January I wrote briefly about safety culture and in particular about Exxon's journey along the pathway to a sustainable safety culture. The occasion was a statement given by Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil to the U.S. National Commission on the BP Deepwater Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling on November 9th, 2010, in which Tillerson outlined ExxonMobil's approach to safety, operational integrity and risk management. Tillerson made the point that safety had to become a value to be embedded in the organization's culture. Expanding on this, he outlined three key criteria for a safety culture:

1. A culture of safety is born within an organization. You can't buy a culture - you have to make it yourself.

2. Creating a strong, sustainable safety culture is a long process.

3. Leadership by example and thoughtful, honest and objective self-assessment are essential.

Today there was some news from a fellow energy company that sits at the opposite end of the spectrum with respect to valuing safety and a safety culture. The NY Times reported on the release of the West Virginia Governor's Independent Investigation Panel charged with examining the April 5th, 2010 explosion at the Massey Energy Upper Big Branch Mine. The explosion killed 29 miners - the worst disaster in U.S. mining in 40 years. The report, released today, doesn't seemed to have pulled many punches:

"an independent team of investigators has put the blame squarely on the owner of the mine, Massey Energy, concluding that it had “made life difficult” for miners who tried to address safety and built “a culture in which wrongdoing became acceptable .... echoed preliminary findings by federal officials that the blast could have been prevented if Massey had observed minimal safety standards ... but it was more pointed in naming Massey as the culprit, using blunt language to describe what it said was a pattern of negligence that ultimately led to the deaths of 29 miners on April 5, 2010, in the worst American mining disaster in 40 years."

The culpability of Massey in the disaster is certainly the most important part of the story and one that the NY Times tells well. However, when I linked to the report itself and read through it, I was struck by the contrasts between the approach to safety articulated by Tillerson and Massey's moral failure. The report discusses the process of "normalization of devience"by which, in the push to to produce coal, the operating culture of the mine made allowances for a laundry list of unacceptable problems and failures. For example:

Chronic low airflow;
Illegal ventilation changes, made with a blatant disregard for worker safety and the law;
Lack of an effective engineering design with engineering staff disconnected from the mine management decisions;
Continual problems with high water, routinely sending men into chest-high water;
Lack of safety equipment;
Failure to carry out basic safety measures (e.g. rock dusting to reduce risk of coal dust explosions);
Ineffective and even fraudulent safetyboss (i.e. safety managers) practices;
Failed equipment;
Disabled safety mechanisms.

The report goes on to detail how, far from promoting a safety culture, Massey conspicuously valued production over safety and created a climate in which intimidation of employees, institutional secrecy, deliberate law-breaking and more were routine. One would have to ask, where were the regulators that were responsible for ensuring mine safety? Massey had systematically used its wealth to undermine the political and regulatory process and to undermine the legitimacy of the regulators in the eyes of the workforce. The question that emerges from this report is not "How could it happen?", rather it is "How didn't it happen more often and on a greater scale?"

In a way this report reinforces the message from Tillerson. A positive safety culture isn't something that just happens. In fact it’s possible to create the complete opposite - a Frankenstein culture if you will.

Innovation for the Energy Sector

2011-05-08T10:57:03-07:00

Source: MEKRA Lang

Innovation, and in particular development of the technologies needed to address the environmental challenges facing us now and in the future, is the key to any kind of sustainable future.

Back at the end of March I reviewed The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge (Harvard Business Review Press, 2010), a book by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble on innovation for the corporate set. As is always the case, since writing about the topic, I've become aware of how much commentary on innovation is pulsing through the web. One piece in particular caught my attention.

In a post written April 25th on the Cleantech blog, Richard Steubi talks about innovation, and draws some conclusions about innovation in the energy sector:

"My experiences with large electric utilities, oil companies, equipment vendors, and engineering/construction firms — of a comparable magnitude and global reach as P&G — have not been so encouraging ........ to date, many aspects of the energy sector (particularly in the electricity industry) have largely been shielded from the imperative to innovate."

The focus of his post is twofold:

Procter & Gamble's launch of its open innovation program, improving its ability to collaborate with outside partners in technology research and product development; and
The U.S. federal government's hugely important catalytic role in commercial innovation, even in technologies (e.g., the iPhone) that seem on the surface to have been developed solely by “the free market".

Smart Grid Comes to B.C.

