I pose this question with no intention of answering it.
Rather, the question is a springboard for addressing a situation that many in the sustainability community have to face: curiosity, doubt, cynicism, and often-times outright hostility about the topic of man-made Global Warming. Corporate sustainability is not limited to questions of climate. However, there is no other aspect in the field that inflames passions so greatly (on both sides of the debate)--and therefore no issue that potentially can impede your successful execution of a corporate sustainability program. The point of this post is merely to give you both a strategy and some tactics for overcoming this particular objection.
As a sustainability professional, one of your principal job requirements is salesmanship: you are asking a lot of very busy people to do things very differently; doing so will benefit them, but that doesn't mean that they see that end-game when you first walk through their office doors. And because Global Warming is such a radioactive topic, the likelihood of deep-seated objection increases greatly. The Japanese martial art of Aikido emphasizes non-violent resolution of conflict, often by pre-empting the attack before it can gather momentum--a strategy that works well when you enter the ring of Global Warming debate. I hope that the following approach enables you to side-step an unwinnable debate about an un-knowable topic, while advancing toward your goals of building internal partnerships that will achieve sustainability goals.
I have found that the best approach to what I will term "Global Warming Deniers" is preemptive action. I try to dispense of objections before they can even be raised. This means introducing the topic early and proactively, and framing it in a non-threatening way. In all formal presentations and in many less-than-formal discussions, my goal is to de-fuse the Global Warming dynamite before the fuse even ignites. My standard opening gambit goes something like this:
"Is Global Warming real? Who knows. And more importantly, who cares? Because the (political/management/regulatory/market) concensus is that Global Warming is real, dangerous and already underway. So unless you are (US President/company CEO/agency director/market maker), what you and I believe, or what we think we can prove doesn't matter. The context in which you do your job must be that Global Warming is real--because the rulemakers have deemed it so."
For some people, this is enough, and the subject is put to bed. For many others, however, this is just the opening they've been waiting for. If you don't control the discussion, you may be in for a protracted and thorny interchange that bears only passing resemblance to productive dialog. Sadly, Global Warming incites nearly religious fervor, and certain opponents demand the opportunity to advance their dogma. For example, I was recently told: "You have to admit that the emails [day-lighted leading up to the Copenhagen summit] prove that Global Warming is a hoax." Even if I believe that assertion (I believe the emails raise additional questions about the causes of current Climate Change, but that they prove nothing about the actual inter-relationship of man and climate), there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO constructive result that can emerge from engaging in a dialog on the subject.
In such instances, I try to move quickly beyond the the environmental impact of corporate sustainability, and onto its potential for reducing costs and increasing profits. That dialog goes something like this:
Global Warming Denier: "Well, I don't believe in Global Warming, and therefore, I don't see any reason to support any program that will reduce our carbon footprint."
Me: "Okay, so I'll concede for the sake of this discussion that reducing your company's carbon footprint won't make any difference related to global temperature. But what if I told you it will increase your company/business unit's profitability?"
Usually, this tactic yeilds the "tell-me-more" response. But I believe that its success depends on two pre-requisites. First, you must shift the discussion out of the realm of climate dogma and back to business basics: what if that which I am describing can make good business sense? This approach can rapidly migrate a person from global warming denier to curious capitalist. But I also think it is crucial to frame this issue as a question. This has a dual effect: it takes the counter-party out of the pulpit of his expertise, and shifts the dialog to an arena where you are--at least between the two of you--the expert. It therefore gives you control of both the direction and the tenor of the conversation. What was momentarily contentious can swiftly become instructive. Finally, it gives you credibility in the eyes of the counter-party: since you are demonstrating a willingness to supplicate at the Temple of Almighty Profit, you can't really be a total lefty-loony bugs-and-bunnies eco-nut.
The majority of people in business are coldly profit-driven. By migrating sustainability discussions into constructive dialog focused on balance sheets and P&L performance, you will have greater success in building internal partnerships and advancing your sustainability mandate. Internal stakeholders, whether "global warming deniers" or not, who see the business sense of reducing material inputs and lowering costs associated with waste stream remediation, become valuable allies. Over time, such recruiting is your central mission. The enterprise that unifies the most employees under the banner of sustainability--whether to curtail Global Warming or simply to enhance profitability--is the one that will see the greatest success.
Full disclosure: On balance, I believe the evidence supports the thesis that anthropogenic forces account for a rise of atmospheric carbon levels from a pre-industrial revolution average levels of 280 ppm to current readings around 385 ppm. But those findings do not prove causation. As an advocate of the Precautionary Principle, I therefore am also a strong proponent of all reasonable efforts to curtail human-driven GHG emissions, especially in concert with a reduction in industrial dependence on fossil fuels.
