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What is a clean technology? The Clean Technology 2009 conference in Houston is one of the most all-encompassing technology events that  I’ve attended.  I concentrated primarily on the presentations and companies related to renewable energy, learning more about marine power, tidal energy, solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal, energy efficiency and green roofs, and even a little about waste stream reuse.

It was a great opportunity learn about innovation in the energy world and weigh some of the pros and cons of our portfolio of energy options.  I was a little surprised by the number of references to wind power from other renewable energy producers, though.  I pointed out to a few attendees during discussions- sure, wind is getting a lot of attention, but the big technology we all need to compete with is still fossil fuel.  Maybe utility scale wind power has jumped the shark in the world of renewables, no longer struggling for attention in the same manner as some of the other technologies.  But let’s not all compete for the same 2%-6% of energy production in the US; we need to think bigger! 

I was surprised not to hear hear from anyone on the floor about nuclear, with all the recent dialog about nuclear power as a cleaner technology.  But maybe the difference is that many of the attendees are small companies and start-ups interested in funding.  Nuclear doesn’t take that route; it hasn’t been achievable for the average entrepreneur…Or for the average major corporation in America, recently.

I didn’t attend the clean coal presentation, and the booth remained unmanned during my tours of the exhibition floor.  But one attendee that promoted a technology for PCB removal summed up my thoughts of some of the technologies present: “The Cleanest form of…”  I had to ask the gentleman working that booth: “So as far as PCB removal goes, you’re the cleanest…but how clean is it?”  I’ll admit, the technology sounded pretty good, though not sure it could scale enough to clean up GE’s years of polluting the Hudson river.

It is a good goal, though, for all technologies: To be the cleanest, on a pretty dirty planet.  Let’s all keep this goal in the forefront.

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Chicago will host the AWEA WindPower 2009 Conference and Exhibition, with representatives flying in from around the world to attend.

So it’s time to welcome the Spring, attend some lectures, make some deals, and help bring the world to a cleaner future.

Last year at the AWEA conference I wrote about many companies evaluating a greener future.  I met my own current employer in Wind Power at that Houston conference. 

In spite of the downturns in the market, I still see so much growth in my new industry.  Maybe we can bring about an economic recovery through cleaner technologies and further innovation.  We can only try.

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I’ve visited a couple of different college campuses recently, recruiting entry level engineers.  At a recent campus visit, I was impressed at the environmental credentials of many of the interviewees.  Candidate after candidate described his or her environmental projects, experiences installing residential wind turbines or solar panels, and on and on.  One student had completed multiple internships measuring local air quality for government projects.  I got the feeling during the interview that he expected me to have more answers.  He asked me what I thought about the haze hanging over the state, the way local coal plants were allowed to pollute because the local governments were so concerned over job loss if the plants left, the horrors of mountaintop mining.  He would pause and stare at me, waiting for me to provide a solution, perhaps.

About half way through the interview, I started to ask him if he had spoken with the woman interviewing in the room next to us.  She worked on the air quality monitors in coal plants. What a perfect fit, in my mind.  Take a person who cares about the pollution coming out of coal plants, and set that guy to work putting better filters in place, injecting carbon waste into the ground, working on more responsible processes and practices that the rest of us haven’t thought of yet.  Maybe he’s someone who could make clean coal happen, at least of the consumption side, if not on the processing site (but stop mountaintop mining anyway!)

I don’t know if he’ll follow through on it, but I did get him an interview with the woman in the room next to me, and he came back later and spoke with her.  So for everyone else, let’s move away from coal. For those with the right knowledge base and idealism, please clean up that fossil fuel process, while we work on getting alternative energy replacements in place.

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A few weeks ago I was working from the site building at a customer’s wind farm.  A man came to the door and asked for the Site Manager, by name.  He had been told to come talk with the Site Manager about getting a job; as I looked over at him, I noticed he was dressed in work clothes and had worn through the leather toes of his steel-toe boots.  This man had shown up hoping for work, not for an interview.

Local jobs, for rural towns. We say the words, but I remember what it means each time I visit a wind farm.  When I was new in my current job, I argued for centralizing our supply of fork-lifts. Surely we could cuts costs, leverage our negotiating power and gain efficiencies by making one umbrella agreement for all of our farms with one vendor.  For all of my planning, a coworker cut me off by mentioning that he thought we were trying to support local businesses in these small towns by using local equipment, even if it wasn’t always quite as cheap.  Local jobs, in rural towns.