2011-04-18T09:27:06-07:00

Source: cleantechnica.com

Last week BC Hydro announced that it had selected Itron as the supplier of smart meters for the province, in a contract worth $270 million. This followed on an earlier announcement, in January, that Corix, a Vancouver company, had been selected to install 1.8 million smart meters and that Capgemini had been selected to provide project implementation and technology integration services. Installation of smart meters is a key step towards the development of a smart grid - simply put, the incorporation of digital monitoring and communications technologies into the existing electrical grid. As BC Hydro rightly points out on their website, implementation of a smart grid potentially offers enormous benefits, including:

Two-way communications providing real-time information allows consumers to manage their own energy use and utilities to better balance generation and demand;
Real time information from all points of the grid also allows better customer service in the event of power failures - if utilities can pinpoint the failure earlier, they can fix it quicker;
Allows time-of-day electricity pricing, i.e. higher prices when demand is greatest, lower prices when demand is reduced, which can lead to reduced demand in peak periods and, ultimately, less need to build (expensive) generation facilities that sit idle for all but short periods of time;
Permits a distributed and more adaptive network that increases the stability, security and reliability of the grid;
Allows more distributed generation such as intermittent and small-scale renewables to be attached to the grid.

Overall, making the grid smarter should support more efficient use of electricity, reduce the generating capacity that has to be built, support development of renewables and reduce emissions associated with electricity generation.

What's not to like and why are smart meters so unpopular?

U.S. utilities installing smart meters in California, Colorado, Maine, Texas and elsewhere have faced a barrage of consumer complaints (not to mention Ontario - here and here). The biggest source of concern appears to be the perception that power bills have increased with installation of smart meters, although, social concerns relating to "big brother" monitoring or even controlling in-home electrical use have also emerged as have the usual concerns for increased exposure to electro-magnetic fields (EMF).

Part of the problem might be ignorance. GE published results of a 2010 survey in which it found 79% of Americans were unaware of the term smart grid and had no idea what it meant (GE did find that 80% of those who did understand the term - i.e. 16% of the total, not an overwhelming number - did believe that there would be benefits from introducing smart meters. Judging from the public reactions in the states where smart meters have been introduced I wonder if GE isn't kidding itself about even that low level of understanding.)

Another might be utility approaches to customer service, or lack thereof. Back in 2009, when the California revolt against smart meters first erupted, Katie Fehrenbacher, writing at Gigacom.com, had this to say:

"Smart grid technology and smart meters don’t represent new or risky or bleeding-edge technology. They use the same type of information technology — wireless networks, silicon, software — that controls our cell phones, computers and Internet, and that plays a massive role in the U.S. economy. It’s just being used in a new industry: electricity. Of course software can occasionally be glitchy, but so can a person manually driving by and reading home meters. As Grid Net CEO Ray Bell told audience members of the GreenBeat conference today “digital meters are rigorously tested, and highly accurate.”

The big issue is that utilities need to learn to communicate a lot better, and develop a much stronger relationship, with their customers, whether that’s through marketing, PR or customer outreach. As Seth Frader-Thompson, CEO of energy management startup EnergyHub said at the Dow Jones Energy Conference this week, utilities, with their regulatory markets, have a long history of looking at their customers as “rate payers,” or even “load”. There needs to be a sea change in the relationship between utilities and power consumers .... ultimately it’s the responsibility of the organization that’s leading the switch to the digital two-way system to keep the line of communication open."

With all of the information that is out there about managing change you would think the utilities would have perfected the art of introducing new technologies and growing electrical rates. Apparently not. So what does it take to successfully introduce smart meters (or any significant change for that matter)?

Arguably, John Kotter's Eight-Step Process of Creating Major Change is the best known framework for bringing about change in a corporate setting:

Modified from John P. Kotter, "Why Transformation Efforts Fail", Harvard Business Review (March-April, 1995):61.

It may be a bit too Corporate so I have been using a simpler diagram to explain what I think is need to bring about a change:

Whether you like a simple approach or a more complex one, the basics appear to be the same - communication and lots of it. And it wouldn't hurt to clearly describe the the benefits to the people that are going to be affected, in terms that are relevant for them, e.g. lower long term costs, greater reliability, faster repairs, etc. Making consumers aware of the change and what it will mean before it arrives on their doorstep wouldn't hurt either.

The Crown corporation, which enjoys an almost complete monopoly in B.C., is obviously aware of the consumers concerns that have arisen in other jurisdictions, as a BC Hydro customer I am not aware of any significant communications efforts beyond the project website. And this is in a province in which a previously popular Premier was forced into retirement over his failure to adequately engage voters before abruptly introducing a significant change in the province's sales tax regime - perhaps the first Canadian tax revolt in (recent) history.