Put more simply: Do I believe that Global Warming is real? Who knows. and who cares: the evidence suggests it is, and it would be a really bad idea to proceed down a business-as-usual path that results in irrevocable damage to our people and our planet.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Sustainability in practice: Doing. With less.
In an earlier post, I noted that one of the central pre-requisites of embedding sustainability in the enterprise (in addition to it being a process and not a moment; more on that later) is a cultural shift. This post deals with the rationale that underlies the need for cultural migration away from heavy dependence on materials inputs and low-cost access to waste sinks, to consumption minimalization.
Remember, sustainability only succeeds when it becomes a holistic, corporate strategy—not an add-on, an after-thought or an accommodation such as black-letter compliance with environmental regulation. For any transformative strategy to succeed, it must be embraced throughout the enterprise; if it is not, it simply becomes a stuck-in-the-mud mantra, or—worse yet—a failed slogan.
Under the rubric of Environmental Sustainability, a cultural shift is both very simple, and very profound. It is simple, because it complements the core directive of any enterprise: profit-making. It is profound, because it requires the rejection of a long-standing bias that says that environmental protection can only be a cost. But viewed through a different lens—that of efficiency, of getting the same unit of output with lower levels of constituent inputs—brings these two (falsely) disparate concepts together. Why? Because using fewer inputs means spending less on input materials—and it also means generating fewer non-productive outputs. Another name for outputs? Waste. Fewer outputs means less waste to be treated, remediated, stored, landfilled or offset. Each of those waste stream management activities costs money. So yielding the same unit of productive output from fewer inputs pays a double dividend: lower materials costs; lower waste stream management costs. And the environmental benefit is also two fold: fewer input materials means less extraction (mining/harvesting/refining/processing--all of which have attendant waste streams and carbon output from energy usage); less waste means fewer demands on the “eco-assets” of the planet as a waste sink. The enterprise saves money that flows directly to the bottom line; the environment is treated more gently on both ends of the production cycle. Profits rise; environmental impacts fall; the enterprise enters a sustainable production cycle
But back to the idea of a cultural shift for moment—those are the component parts, but it is actually a much simpler undertaking. Collectively, the enterprise stops thinking exclusively in terms of maximizing profit, and elevates the comfortable and constructive interplay of the so-called “triple bottom line” to priority status. Consciously, the decision makers recoginize that long-term profit for the enterprise depends on the long-term health of the planet. To achieve this balance, the enterprise needs to take less and more importantly dispose of less into the various common waste sinks (air, water, land) that have been so inefficiently exploited in the past (a review of the classic essay by Hardin, "the Tragedy of the Commons" is helpful...http://dieoff.org/page95.htm).
But a funny thing happens on the way to the landfill: people realize that short-term profit can be captured from sustainability activities, that what was once viewed as a cost center is actually a profit driver: sustainability is an engine for value creation in the enterprise.
Finally, it is absolutely essential to manage expectations (both your own and that of the C-level) about the timeline for shifting internal perceptions and behaviors. In this way, embedding sustainability in the enterprise is a process. It won't occur at the end of the metaphorical bayonet point of a corporate mandate. Rather, it occurs gradually, as your team deploys a planned, coordinated communications effort aimed at first eductating employees, and then rewarding them for involvement in the program's cross-enterprise success.
As a result, it is critical to up-ramp your Sustainability program gradually; you need to ensure success with early initiatives in order to develop credibility with rank and file employees and to demonstrate to management that a properly conceived and executed sustainability program can yield measurable activities that translate to waste reduction and further to bottom line profit. But more on that in a future post, when I will outline the essential steps for triggering such a shift, through Marketing the Environmental Sustainability Program to Internal Stakeholders.
Remember, sustainability only succeeds when it becomes a holistic, corporate strategy—not an add-on, an after-thought or an accommodation such as black-letter compliance with environmental regulation. For any transformative strategy to succeed, it must be embraced throughout the enterprise; if it is not, it simply becomes a stuck-in-the-mud mantra, or—worse yet—a failed slogan.