If I can keep more men at home in these small towns, I’ll sacrifice some of the gains from a cheaper, centralized energy source.  I’ve talked with some of our employees that came over from the fossil-fuel sector.  They’ve told me they made a lot more money when working on the off-shore rigs, or they made more money when working on drilling platforms overseas.  But they want to be near their families.  They want to go back to the small towns they came from.  They’re proud of using local resources for their energy needs. Local jobs, for rural people.

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At a dinner with my senior managers last fall, we were discussing one of my manager’s former jobs working on generators for nuclear plants. He mentioned traveling to some of the plants, and how there was great fishing in the coolant water ponds downstream from the plants.  I asked if the fish in those ponds had three eyes.  He stared at me for a minute, started laughing and called me a tree hugger.  I started laughing, too, and realized we had both thought the other was joking. 

Nuclear power has bad PR; whether US politicians can change the culture of fear may be more debatable than whether nuclear is the right power solution for tomorrow.

In my engineering classes in school, I studied nuclear power, and how our US plants are designed completely differently than Chernobyl.  Several of my friends went into the Navy nuclear program, and many of my coworkers now in wind power came from a nuclear background.  Even with my knowledge, or maybe because of it, I still think of nuclear as a step away from dangerous.  My Navy friends have summed it up for me- sure it’s cool technology, but without the military chain of command in charge, is it safe to have civilians handling this power?

As we debate the best path forward for US energy needs, I can’t think of another type of energy that has as much bad international press coverage.  I regularly see articles about whether Iran and North Korea have weapons grade nuclear fuel.  Maybe the articles are wrong to suppose the weapons grade fuel is so similar to power grade fuel, but how can a single industry overcome this constant media barrage about the possible dangers?  Sometimes I wonder if the same argument for nuclear power- that so much power can be generated from such a small bit of fuel, is the worst one for this industry: so much power is contained in such a small bit of fuel.

Maybe I’m showing my age as a Gen-X child of the 80s, watching movies about Red Dawn and worrying about the Soviet Union and all of their nuclear missiles pointed at the US.  Surely the face of war has changed to a much lower tech worry, with men using our own planes to attack our own buildings.  That said, do any of us wonder about the controls around those nuclear plants that some in our government want to build at the end of every main street?

What can a wind turbine do to us?  Can an over-speed condition fling a blade into a cow?  Can a solar panel fall through our roof and crush us?  Or fly off in a tornado and land in Oz? Less power per unit, less risk for control.  Sometimes the drawback is the the benefit, too. Too often we argue technical solutions from an analytical standpoint; I don’t think this nuclear energy solution can restart in the US without deep consideration of the emotional reaction. 

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Around wind turbines, farm and ranch life continues. On my first trip to one customer’s farm last year, the site manager took me on a tour. He made sure to bring me by turbine number 18, because, as he told me, the rancher’s horses always congregate under that wind turbine, no one really knew why.  It was a beautiful sight- the horses shuffled away as we drove up the dirt road, but then returned and sniffled at us curiously as we walked around the turbine.

I’ve recently heard wind power referred to as “energy sprawl:’ that was a new term for me.  Certainly these utility scale wind farms are being erected in some areas where the previous activities were primarily agricultural.  But these agricultural areas weren’t untouched virgin landscapes before the wind turbines arrived; cattle ranching and farming are also challenging to manage in an environmentally respectful manner.  The benefit that I’m trying to maintain with the wind farms is allowing the previous land uses to continue while we’re also taking advantage of the never-ending natural wind resources.

The not-in-my-backyard mindset is an issue for all types for energy production.  Personally I’d cringe to see a fossil-fuel or nuclear plant erected within view of my own home.  And I would try to move before the plant erection began.  But the wind turbines don’t raise that same fear of loss of land value that I’ve seen so far.  In fact, people seem to associate them with raised land values in west Texas; land that had primarily agricultural use can now extract even more value, and attract the youth of small towns to stay in the area, with additional outdoor jobs and technical training.