Hopefully, BC Hydro will learn from that experience. It was awfully close to home.

How Does Canada Stand in the Clean Energy Race?

2011-04-11T14:50:40-07:00

Source: sustainabilitygalore.com

Although it was released March 29^th, I only got around to looking at the Pew Environment Group's latest analysis of clean energy investment over this past weekend. Who's Winning the Clean Energy Race? 2010 Edition estimates that global clean energy investment reached US$243 billion in 2010 a 30% increase over 2009. For the second year, the investment champion is China, which invested a total of US$54.4 billion followed by Germany (US$41.2) and the U.S. (US$34.0).

"The clean energy sector is emerging as one of the most dynamic and competitive in the world, witnessing 630 percent growth in finance and investments since 2004," said Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew's Clean Energy Program. "Countries like China, Germany and India were attractive to financers because they have national policies that support renewable energy standards, carbon reduction targets and/or incentives for investment and production that create long-term certainty for investors."

Canada came in a lowly 7th place, investing US$5.6 billion - which is actually not bad given a population 1/10^th the sixth of that in the U.S. (and only 1/40^th that of China). As a country we only accounted for 2.8% of the G-20 investment total.

Pew's Fact Sheet for Canada is brief but attributes most of the control over clean energy investment to the provinces - and, although, they don't break the country totals down by province, its likely that Ontario accounted for the lion's share of investment this past year. In large part this attributable to the feed-in tariff and the Renewable Energy Standard the province has in place.

(Interestingly, the report highlights the important role of Feed-In Tariffs (FIT's) in supporting clean energy investment. Pew cites the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory which estimates that FIT's have led to 75% of global solar installations and 45% of global wind projects. While Germany and Italy are the best known FIT proponents, as noted above, Ontario also has a FIT program in place - something the Ontario government has increasingly come under criticism for.)

While Canada is in 7th place for investment, the country falls to 12-13% (depending on technology) based on installed capacity, suggesting that conditions in the past one to two years have allowed investment in renewables in this country to accelerate - again, likely to Ontario's support programs. If you are developing renewable power in this country, you are likely active in Ontario.

One thing Pew doesn't provide is any assessment of the effectiveness of the clean energy policy alternatives. This type of review should have allowed some observations in that regard, but there is no mention of it that I saw. Perhaps next year.

Innovation (only for the Fortune 500?)

2011-03-29T09:25:15-07:00

Source: PSFK.com

In a new book on innovation (The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge. Harvard Business Review Press, 2010), Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble have laid out some well thought out rules for the corporate set. Most importantly they knowledgeably illustrate the difference between creativity, AKA generating ideas, and the hard work of executing innovation initiatives that can have a real impact on the world.

"Companies think far too little about the other side of innovation, and we are not the first to say so. In 2007, IBM ran an advertisement intended to convey that it could help its clients innovate. It featured a pudgy mock superhero sporting a capital "I" on hi outfit who introduced himself as "Innovation Man". A bemused colleague asked, "And your job is?" The superhero replied with gusto, "I for ideation! I for invigoration! I for incubation!" The onlooker replied, "What about I for implementation?" Innovation Man answered "I knew I forgot something." ..... It captured so humorously and yet so perfectly the off-balance approach to innovation that is commonplace in corporations around the world. There is too much emphasis on ideas, not nearly enough emphasis on execution. Thomas Edison made essentially the same observation more than a century ago: "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." Nobody listened."

While innovation in the form of software start-ups by 20-Something digital wizards is now the stuff of popular myth and legend, this book provides a detailed a recipe for the rest of the business world. In a treatise that seems directed primarily at the Fortune 500, Govindarajan and Trimble make three key points:

Business organizations are not designed for innovation, they are designed for ongoing operations, with deep and fundamental conflicts between the two;
Innovation requires a dedicated team with its own structure and processes; and
innovation initiatives should be run like a disciplined experiment.

Govindarajan and Trimble contrast their approach to innovation, which is most relevant to major innovation initiatives, to innovation strategies that lead to incremental or process innovation. Interestingly, they define the different possible innovation models with four different "equations" (with the authors' characterisations of each):

innovation = idea + leader + team + plan (their approach)

innovation = ideas + motivation (people working in their spare time to generate many small initiatives, but unable to get much beyond the idea stage);

innovation = ideas + process (small steps that may accumulate into a meaningful result);

innovation = ideas + leaders (based on talented leaders to overcome the organizational barriers to execution - flawed in the authors' opinion).