Under the rubric of Environmental Sustainability, a cultural shift is both very simple, and very profound. It is simple, because it complements the core directive of any enterprise: profit-making. It is profound, because it requires the rejection of a long-standing bias that says that environmental protection can only be a cost. But viewed through a different lens—that of efficiency, of getting the same unit of output with lower levels of constituent inputs—brings these two (falsely) disparate concepts together. Why? Because using fewer inputs means spending less on input materials—and it also means generating fewer non-productive outputs. Another name for outputs? Waste. Fewer outputs means less waste to be treated, remediated, stored, landfilled or offset. Each of those waste stream management activities costs money. So yielding the same unit of productive output from fewer inputs pays a double dividend: lower materials costs; lower waste stream management costs. And the environmental benefit is also two fold: fewer input materials means less extraction (mining/harvesting/refining/processing--all of which have attendant waste streams and carbon output from energy usage); less waste means fewer demands on the “eco-assets” of the planet as a waste sink. The enterprise saves money that flows directly to the bottom line; the environment is treated more gently on both ends of the production cycle. Profits rise; environmental impacts fall; the enterprise enters a sustainable production cycle
But back to the idea of a cultural shift for moment—those are the component parts, but it is actually a much simpler undertaking. Collectively, the enterprise stops thinking exclusively in terms of maximizing profit, and elevates the comfortable and constructive interplay of the so-called “triple bottom line” to priority status. Consciously, the decision makers recoginize that long-term profit for the enterprise depends on the long-term health of the planet. To achieve this balance, the enterprise needs to take less and more importantly dispose of less into the various common waste sinks (air, water, land) that have been so inefficiently exploited in the past (a review of the classic essay by Hardin, "the Tragedy of the Commons" is helpful...http://dieoff.org/page95.htm).
But a funny thing happens on the way to the landfill: people realize that short-term profit can be captured from sustainability activities, that what was once viewed as a cost center is actually a profit driver: sustainability is an engine for value creation in the enterprise.
Finally, it is absolutely essential to manage expectations (both your own and that of the C-level) about the timeline for shifting internal perceptions and behaviors. In this way, embedding sustainability in the enterprise is a process. It won't occur at the end of the metaphorical bayonet point of a corporate mandate. Rather, it occurs gradually, as your team deploys a planned, coordinated communications effort aimed at first eductating employees, and then rewarding them for involvement in the program's cross-enterprise success.
As a result, it is critical to up-ramp your Sustainability program gradually; you need to ensure success with early initiatives in order to develop credibility with rank and file employees and to demonstrate to management that a properly conceived and executed sustainability program can yield measurable activities that translate to waste reduction and further to bottom line profit. But more on that in a future post, when I will outline the essential steps for triggering such a shift, through Marketing the Environmental Sustainability Program to Internal Stakeholders.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Energy Use: The Devil Inside
In several other posts, I've noted that energy is the both the Holy Grail and the Gordian Knot of environmental sustainability. In the Pandora's box of environmental threats, anthropogenic climate change--aka, Global Warming--is the greatest scourge: on its own, it has the potential to destroy human civilization as it currently exists. The corresponding loss of life, destruction of property and decimation of productive land and industrial capacity renders questions of clean air, clean water, arable land and food supplies almost totally irrelevant. As a result, solving the Environmental Energy Crisis (not a shortage of fuel sources, but a shortage of the right type of fuel sources) lies at the center of the global need to migrate human activity to a sustainable model.
Crusaders sought the Holy Grail because it supposedly possessed mystical powers of salvation. In this context, clean, zero-carbon energy is an industrial Holy Grail: it enables "afterlife" for modern industrial society, enabling us to live beyond our current energy accomodations, which appear to have a termination point somewhere around 550 PPM of atmospheric carbon.
But like the Holy Grail, zero-carbon energy is elusive. In this respect, it is the Global Warming Gordian Knot: the bonds of energy consumption patterns, structural bias toward existing fuels and technologies, system realiability, economic considerations, backward compatibility with installed transportation and distribution infrastructure and--ironically--environmental regulation have tightly lashed the helm of the contemporary economy on a collision course with Fate. Without a broad-based, international migration away from fossil-instensive feedstocks, the planet--and the civilizations, economies and capitalist systems it supports appear posed to collapse.
Energy in the Enterprise
There is a on-going (and some would argue, terminal) debate about what the solution to Global warming should "look like." Should it be a multi-lateral, internationally negotiated governmental fix? Or should it be left to markets to resolve? For sustainability officers in the enterprise, this debate is immaterial, because you already have a strategic mandate outside of any broader systemic response. Beyond questions of environmental sustainabilility, your enterprise embraces the profit potential and competitive advantage of sustainability practices and is moving forward. As you design your program, energy usage is thus a key component in achieving your goals.
In an ideal scenario, the enterprise will become a zero-net emitter of greenhouse gases resulting from fossil fuel driven energy systems. Reaching a zero-emissions standard is a two-step process:
1. Minimize useage of GHG-emitting energy and system inputs that have high levels of "embedded" energy;
2. "Offset" that energy usage which cannot be eliminated from the production chain
In the first case, actual implementation will depend largely on the type of business you are running. Manufacturers may need to install higher efficiency pumps and motors, utilize "load-building" software that optmizes transportation loads and reduces fuel waste, and install oversite controls in the supply chain; Services companies may simply build-out renewable (solar; micro-wind) on-site to diminish reliance on fossil-driven grid energy, retro-fit buildings to improve on-site efficiency, and optimize business travel for the sales force.