At another wind farm, I had to bring in a crane for some turbine maintenance.  We had to schedule closely with the land-owner when he would allow a maintenance window, because he used the ground around and under the turbines for crops.  First harvest the crops, then work on the turbine.

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Yesterday I spent a while on the phone with a friend whose telecom employer recently declared bankruptcy.  My friend just accepted another job within that same company that required her to travel a lot more, away from her small children.  She’s a positive person, and continued to say positive things about the company, how she didn’t think she could find another position that let her work from home so frequently, the new certifications she was getting seemed to position her for other jobs, etc.  One thing I asked her, but she talked around, was whether she really felt interested in her product lines and industry.  She plans to spend another 18 months in her new job until her employer is past this bankruptcy mess, before finding another job that requires less travel.  I don’t know why her company should recover, but she’s holding onto the belief that business goes on, whether or not a market exists for the product lines.

We have created a nation of people who like their benefits, lifestyle, seniority and other such peripheral aspects of their jobs, but they don’t really seem to care about the business itself.  How else can we explain the thousands of people who work for Frito-Lay and Coca Cola- are employees at those companies because of their love of bringing highly preserved salty snacks and fizzy drinks to the needy world? Or what reason do people give for spending years of their life working on financial products on Wall Street that no one can understand- does the money created from and lost into thin air generate cancer research funding in some hidden back office? 

Or are we a nation of people who love a lifestyle and don’t really care about the vehicles that bring us to that lifestyle? At a job fair last week, recruiting for wind power jobs, I stood near a woman recruiting for oil and gas positions. We didn’t talk very much, but at one point she turned to me and said, “You know, sometimes I feel a little guilty about what I do…” I nodded and told her to listen to her little voice.

We can drown out our little voices with anti-depressants, alcohol, shopping sprees and various hobbies, but as a nation, we are overdue for re-evaluation.  A deep “recession” could be the best thing we’ve seen for decades.  A possible depression can be just the breath of fresh air our planet needs.  Sure it hurts, and I don’t want to lose my house either, but it won’t destroy me to share a home with my parents or in-laws either. Or share a car, carpool more, walk to get groceries, and dress my kids in hand-me-downs. 

This is our opportunity to let some business fail and rebuild a better market structure.  We need to build better infrastructure for travel, communications and energy. It’s time to clean up the mess from decades of irresponsible business practices, and create jobs in the practice of cleaning and improving again. Let’s embrace this opportunity and come out better, instead of coming out the same, but poorer, desperate, and creating products no one wants or needs.  Imagine how powerful we could be again if we, as a nation, actually paid attention to our next generation’s tomorrow, in addition to our today.

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Texas is the nation’s leader in wind power capacity at over 16,000 MW at the end of 2007.  The subtle danger in the previous sentence is “capacity.”  The grid in Texas cannot handle the available wind power, and many of these wind farms in West Texas are being curtailed to 0 MW of production.

This is becoming even more common as more wind farms are being erected.  Instead of using an increasing source of renewable power as a replacement for energy sources related to climate change, we seem to be trying to hold the current status of power creation and use wind power as an occasional frivolous extra power source.

We need to take wind power seriously today, use it as the preferred source of energy, and create additional ways and grids to get this power to the demand centers.  The only solution to successful management of a variable power source is a smart grid.  The faster this becomes a federal and state priority, the better for our world.

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I can’t argue with our leadership’s frantic attempts to keep liquidity in the marketplace, but this $700B government bailout does feel like a socialist maneuver with a capitalist heart.  We’re borrowing from our grandkids to give money to banks to do..well, to do whatever they see fit.  Because we all trust the banks to support our economy and make the best lending decisions, right?  Trust big business, they’ll see us through…pull us out of this crisis….crap on our shoes and leave our grandkids to repay these loans from China, Russia, etc. (Make no mistake, the money our government is borrowing for this bailout will not be repaid only within America- we’re sinking deeper and deeper in debt to our trading partners, for as long as they’re willing to float us on this one.)

And after all of this borrowing is through, what are we left with? Debt.  Debt and maybe some more McMansions that won’t be abandoned after all in the distant exburb.