I was surprised at how dismissive they were of the approaches other than their own.

Briefly, looking at the authors' three key points:

The Conflict

Referring to them as Performance Engines, they make the case that the ongoing operations of established businesses "instinctively swat down innovation initiatives - or any project, for that matter, that cannot make an immediate contribution". Hence their first rule of innovation: Innovation and ongoing operations are always and inevitably in conflict. This isn't a characteristic of a poorly run business - on the contrary, its a part of every succesful Performance Engine's approach to optimizing its business:

"The most powerful conflicts between innovation and ongoing operations ..... lie in the method of the Performance Engine. The method is the same, in every company and in every industry. To maximize results, the Performance Engine strives to make every task, every process, and every activity as repeatable and predictable as possible."

A Dedicated Team

The solution: building a fit for purpose team with its own, custom organizational model. In their view, an innovation team, to be successful, must leverage off of the skills and resources of the Performance Engine but must have the independence to strike its own path, unencumbered by the biases, habits and business models of the mothership. While the innovation team will be structured, managed and measured differently from the Performance Engine, successful innovation requires a partnership between the two. Three key steps are identified for building the innovation team:

Divide the labour between the dedicated team and the shared (with the Performance Engine) staff;

Assemble the dedicated team and assign roles and responsibilities; and

Manage the partnership between the dedicated team and the shared staff.

A Disciplined Experiment

Govindarajan and Trimble advocate a learning based approach to innovation, arguing that the goal of an innovation team should be to learn from innovation experiments as quickly and cheaply as possible. Following a process that sounds a lot like the scientific method, they suggest three key steps:

Formalize the experiment following a disciplined process that maximizes the opportunity for learning. The core of the process is a clear hypothesis of record against which progress can be measured;

Break down the hypothesis

Seek the truth

The approach is good (the disciplined experiment element is also directly based on the scientific method, a point the authors never acknowledge) and could be used to bring discipline to almost any organization's innovation initiatives.

What I liked about the book was the recognition that the real challenge for innovation was not generating new ideas. Contrary to popular understanding, eureka moments are just the beginning, with the greatest challenge being the hard work of execution or implementation - and the authors lay out a convincing approach for overcoming the execution challenge.

What I didn't like about it was the degree to which they dismissed approaches other than their own. Not all innovation takes place in the Fortune 500 and involves transformational change. I think I would have appreciated a greater recognition of this fact once they had established the focus on execution. Some suggestions on applying that focus to incremental and process innovation might have been nice too.

On balance, the book is well worth reading if you have an interest in how innovation occurs and how to drive it in an organization (stepping back to look at the prescriptions a bit more generally, it also has lessons for implementing change of other sorts).

Enjoy.

Is it Time for Fair Trade Oil?

2011-02-22T21:47:03-08:00

Source: tropical-rainforest-animals.com

Oil is oil is oil and it is well nigh impossible to separate it once it's in the pipeline. But that was then and this is now. Two stories I came across today suggest that there are some out there that are working hard to differentiate between oil sources, as difficult as that sounds.

First, according to the Globe & Mail, Canada's federal government seems to be picking a fight with the European Union as the EU pushes European fuel suppliers to reduce the carbon footprint of supplied fuels over the next decade (see Oil sands row threatens EU trade deal, sources say, February 22, 2011).

"Canada has threatened to scrap a trade deal with the European Union if the EU persists with plans that would block imports of Canada’s highly polluting tar sands, according to EU documents and sources .....The Commission had initially proposed that tar sands be ascribed a greenhouse gas value of 107 grams per megajoule of fuel, making it clear to buyers that it had far greater impact than average crude oil at 87.1 grams. The latest EU research, published this month, backs that up."

I'm not quite clear on why Canada would pick a fight over a product that the EU does not, and is unlikely to, import from Canada. However, what interested me was the "certifying" of different oil sources ... an interesting precedence (and perhaps a reason for the disagreement).

Much more interesting was an article in GOOD magazine's Issue 022, The Energy Issue. On a safari through the range of energy issues facing the U.S. today, GOOD slipped a short mention of David Poritz's Gaia Certification Ltd. and its efforts to establish a certification standard for oil sources. According to GOOD, Poritz's goal is "Fair Trade" in fuels, that allows consumers to pick the the level of environmental performance that they are willing to pay for. His model is the Forest Stewardship Council, which oversees standards for certifying woodlands and forest product producers. You may have noticed companies like Home Depot selling FSC lumber or Staples selling FSC paper.