After the enterprise has done everything it can to wring energy waste out of its operational processes, there will still activities that generate carbon. To achieve a goal of zero-net emissions, the enterprise must then engage in offset activities--the purchase of renewable energy credits, and forest offset products are leading candidates for this process. These are available either through commercial brokerage services, or through bilateral contracts with originating project developers. In either case, the enterprise must be cautious, ensuring that the products it buys are real, additional, verifiable and permanent. If a product fails that four-prong test, the enterprise cannot reliably assert that its emissions activities have genuinely been negated.
The question often arises: if Sustainability is supposed to flow profit through to my bottom line, why am I incurring a hard cost in the form of offset purchases? This is both a fair and important question: remember, sustainability is a viable strategy only if it does not raise operating costs (and preferable reduces them). So reconciling incremental costs with your sustainability program is essential to success. The first answer to the question is that reduction in energy costs will at least partially cover the cost of offset purchases. The firm realizes hard-dollar savings from reduced energy use, which then offsets the cost of offsets.
The second answer is more subjective, because it depends largely on the industry and type of business you are managing and therefore your needs for energy inputs and thus your opportunities for reduced usage and increased efficiency will vary. Generally speaking, overall savings from increased efficiency and lower costs of both energy inputs and waste management remediation (such as purchasing allowances for the emissions of SOX, NOX and/or particulate matter) counter offset costs and yield hard dollar savings. (Note: this phenomenom will become increasingly important in jurisdictions that implement some sort of GHG control, such as either a cap and trade system or an emissions tax. In such a case, those firms that have seen anticipated government controls and prepared for them realize immediate benefit in the form of compliance costs never expended. Proper planning in the name of enviromental sustainability yields "preventative profit" instead of requiring expensive compliance payments.
Finally, it is worth noting that a willingness by your firm to purchase offsets is a powerful driver toward reducing GHG emissions from energy consumption. Obviously, the less energy used, the lower the emission load that needs to be offset. So there is a positive feedback loop: as the enterprise seeks to reduce its liability for offsets, it innovates in its core business activities--driving down offset costs certainly; but also further reducing energy needs and thus front-end energy costs. As a result, Environmental Sustainabilty has mutually reinforcing forces that move more dollars into the profit column.
Crusaders sought the Holy Grail because it supposedly possessed mystical powers of salvation. In this context, clean, zero-carbon energy is an industrial Holy Grail: it enables "afterlife" for modern industrial society, enabling us to live beyond our current energy accomodations, which appear to have a termination point somewhere around 550 PPM of atmospheric carbon.
But like the Holy Grail, zero-carbon energy is elusive. In this respect, it is the Global Warming Gordian Knot: the bonds of energy consumption patterns, structural bias toward existing fuels and technologies, system realiability, economic considerations, backward compatibility with installed transportation and distribution infrastructure and--ironically--environmental regulation have tightly lashed the helm of the contemporary economy on a collision course with Fate. Without a broad-based, international migration away from fossil-instensive feedstocks, the planet--and the civilizations, economies and capitalist systems it supports appear posed to collapse.
Energy in the Enterprise
There is a on-going (and some would argue, terminal) debate about what the solution to Global warming should "look like." Should it be a multi-lateral, internationally negotiated governmental fix? Or should it be left to markets to resolve? For sustainability officers in the enterprise, this debate is immaterial, because you already have a strategic mandate outside of any broader systemic response. Beyond questions of environmental sustainabilility, your enterprise embraces the profit potential and competitive advantage of sustainability practices and is moving forward. As you design your program, energy usage is thus a key component in achieving your goals.
In an ideal scenario, the enterprise will become a zero-net emitter of greenhouse gases resulting from fossil fuel driven energy systems. Reaching a zero-emissions standard is a two-step process:
1. Minimize useage of GHG-emitting energy and system inputs that have high levels of "embedded" energy;
2. "Offset" that energy usage which cannot be eliminated from the production chain
In the first case, actual implementation will depend largely on the type of business you are running. Manufacturers may need to install higher efficiency pumps and motors, utilize "load-building" software that optmizes transportation loads and reduces fuel waste, and install oversite controls in the supply chain; Services companies may simply build-out renewable (solar; micro-wind) on-site to diminish reliance on fossil-driven grid energy, retro-fit buildings to improve on-site efficiency, and optimize business travel for the sales force.
After the enterprise has done everything it can to wring energy waste out of its operational processes, there will still activities that generate carbon. To achieve a goal of zero-net emissions, the enterprise must then engage in offset activities--the purchase of renewable energy credits, and forest offset products are leading candidates for this process. These are available either through commercial brokerage services, or through bilateral contracts with originating project developers. In either case, the enterprise must be cautious, ensuring that the products it buys are real, additional, verifiable and permanent. If a product fails that four-prong test, the enterprise cannot reliably assert that its emissions activities have genuinely been negated.