So why not skip the banks, or partner with the banks to enforce loaning the money to actionable improvements that will help our grandkids?  My list:

1. Utility scale renewable energy.  Why leave our grandkids with both debt and uncontrollable global warming? Invest directly in wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave-power, and anything else that can both create regional jobs and regionally sustainable power.
2. Fuel efficiency and electric cars.  At this point any bailout of the automotive industry is just more money tossed into a dying business model.  Redirect the companies so that the cars our grandkids drive will actually be able to drive without foreign oil dependency.
3. Energy efficient housing conversions.  This one can redirect all of those construction workers that built so many houses so quickly.  Lets now go back to so many quickly built homes- convert some to apartments, add insulation and solar panels, reduce household energy consumption to a defined level and plant a garden with local fruit trees.

To quote Saturday Night Live, and maybe someone else: ‘It’s all about job creation.’ Let’s create those jobs in the correct place, though; big business doesn’t tend to look long term, and it’s past time for the long term view. 

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I’m 2 months into my new job in the wind industry and loving every day.  This is the first job that I’ve ever looked forward to on the weekends; every day could make a difference.

I’m tired of the energy debate in the news; I’m tired of hearing vague assertions that alternative energy isn’t ready.  Coal and fossil fuels were rolled out as an energy source before we were ready to control the impact of their side effects on our world.  We’re still not ready for coal- go back to the drawing board!  Clean coal isn’t here yet!  I want to see innovative engineering; I want to help make world a better place to live, and I don’t want to start with the technologies that cause black lung and acid rain. Let’s jump past those. 

I realized recently that I’ve thrown myself into a T. Boone Pickens type debate- if I’m earning money from the renewable energy industry, can my opinions on the industry be trusted?  I’m no longer impartial, right? But I honestly can’t think of anywhere else to be right now.  Talk is good, but it’s time to put my salary where my mouth is and help change the world.

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“The lack of transmission has been a fundamental issue in Texas, and it’s becoming more and more of an issue elsewhere,” said Vanessa Kellogg, the Southwest regional development director for Horizon Wind Energy, which operates the Lone Star Wind Farm in West Texas and has more wind generation under development. “This is a great step in the right direction.”

Ms. Kellogg said that the project would be a boon for Texas power customers, whose electricity costs have risen in conjunction with soaring natural gas prices across the state. “There’s nothing volatile about the wind in terms of the price, because it’s free,” she said.

She told me a few more points to keep in mind, listed below, but overall I get the feeling that this package is the sign we all wanted to see that Texas is looking forward.  Change is happening, and I hope other states will follow the example set here.  Below are a few of the points Vanessa mentioned:

“Important things to note:

• S1B was rejected as “fatally flawed.” This was excellent news.
• S3 was not rejected, but rather determined not appropriate “at this time,” due to insufficient analysis
  • Ancillary services study only went to 15,000MW
  • Cost/Benefit for S3 or S4 was not studied by ERCOT
• S2 is a great step in the right direction
  • It enables investment in the industry to continue
  • Will allow for large projects to proceed
  • It is expandable to Scenario 3, per ERCOT’s recommendations.

Other points:

• As we push forward in this process, there will be time to study the larger scenarios and perhaps implement Scenario 3 (or something even larger) following the build-out of S2. And as evidenced by the two press conferences representing broad bipartisan support for a “bold” plan, there seems to be the political will to keep going.
• The transmission lines will be built to the windiest areas of the state, allowing the best wind resource (thus the cheapest wind) access to market. However, these lines will not be used exclusively by wind generators. ERCOT has an Open Access Transmission Tariff (OATT) that allows any generator to connect to the system. Therefore, these lines will transport not only wind-generated electricity, but likely solar, clean coal, natural gas, and even nuclear generation.
• All of this country’s electric transmission infrastructure is outdated. The CREZ upgrades will provide much-needed enhancements to the ERCOT grid to improve performance and enhance grid stability.
• Utilizing an abundant, clean, domestic energy resource will improve our energy security.
• Adding wind generation will put downward pressure on prices since the “fuel” is free. More natural gas should come off the margin.
• The $4 price per month is a conservative estimate, and should be more than offset by price reductions on the generation side.

All in all, this is a great step for Texas – and an unprecedented one throughout the country.”

Thank you Vanessa, and everyone involved, for working towards this sea of change! 