A quick look at the website suggests Gaia Certification is just getting started, and choosing to do so in Ecuador (where Chevron has become embroiled in lawsuits and accusations of systemic oil spills and pollution). Drawing on participation from industry, NGO's, government and indigenous communities, Gaia is on the verge of issuing its first set of certification standards, which will serve as the basis for rating the practices of individual countries.

A summary of what Gaia is trying to achieve:

"The mission of Gaia Certification Ltd. is to create a market-driven process that will reward and distinguish world-class oil and gas producers for outstanding social and environmental performance through the active engagement of consumers, civil society, NGOs and the oil industry."

And Poritz is quoted by GOOD, outlining the value proposition for energy marketers as the world makes the transition to low-carbon fuels:

"There’s real market value here for energy producers, ...... It takes time to move to all renewables. We’re in transition, and that transition has to feel good."

It could be the start of something interesting - a first step towards extended product responsibility for the oil industry. Forget Regular, Premium and Super, imagine going to your local boutique gasoline bar and having a choice of Fort McMurray Mild, Colorado Medium or, for the more discriminating the really good imported stuff, Ecuadorean Dark.

Integrating Renewables into the Grid - Its All About Flexibility

2011-02-18T13:04:01-08:00

Source: techvert.com

Back in mid-January, Stanford's TomKat Centre for Sustainable Energy hosted the Grid Integration of Renewables Workshop, bringing together a group to examine the issues relating to grid expansion and the integration of renewables into that grid. I came across a report on the workshop at the CleanTech blog that interested me but was unable to get much detail about the discussions.

Sometime in the past few weeks, the TomKat Centre posted most of the presentations given at the workshop. Collectively they provide an interesting picture of the issues at least these experts foresee as the proportion of intermittent renewables such as wind and solar that are connected to the grid becomes significant.

Keynote Speakers included U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico) and Commissioner Jeffrey Byron of the California Energy Commission (CleanTech blog's report focuses on what the keynote speakers had to say in lots of detail so I won't try to add anything here).

Speakers included:

Gregor Czisch, Transnational Renewables, Germany - The Supergrid: 100% Renewable Electricity Supply for Europe and Its Neighborhood » (ppt)

Mark Jacobson, Stanford - Grid Integration Challenges for 100% Conversion to Wind and Solar Power » (pdf)

Hans Henrik Lindboe, Ea Energy Analyses, Denmark - Enabling Renewable Energy Integration in Denmark » (pdf)

V. John White, Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies - Pulling the Pieces Together: Thinking Regionally and Cooperatively » (pdf)

Antonio Alvarez, PG & E - Efforts and Challenges to Manage California's Expected Intermittent Renewable Additions » (pdf)

Debbie Lew, National Renewable Energy Laboratory - Finding Flexibility in the Existing System » (pdf)

Nick Jenkins, Cardiff University, UK - Optimizing AC and DC Transmission Networks for High Penetration of Renewables » (pdf)

Michael Wara, Stanford - Key Regulatory Challenges for Deep Penetration of Renewables (no links provided)

Willett Kempton, University of Delaware - Low Cost Grid Integration via Met-Smart Interconnection and Storage Inherent in End-Use Devices » (pdf)

The clearest point of agreement running through the speakers' presentations was that increased reliance on non-hydro renewables would lead to greater uncertainty of supply, which would in turn demand greater flexibility within the management of the grid if supply and demand were to be successfully balanced. Suggested mechanisms for achieving the necessary flexibility generally fell into one of three categories, including:

Increase the Size of the Catchment

Speakers identified a range of approaches that relate to increasing the size of the area from which power can be drawn from to lessen the chance that power is available due to weather issues. Suggested mechanisms included imports, Balancing Area cooperation and development of "asynchronous" resources (i.e. resources that are expected to be couter-cyclical in the availability). The underlying assumption of efforts to increase the size of the catchment being that its always windy somewhere. Needless to say, just about any approaches relying on increased catchment size demand big investments in transmission infrastructure - perhaps one of the most significant challenges facing future grid development.

Better Manage Supply

While some of the suggestions appear to focus primarily on the need for standby conventional power sources, more creative approaches included development of asynchronous sources, as noted above, and the need for grid storage.