The question often arises: if Sustainability is supposed to flow profit through to my bottom line, why am I incurring a hard cost in the form of offset purchases? This is both a fair and important question: remember, sustainability is a viable strategy only if it does not raise operating costs (and preferable reduces them). So reconciling incremental costs with your sustainability program is essential to success. The first answer to the question is that reduction in energy costs will at least partially cover the cost of offset purchases. The firm realizes hard-dollar savings from reduced energy use, which then offsets the cost of offsets.
The second answer is more subjective, because it depends largely on the industry and type of business you are managing and therefore your needs for energy inputs and thus your opportunities for reduced usage and increased efficiency will vary. Generally speaking, overall savings from increased efficiency and lower costs of both energy inputs and waste management remediation (such as purchasing allowances for the emissions of SOX, NOX and/or particulate matter) counter offset costs and yield hard dollar savings. (Note: this phenomenom will become increasingly important in jurisdictions that implement some sort of GHG control, such as either a cap and trade system or an emissions tax. In such a case, those firms that have seen anticipated government controls and prepared for them realize immediate benefit in the form of compliance costs never expended. Proper planning in the name of enviromental sustainability yields "preventative profit" instead of requiring expensive compliance payments.
Finally, it is worth noting that a willingness by your firm to purchase offsets is a powerful driver toward reducing GHG emissions from energy consumption. Obviously, the less energy used, the lower the emission load that needs to be offset. So there is a positive feedback loop: as the enterprise seeks to reduce its liability for offsets, it innovates in its core business activities--driving down offset costs certainly; but also further reducing energy needs and thus front-end energy costs. As a result, Environmental Sustainabilty has mutually reinforcing forces that move more dollars into the profit column.
Friday, November 1, 2013
New Nukes: The Rise of Thorium
In the context of Global Warming and climate change, the attraction of nuclear power has re-emerged among serious energy policy discussions after a 30-year hibernation. Three Mile Island (TMI) and later Chernobyl badly chilled tolerance for "nukes", and the broader zeitgeist surrounding nuclear decommissioning in the wake of the Cold War cooled possbilities even further. Despite well known cost considerations (read: over-runs), permitting challenges, construction delays and rampant NIMBYism, nuclear power is now receiving renewed consideration: it has the potential to provide vast amounts of electricity with comparative minor greenhouse gas emissions, especially with the popular re-emergence of an alternate fuel source, Thorium. As a result, certain traditional opponents of nuclear power are experiencing a sort of philosophical glasnost moment, and even environmental activists--long the entrenched skirmish line against nukes--are opting for a second look. But challenges remain.
Electricity--cheap, reliable and clean. Pick two. In corporate project management, clients often seek a trifecta of results: a high quality work product, a quick delivery and a low budget. Corporate project managers have an axiom when responding to such requests: "You can have it good, fast or cheap. Pick two."
A similar cost-benefit trade-off tightens the turnbuckle of tension between global warming and industrial-scale electricity production. Society can have it cheap (conventional fossil fuel), reliable (the lights come on every time we want them), and clean (low-carbon intensity, with side benefit or reduced "conventional" pollutants). But it has not, at least to date, been plausible to have all three.
For the most part, utility scale generators have generally opted for cheap and reliable. This trade-off has had relatively minor environmental ramifications--acid rain, particulate matter emissions, localized extraction impacts (think coal tailing ponds and Appalachian-style "mountain-topping"). The spectre of anthorpogenic global warming, however, has changed the calculus, as policy makers and electricity entreprenuers alike have aggressively sought out alternate and ideally magic-bullet energy sources. The message has been that the clock is ticking, and irreversible climate change lurks around a not-too-distant bend on humanity's timeline. Things are urgent, the argument goes, and a solution must be found now.
Along Comes Thorium
And a funny thing happened on the road to climate catastrophe: the once-great environmental threat from energy sector suddenly seems like a potential savior. Not only is nuclear power getting a second look, but proponents are dusting off a technology from the second generation of nuclear reactor development and enabling a "new" type of utility-scale nuclear power. Recent fanfare surrounding thorium-based reactors, however, suggests that a parallax shift in how we address the energy equation may be at hand. Thorium reactors resolve several of the problems that bedevil nuclear power on a global scale:
1. Sourcing and fuel conversion. Thorium is both naturally more abundant than uranium and enrichment techniques are easier, effectively making thorium even more "plentiful" than uranium.
2. energy density. Thorium contains up to 200X the energy of uranium1.
3. weaponization. Enriched thorium--as well as its by-products--are unsuitable for both weapons-grade and "dirty bomb" development.
4. waste remediation. A thorium reactor can actually "burn" plutonium, eliminating it from the waste--as well as the weapon--stream).