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T. Boone Pickens

I know he’s had an impact because my mom called me the other night and told me she had heard about the Pickens Plan on the news.  She said, “I didn’t understand everything, but it sounded pretty good.” My mom, who sees my views as overly idealistic and youthful, heard a man that she’s willing to respect talk about reducing our dependency on foreign oil and making more investments in renewable and cleaner energy.  She heard the part about him being a lifelong Republican and oilman. She heard the part about his being worth $4Bm and being 80 years old, and how he thinks this is the right thing, and he wants to put his money where his mouth is and do the right thing for the country.

My mom may or may not be representative of the baby boomer generation.  She thinks climate change is an illusion of the liberal media; she thinks coal isn’t so bad and remembers when it was delivered to her apartment building’s basement as a child; she generally doesn’t see any need for disruptive change.  But she heard T. Boone Pickens and called me, and thought he sounded pretty good.  So thank you Mr. Pickens, for making more people aware of causes and possible solutions for our nation’s energy crisis.  Whether or not your plan is perfect doesn’t matter. The conversation has begun.

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WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Friday rejected regulating greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, saying it would cause too many job losses.

In a 588-page federal notice, the Environmental Protection Agency made no finding on whether global warming poses a threat to people’s health, reversing an earlier conclusion at the insistence of the White House and officially kicking any decision on a solution to the next president and Congress.

Environmentalists criticized the move, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce worried it left open the door for mandatory reductions.

So the White House is making the EPA change their story and forcing the agency to deliberately not protect the environment.  Neither side of the issue is happy with the decision: environmentalists are worried that the false economic argument will continue to trump the environmental argument until we have no economy or environment worth saving. Utilities worry that if this administration doesn’t provide a workable template, the next administration will provide an even harsher set of restrictions.  The administration’s apparent desire to do absolutely nothing solves no problems and helps no one.

Back to the idea of this decision as some benevolent way to save jobs - which jobs are they talking about?  The automotive industry jobs that are imploding as American cars can no longer compete with more fuel-efficient foreign cars? The airline industry jobs that are quickly disappearing?  The mortgage and banking jobs that are disappearing because of vast corruption and mismanagement?  The administration seems to think that no regulation is the better path for our current economic situation, without recognizing that regulations could actually create a rush of new jobs as companies work towards compliance.

Our administration’s refusal to take action has created a problem for our utilities in a deregulated market: Those utilities that want to act to reduce emissions have a real risk of becoming uncompetitive in the market if their costs rise compared to their nearest competitors. So they all wait and hope the government forces compliance at one time.  Haven’t we learned anything from the automotive implosion?  If fuel standards had been aggressively put in place, the American automotive companies may have had temporary pain but would be more competitive today. Developing technologies to create clean and cleaner energy creates jobs; it would be nice to have some of those job created in America. Are we going to set up American utilities to also not be competitive in the world market because of a short-sighted leadership that doesn’t want to make any waves in the current, sinking status-quo?

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I just received an email from a friend who has recently testified in front of the Texas government in support of wind energy.  The email text and attachment text is below.  I’m not sure if emailing this around is the most efficient idea, but this is a good time to contact your representatives and ask them to support CREZ and wind power:

Dear Friends:

We have reached a critical juncture in the wind industry in Texas. The Public Utility Commission of Texas will make a decision in mid-July on expanding transmission (power lines) to bring more wind energy into the Texas market.    

I have been very involved in this initiative, and I have filed documents on the public record on behalf of Horizon Wind Energy about the environmental benefits of wind power (no pollution, no CO2 emissions, no water consumption) as well as the important fact that the wind is a FREE fuel source, and more wind power on our electric system will lower electricity prices for all of us.  Attached you will find a letter from Representative David Swinford that has been signed by twelve West Texas Legislators supporting this transmission initiative not just for wind, but also for other types of generation that will be able to utilize the new infrastructure as well. 

This is important to me not only professionally, but also personally. Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and increasing our fuel diversity is of critical importance as we look toward the future of Texas and of the country in terms of electricity use, environmental challenges, and energy independence. I ask that you please open the link below and sign the petition from State Representative Mike Villarreal, and forward this to EVERYONE you know in Texas.  I understand that Rep. Villarreal intends to present the petition results to the PUC TOMORROW and we hope to demonstrate to the PUC that wind power and this transmission initiative enjoys broad-based public support. This is a critical time to support the growth of the wind industry in this state, and your input will be immensely valuable.