Better Manage Demand

Clearly an approach with a lot of future potential as Smart Grid technologies are developed, speakers focused on automatic demand response technologies, "dynamic pricing" (i.e. higher pricing during times of the day that electricity is in greater demand or less available) and curtailment or the ability to automatically cut off some customers or applications as demand increases/supply decreases.

When you say them fast, these all sound pretty simple. But they represent significant shifts in approach, huge infrastructure investments and potentially years of regulatory and public process to put in place.

Still an interesting collection of views on what seems the most likely future direction for electricity.

Wind Energy Siting: Will Environmental Guidelines End the Conflicts?

2011-02-15T08:36:38-08:00

Source:Clean Technica

If you are concerned about global warming and the effects that atmospheric carbon levels are even now having, then wind energy looks like a no-brainer. Clearly not everyone agrees.

February 1st, the first appeal of a Renewable Energy Approval certificate in Ontario began, focusing on a small wind farm being developed by Suncor Energy Inc. The Kent Breeze wind farm, once constructed, will have eight turbines with 20 MW total capacity. At issue are claims that the windfarm will cause serious harm to human health as a result of exposure to to the infrasound and/or low frequency noise and shadow flicker from wind turbines. The appeal hearing is expected to take until March 31st and involve 16 days of testimony.

Similarly, High Country News has long followed the controversy regarding wind power development in Wyoming. On the surface the debate in Wyoming appears to be about preserving Sage Grouse and the aesthetic of undeveloped ranchland. However, digging deeper and it becomes a conflict between oil and gas interests and wind (see Wind Resistance: Will the petrocracy - and greens - keep Wyoming from realizing its windy potential?, Deccember 2009):

"Look closer, however, and you'll find that much of the resistance to wind actually comes from the fossil fuel industry and the politics it bankrolls. Wyoming is the largest coal producer in the nation and the third-largest producer of natural gas; at least one town is named after an oil company. Severance taxes and royalties from these industries keep the state's government, schools and other services afloat. In an indirect and sometimes convoluted way, wind threatens that old-school energy dynamic. At an August symposium on wind energy at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Aaron Clark, an advisor to the governor, put it candidly: "We can't let wind development hurt the state's revenue stream from extractive minerals."

The Cape Wind went through a nine year of regulatory process with opposition from no less than Sentaor Ted Kennedy, who appeared to fear the impact on his holiday home's vistas over Nantucket Sound - and its still in the courts!

And its not just in North America. Back in August 2009, Greenpeace U.K. voiced its concerns about local councils' negative stance towards onshore wind farms:

".... of the reasons Britain’s green industrial revolution is yet to take off is the lack of domestic demand for wind turbines, and a key reason for that has been the attitude of many Conservative councils ..... a key factor behind the woes is a backlash against onshore wind farms by local authorities concerned about damage to the value of citizens’ property and to the environment — including local bird populations."

Much of the negative sentiment seems to arise because some people don't like looking at the turbines (from one description of 1.5 MW turbines: "From its base to the tip of its rotor, the GE 1.5 megawatt wind turbine is 380 feet tall. Each rotor blade is 122 feet long.") or see them as a threat to their property values (although, some of the controversy appears to be driven by entrenched industries with no interest in change). In a word, a classic case of NIMBY'ism. And while these types of arguments always seem to be advanced in terms of environmental or human-health claims, how real are the claims?

Earlier this month, in an effort to address the burgeoning concerns, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service issued voluntary Draft Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines. These Guidelines have been a long-time coming. The Fish & Wildlife Service introduction to the Guidelines that is on their website suggests a gestation of more than eight years:

"In July 2003, the Service released for a set of voluntary, interim guidelines for land-based, wind energy projects to assist developers in avoiding, minimizing and/or compensating for effects to fish, wildlife, and their habitats. Following an extended two-year public comment period, the Secretary of the Interior established the Wind Turbine Guidelines Advisory Committee under the auspices of the Federal Advisory Committee Act in March 2007 to provide the recommendations for the final guidelines. The Committee was comprised of a diversity of stakeholders, including federal, tribal, state, private industries and conservation organizations. After two years of deliberations, the Committee submitted their final recommendations to the Secretary on March 4, 2010. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service then convened an internal working group representing several Service programs to review the Committee recommendations. The working group used the recommendations as a basis to develop the Service’s proposed wind energy guidelines."

The Guidelines are intended to guide site-selection of land-based, wind energy projects, addressing the potential negative effects of wind energy development on fish, wildlife, and their habitats.