5. Reliance on the Imperium. Almost 90% of known reserves are concentrated in countries that are both politically stable and economically partnered with the United States--which itself holds a 15% of proven resources.
As an added benefit, thorium reactors can be micro-sized to operate at load centers--thereby reducing expensive transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure.
The current accomodation for most of the industrialized world--France, certain parts of Scandanavia and Spain notwithstanding--is fossil intensive. The commercial grid depends on extensive and complex (T&D) systems that link central power stations to load centers such as cities and high demand industrial zones. To reliably respond to the "demand curve" that typifies most of Europe, North America and the manufacturing economies of Asia, regional and national electricity systems require a bipartite supply: base load, which runs 24 hours a day and fulfills the minimum constant level of demand on the electricity system; and marginal (intermediate/peak) load, which varies by time of day, time of year, weather and other variables and which is dispatched by a central operating authority in reponse to the demand ebb and flow. Baseload is generally fulfilled with low-cost generation such as coal plants and natural gas-powered "combined cycle" facilities. In addition to high environmental impacts, these facilities have the disadvantage of slow start-up and ramp times, and thus cannot be used to meet variable demand such as high air conditioner use on hot summer afternoons. Marginal load rely on generation types that are easily and quickly dispatchable (turned on), but that are higher cost for reasons such as start-time and fuel efficiency. So-called "peaker" units can start up in as little as 30 minutes, but burn fuel at rates that make them expensive to operate. In combination, the baseload/marginal service is highly reliable, but is requires trade-offs in either costs of operation or GHG emissions.
So the conumdrum remains. The industrialized west has extremely high demand for electricity and high population emerging economies such as China and India understand that cheap and reliable electrification is a cornerstone of modernization. Fuel is being burned at geometrically-increasing rates, which has corresponds directly with GHG emissions and threatens climate stability.
Conventional nuclear power is at best a difficult political pill to swallow and at-worst a catastrophe in-waiting. Thorium could be the comfortable compromise. But much would have to be done, from revised permitting processes, to a successful (and honest) public education campaign, to neutralizing the fossil fuel lobby that would oppose a nuclear renaissance. In sum, this represents a sort of public policy Rubic Cube, where a lot of inter-linked variables would have to line-up "just so." Is it possible? Cynicism is justified: For a nation that split the atom, but the gridlock of entrenched interests in national politics are a force of a whole-other magnitude.
1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/7970619/Obama-could-kill-fossil-fuels-overnight-with-a-nuclear-dash-for-thorium.html
Electricity--cheap, reliable and clean. Pick two. In corporate project management, clients often seek a trifecta of results: a high quality work product, a quick delivery and a low budget. Corporate project managers have an axiom when responding to such requests: "You can have it good, fast or cheap. Pick two."
A similar cost-benefit trade-off tightens the turnbuckle of tension between global warming and industrial-scale electricity production. Society can have it cheap (conventional fossil fuel), reliable (the lights come on every time we want them), and clean (low-carbon intensity, with side benefit or reduced "conventional" pollutants). But it has not, at least to date, been plausible to have all three.
For the most part, utility scale generators have generally opted for cheap and reliable. This trade-off has had relatively minor environmental ramifications--acid rain, particulate matter emissions, localized extraction impacts (think coal tailing ponds and Appalachian-style "mountain-topping"). The spectre of anthorpogenic global warming, however, has changed the calculus, as policy makers and electricity entreprenuers alike have aggressively sought out alternate and ideally magic-bullet energy sources. The message has been that the clock is ticking, and irreversible climate change lurks around a not-too-distant bend on humanity's timeline. Things are urgent, the argument goes, and a solution must be found now.
Along Comes Thorium
And a funny thing happened on the road to climate catastrophe: the once-great environmental threat from energy sector suddenly seems like a potential savior. Not only is nuclear power getting a second look, but proponents are dusting off a technology from the second generation of nuclear reactor development and enabling a "new" type of utility-scale nuclear power. Recent fanfare surrounding thorium-based reactors, however, suggests that a parallax shift in how we address the energy equation may be at hand. Thorium reactors resolve several of the problems that bedevil nuclear power on a global scale:
1. Sourcing and fuel conversion. Thorium is both naturally more abundant than uranium and enrichment techniques are easier, effectively making thorium even more "plentiful" than uranium.
2. energy density. Thorium contains up to 200X the energy of uranium1.
3. weaponization. Enriched thorium--as well as its by-products--are unsuitable for both weapons-grade and "dirty bomb" development.
4. waste remediation. A thorium reactor can actually "burn" plutonium, eliminating it from the waste--as well as the weapon--stream).
5. Reliance on the Imperium. Almost 90% of known reserves are concentrated in countries that are both politically stable and economically partnered with the United States--which itself holds a 15% of proven resources.
As an added benefit, thorium reactors can be micro-sized to operate at load centers--thereby reducing expensive transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure.