Thank you for your time and attention to this.

Attachment text:

Commissioner

Barry

Smitherman

Commissioner Paul Hudson

Commissioner Julie Parsley

Public Utility Commission of Texas

1701 N. Congress

P.O. Box

13326

Austin, Texas

7871 1-3326

Dear Commissioners;

First, we want to thank you and your staff for the concentrated effort you have given to the CREZ process. This month marks the three year point since we passed SB 20. This deliberate process has served to educate the many stakeholders that have been involved, but we must move ahead in a significant step and proceed to the construction phase. We appreciate your dedication to the people of Texas in thoughtfully evaluating the infrastructure options for meeting our energy future.

Certainly, you have determined the great wind resource we have in Texas and have validated that the West Texas, Panhandle, and South Plains regions of the state can provide world class wind resources that can produce abundant clean, renewable energy for the State for many years to come.

We write today to encourage you to stay the course, be bold, and make the decisions that best serve the people of Texas. Many Texans are very concerned about high energy prices that result from the rapidly increasing cost of oil and natural gas. We must find ways to provide additional energy supplies that are affordable. The cost of transmission lines have doubled since we saw the first estimates. Unless you have inside knowledge showing the cost of copper, steel, and concrete will be going down soon, we maintain that the longer we wait, the more expensive these lines and fuel costs will become. These lines we ask you to support are not just for wind, At least three communities in our areas have plans for coal plants. We have some folks that are considering gas plants and others solar plants. While your discussion is currently about wind transmission lines, these in reality are energy lines. We can tell you that putting coal plants next to the state’s metro areas compounds the serious air quality problems that now exist. All regions of the state are affected by the cost to comply with our state air quality programs.

As we have studied this issue and as we travel our districts, there is no doubt that our constituents want to work with you, the wind companies, and other energy providers for economic reasons as well as being good neighbors to the rest of the state because we can supply huge amounts of energy. This is evident by looking at the map that is attached that identifies communities that have passed resolutions. There are over 170 total resolutions asking you to approve a robust transmission system and pledging you their help in location these lines.

As a group that has worked with difficult issues for many years, we assure you it is rare to find this level of widespread passion for any issue.

Thank you again for the valuable contributions you are making to the people of our region and throughout the state. Your service to Texas is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

David Swinford, State Representative, District 87

Warren Chisum, State Representative, District 88

John Smithee, State Representative, District 86

Delwin Jones, State Representative, District 83

Carl Isett, State Representative, District 84

Rick Hardcastle, State Representative, District 68

Joe Heflin, State Representative, District 85

Buddy West, State Representative, District 81

Drew Darby, State Representative, District 72

Robert Duncan, State Senator, District 30

Susan King, State Representative, District 71,

Kel Seliger, State Senator, District 31

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Fast Company

“The wind is meant to sweeten the deal,” says Representative Chisum. “The big money for Pickens is in the water.”

My primary discomfort with both deals is that Pickens’ discusses the wind and water projects as necessary to meet future demand increases for a city like Dallas.  I don’t want to support an already wasteful city with more sources on top of the currently wasted energy and water.  I want those wind turbines in the panhandle to start supporting Dallas so we can remove some of our dependency on coal.  We’re already warned not to go outside most summer days in Dallas because the air quality is so bad; if this wind farm can help, it’s a good idea.  If we still cannot go outside but have more energy available, well, so what.

The water deal is the flip side of the sustainability argument.  I’ve written about the Texas “Rules of Capture” before, and I still find it distasteful.  Removing nonrenewable groundwater from an arid part of the state and shipping it into Dallas to support big city water usage just feels to me like giving a pile of endangered animal burgers to a 500 pound man because he says he’s still hungry.  Enough.  Yesterday morning I passed two flooded streets on my short commute to work.  It wasn’t raining, those two different streets were flooded by broken sprinkler heads.  We need to work on stopping the waste before depleting a nonrenewable feature of the state.

For both the wind and water projects, adding more supply to an already wasteful city isn’t the optimal solution.  I like a two pronged approach for the wind project: reduce consumption in Dallas while bringing renewable resources online.  For the water, I’m afraid too much of the valuable resource will end up in our storm drains.  Either way that Texas decides on the projects, this should be quite a debate.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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