Briefly, the Guidelines are based on a five tiered approach to habitat and wildlife protection, including:

Tier 1 – Preliminary evaluation or screening of potential sites
Tier 2 – Site characterization
Tier 3 – Pre-construction monitoring and assessments
Tier 4 – Post-construction monitoring of effects
Tier 5 – Research

At each of the site-selection levels, users are asked to assess the risk of future impacts on wildlife and wildlife habitat based on consideration of the species available, presenece of high value habitat (including "intact habitat" - as the Fish & Wildlife Service states in the Introduction, "many of North America's native landscapes are greatly diminished or degraded from multiple causes unrelated to wind energy". So as the dispute in Wyoming shows, wind may just be the latest layer of impacts in the cake - and probably not even the most significant.)

Once the decision to site a wind farm has been made, the Guidelines also provide best practice mitigation and management approaches - although, not in great detail.

As someone who sits down from time to time to develop similar types of guidelines, I would say that they are well thought out and drafted. And they are complimented by guidance to address risks specific to eagles in the Draft Eagle Conservation Plan Guidance as well as by the creation of a new website which the Service is promising to maintain with new and emerging best practice as it becomes comes available.

Will this address many of the concerns around wind farms and wind turbines? I suspect not.

It appears to be a useful tool for addressing wildlife concerns associated wind development. However, much of the concern around wind farms and many other kinds of development is much more visceral than the objective environmental or health concerns often cited. It comes down to a fear of change and a desire to control the change in our own environments. The conflicts also say something about the uneven spread of impacts and benefits. For those living next to a wind farm the global environmental benefits of wind energy may mean little to them.

I was struck by the author's statement at the end of the article about Wyoming's wind farm conflicts:

"I slither through the fence and walk up to a turbine, until I'm directly beneath its blades. The only sound is a low-pitched sort of watery sigh, kind of like a slowed-down version of an unborn baby's heartbeat on an ultrasound. No gears grind or scream on this solitary giant, nothing spews out of it, no drill bits penetrate, and no strange fluids are shot into or sucked out of the earth. The wind blows, the arms turn, and electrons flow through cables, down the tower, under the ground, and into the power lines where they'll join up with the coal-generated electrons 13 miles away. They flow into the bloodstream of the omnipotent, tentacled organism called the grid. Somewhere, someone flips a switch. And there is light."

It says a lot about these types of conflicts - our points of comparison, our awareness of the effects of our decisions and our choices - and much too rational for most of us.

Safety Culture!

2011-01-18T22:21:42-08:00

Source: Wata-Malaysian Oil & Gas Engineer

In the course of a recent conversation with one of my clients' senior leaders, the discussion turned to ExxonMobil and that company's consistantly strong financial performance, due in large part to its rigorous approach to risk management. ExxonMobil consistantly places number one on lists such as Platt's Top 250, which ranks energy companies on their financial performance, and the company has long been thought by many financial analysts to be the most "sustainable" oil and gas company. While I may disagree (strongly) with ExxonMobil's past position and role on issues such as climate change its hard not to be impressed with the discipline the company appears to bring to its operations.

My discussion of ExxonMobil ended with reference to a statement given by Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil to the U.S. National Commission on the BP Deepwater Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling back on November 9th, 2010, in which Tillerson outlines ExxonMobil's approach to safety, operational integrity and risk management. Specifically, Tillerson talks about the development of the company's Operational Integrity Management System (OIMS) and, perhaps more importantly, the development of ExxonMobil's safety culture. Noteably, Tillerson makes the point that a successful approach to safety demands that a corporate commitmnent to safety should be a value, not a priority.

Whats the difference you might ask? In Tillerson's view, it appears to be that a value becomes part of the culture - it goes beyond the written rules, standards and procedures and influences the unwritten standards and norms that shape employees and leaders mindsets, attitudes and behaivours.

Companies must develop a culture in which the value of safety is embedded in every level of the workforce, reinforced at every turn and upheld above all other considerations.

Interestingly, he attributes ExxonMobil's journey along the path to a sustainable safety culture to the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster (and seems the reinforce the notion that sometimes it takes a disaster to build consensus for change). ExxonMobil's safety objective is "Nobody Gets Hurt". Commenting on the transformation of the company's culture to achieve that objective, he clearly defines the end game:

When an organization reaches the point where everyone owns the system and believes in it, only then at that point, the culture of safety and operational integrity has been established that can be sustained - when it enters the hearts and minds of the people of the organization and becomes a part of who we are.