The current accomodation for most of the industrialized world--France, certain parts of Scandanavia and Spain notwithstanding--is fossil intensive. The commercial grid depends on extensive and complex (T&D) systems that link central power stations to load centers such as cities and high demand industrial zones. To reliably respond to the "demand curve" that typifies most of Europe, North America and the manufacturing economies of Asia, regional and national electricity systems require a bipartite supply: base load, which runs 24 hours a day and fulfills the minimum constant level of demand on the electricity system; and marginal (intermediate/peak) load, which varies by time of day, time of year, weather and other variables and which is dispatched by a central operating authority in reponse to the demand ebb and flow. Baseload is generally fulfilled with low-cost generation such as coal plants and natural gas-powered "combined cycle" facilities. In addition to high environmental impacts, these facilities have the disadvantage of slow start-up and ramp times, and thus cannot be used to meet variable demand such as high air conditioner use on hot summer afternoons. Marginal load rely on generation types that are easily and quickly dispatchable (turned on), but that are higher cost for reasons such as start-time and fuel efficiency. So-called "peaker" units can start up in as little as 30 minutes, but burn fuel at rates that make them expensive to operate. In combination, the baseload/marginal service is highly reliable, but is requires trade-offs in either costs of operation or GHG emissions.
So the conumdrum remains. The industrialized west has extremely high demand for electricity and high population emerging economies such as China and India understand that cheap and reliable electrification is a cornerstone of modernization. Fuel is being burned at geometrically-increasing rates, which has corresponds directly with GHG emissions and threatens climate stability.
Conventional nuclear power is at best a difficult political pill to swallow and at-worst a catastrophe in-waiting. Thorium could be the comfortable compromise. But much would have to be done, from revised permitting processes, to a successful (and honest) public education campaign, to neutralizing the fossil fuel lobby that would oppose a nuclear renaissance. In sum, this represents a sort of public policy Rubic Cube, where a lot of inter-linked variables would have to line-up "just so." Is it possible? Cynicism is justified: For a nation that split the atom, but the gridlock of entrenched interests in national politics are a force of a whole-other magnitude.
1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/7970619/Obama-could-kill-fossil-fuels-overnight-with-a-nuclear-dash-for-thorium.html
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
The Thin Blue Line: More on Bottled Water
Apparently, it takes 1.5 million barrels a year of oil to manufacture the plastic water bottles Americans use.
That's right; you heard me:
1.5...
Million...
BARRELS.
Of Oil.
For water bottles.
Of course, it doesn't end there, because you still gotta extract, bottle, refrigerate and transport the stuff around. Which bumps the total to 50 million barrels of oil a year. So it seems that, not only are there serious questions about the economics and health ramifications of drinking a largely un-regulated consumer product, but doing so actually has other destructive characteristics, such as promoting the social injustice associated with extractive imperialism in oil rich nations, increasing GHG emissions (all that CO2 from drilling, pumping, shipping, and burning 50 million barrels of OPEC Ooze has to go somewhere), and adding a whole lotta junk to the global waste stream. (But hey, why shouldn't we expand the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?) And let's not forget: numbers proffered here are for Uncle Sam only. Europe and Asia spend their share of Euros or Yuan to answer the orgiastic call of mass marketing half-truths pimping a product that is free and of equal or better quality. Unless you live here:
But hey, don't take my word that there's trouble bubblin' up from the world's fresh water bottling wells. Go see Tapped, coming to DVD player near you.
Oh, and one other thing: the trouble with fresh water isn't limited to the bottled kind: Regions that destroy native eco-systems in order to grow agricultural products (such as Brazil, razing rain forests to create grazing lands for McDonalds'-grade beef) are in some ways trading short-term financial gains for long-term water pain. While they appear to be swapping beef for hard-currency, their real import may be drought: as rain forests disappear, so does their rain-making capacity. This not only impacts regional bio-dynamics, but also local water supplies. Reduced rain capture undermines surface supplies, but also down-rates water table re-charge.
That's right; you heard me:
1.5...
Million...
BARRELS.
Of Oil.
For water bottles.
Of course, it doesn't end there, because you still gotta extract, bottle, refrigerate and transport the stuff around. Which bumps the total to 50 million barrels of oil a year. So it seems that, not only are there serious questions about the economics and health ramifications of drinking a largely un-regulated consumer product, but doing so actually has other destructive characteristics, such as promoting the social injustice associated with extractive imperialism in oil rich nations, increasing GHG emissions (all that CO2 from drilling, pumping, shipping, and burning 50 million barrels of OPEC Ooze has to go somewhere), and adding a whole lotta junk to the global waste stream. (But hey, why shouldn't we expand the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?) And let's not forget: numbers proffered here are for Uncle Sam only. Europe and Asia spend their share of Euros or Yuan to answer the orgiastic call of mass marketing half-truths pimping a product that is free and of equal or better quality. Unless you live here:
Credit: http://www.chinahush.com/
(See the full series of fun, happenin' Chinese Environmental Disaster Photos here)
But hey, don't take my word that there's trouble bubblin' up from the world's fresh water bottling wells. Go see Tapped, coming to DVD player near you.