The statement to the Commission provides an excellent overview of the framework that has been constructed within ExxonMobil to support a safety culture. In particular, he outlines many of the elements of the company's OIMS. Summing up, Tillerson outlines three key considerations with respect to safety culture:

A culture of safety is born within an organization. You can't buy a culture - you have to make it yourself.

Creating a strong, sustainable safety culture is a long process.

Leadership by example and thoughtful, honest and objective self-assessment are essential.

While the safety literature is replete with lists of what is required to achieve a high performance safety culture, Tillerson's list is jargon free and as good as any. Notably, his remarks also give strong weight to the role of OIMS - that is the system and tools that give substance to what might otherwise be empty rhetoric. This is an improvement over some of the safety literature which seems to think leadership is enough (like much management literature these days), discounting the role of rigorous management systems. In my view, both the systems and the leadership/culture are essential - one reinforcing the other. A strong culture without workable tools to operationalize concern for safety won't produce a result. And neither will tools without the culture demanding their use.

What got me interested in Tillerson's statement originally, was what it suggested for developing a "culture" around other performance imperitives - such as sustainability. But thats a conversation for another post.

A List of Sustainability Lists in This Season of Lists

2011-01-13T20:07:39-08:00

And yes it is a bit late in the New Year to be posting yet another take on the top 10. But it was a busy Christmas season so here we go .....

I thought about putting together my own take on the Top 10 theme, you know, the 10 most important sustainability events for 2010, the 10 most important trends to watch for 2011 or maybe the 10 least sustainable politicians. But the more I looked around at my favorite news and blog sites the harder it seemed to add anything that hadn't already been said. Before I knew it I was putting together a list of all the top 10 (or five or 20, whatever) lists relating to sustainability, environment or clean tech investing. What follows is a compilation of 23 lists that looked to be at least a bit relevant to this blog. Enjoy!

To start, there are those basic lists that make sure we know what were the most important events from the year that has past. In this category, the big stories of the year were undeniably BP's disasterous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the U.S. Senate's failure to do anything useful about climate change. The runner up story was probably the general failure to advance climate policy and regulation almost anywhere.

Vermont Law School’s Top 10 Environmental Watch List for 2011

NY Times Green Blog: An Untameable Spill, An Unpassable Bill

Grist's Top 10 Green Stories of 2010

Mongabay's Top 10 Environmental Stories of 2010

EWG's Worst Environmental Stories of 2010

EWG's Top 10 Good Environmental News Stories of 2010

The American Lung Association's Eleven Biggest Clean Air Events of 2010

Sustainability's Top Trends from 2010

The 10 Most Hopeful Green Business Stories of 2010 by Joel Makower at Greenbiz

Greenbiz's 20 Most Popular Stories of 2010

Sticking with a look at the year that has past, but focusing on climate change issues were the 10 Carbon Reporting Trends That Defined 2010 from Greenbiz and Grist's Top Five Stories of the Year for Climate Hawks. Did Grist capture the essence of the year with their lead in to the Climate Hawks list: Well That Sucked?

New Years wouldn't be complete without someone making some predictions (or just wishes) - and this list of lists won't disappoint.

Top 10 Trends in Sustainable Business

Five Cleantech Wishes for 2011

The Greentech Wish List for 2011

(Greenopolis sat on the fence, listing the Top 10 Environmental Success Stories together with 10 associated Future Challenges.)

There were the clean tech/green tech investment lists.

10 Clean and Green Energy Stocks for 2011 from the Alt Energ yStocks blog

Five Top Sustainable Investment Stories of 2010

The 2010 Cleantech 10 by Corporate Knights

The Cleantech Next 10 also by Corporate Knights

And then there were a few lists that defy my categories so far. Popular Mechanics got the jump on this whole end of year lists thing by publishing their Debunking the Top 10 Energy Myths back in July of last year. Triple Pundit put together And The Top Ten Most "Sustainable" CEO's Are... - and no surprise here Yvon Chouinard takes first prize.

And last but certainly not least is what was perhaps the most interesting list, put together by Mother Jones staffers baring their souls and presenting their 10 Green New Year's Resolutions. How can you not root for Emma L. when she tells us she's committing to:

Actually composting the veggies that melt into mush in the bottom of the veggie drawer instead of holding the bag by one corner and putting it in the trash. There is something about the grossness factor that just makes it hard to scrape them out of the bag...I compost everything else I should!

Enjoy!