Oh, and one other thing: the trouble with fresh water isn't limited to the bottled kind: Regions that destroy native eco-systems in order to grow agricultural products (such as Brazil, razing rain forests to create grazing lands for McDonalds'-grade beef) are in some ways trading short-term financial gains for long-term water pain. While they appear to be swapping beef for hard-currency, their real import may be drought: as rain forests disappear, so does their rain-making capacity. This not only impacts regional bio-dynamics, but also local water supplies. Reduced rain capture undermines surface supplies, but also down-rates water table re-charge.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Think before you drink
Corporate sustainability is an enterprise-wide undertaking. Why? Because CS is not merely about recycling waste-paper, setting printer defaults to "two-sided" and turning off computers and office lights when not in use. (Tho' these are all fantastic ideas, and ones that you should incorporate into your daily code of sustainability behavior.) It is ultimately about achieving a "zero-net" carbon footprint--and since virtually all commercial activity involves carbon output (usually from fossil fuels), virtually all enterprises are net-positive contributors to GHG output. Achieving zero-net therefore requires coordinated corporate action, such as purchasing offsets, participating in corporate transportation programs such as BP's CoolFuel (http://climateneutralnetwork.org/benefits.php), and proactive energy reduction measures in the supply chain.
But that doesn't mean that individuals can't make meaningful contributions to energy reductions that lead to corresponding curtailment of GHG emissions. As part of an on-going series of "Individual Actions", this is post offers one easy and high-impact way that you can reduce your personal footprint (while also saving a BIG BUCKS*): Switch to filtered tap water.
Bottled water is almost incomprehensibly fossil fuel intensive: energy is required to pump it, bottle it, ship it, deliver it and display it. And that's before the manufacturing (and disposal) of the petroleum-based plastic bottle is accounted for. It is certainly true that filtered water also requires energy: it has to be pumped from the reservoir to the tap. But whereas many bottled water sources are extremely remote from the point of consumption (Evian is in France; where are you?), most municipal water comes from local sources and doesn't require an energy outlay (or corresponding GHG emissions) to run either a bottling process or a trucking-based delivery chain. Best of all, tap water doesn't require a fossil-derived plastic bottle that required limited resources to produce, and limited resources to dispose of. So when it comes to water, please think before you drink.
Note: For everything you ever wanted to know about bottled water (but were afraid to ask), take a deep dive into NRDC's report on the topic....http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/bwinx.asp...and learn such frothy, fun facts as one 'brand of "spring water" whose label pictured a lake and mountains, actually came from a well in an industrial facility's parking lot, near a hazardous waste dump, and periodically was contaminated with industrial chemicals at levels above FDA standards,' and most cities have to test surface water for Giardia--yet bottlers don't have to.
*Bottled water can carry a price tag as much as 10,000 times that of tap water. Yikes.
But that doesn't mean that individuals can't make meaningful contributions to energy reductions that lead to corresponding curtailment of GHG emissions. As part of an on-going series of "Individual Actions", this is post offers one easy and high-impact way that you can reduce your personal footprint (while also saving a BIG BUCKS*): Switch to filtered tap water.
Bottled water is almost incomprehensibly fossil fuel intensive: energy is required to pump it, bottle it, ship it, deliver it and display it. And that's before the manufacturing (and disposal) of the petroleum-based plastic bottle is accounted for. It is certainly true that filtered water also requires energy: it has to be pumped from the reservoir to the tap. But whereas many bottled water sources are extremely remote from the point of consumption (Evian is in France; where are you?), most municipal water comes from local sources and doesn't require an energy outlay (or corresponding GHG emissions) to run either a bottling process or a trucking-based delivery chain. Best of all, tap water doesn't require a fossil-derived plastic bottle that required limited resources to produce, and limited resources to dispose of. So when it comes to water, please think before you drink.
Note: For everything you ever wanted to know about bottled water (but were afraid to ask), take a deep dive into NRDC's report on the topic....http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/bwinx.asp...and learn such frothy, fun facts as one 'brand of "spring water" whose label pictured a lake and mountains, actually came from a well in an industrial facility's parking lot, near a hazardous waste dump, and periodically was contaminated with industrial chemicals at levels above FDA standards,' and most cities have to test surface water for Giardia--yet bottlers don't have to.
*Bottled water can carry a price tag as much as 10,000 times that of tap water. Yikes.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Nike touts environmental record; continues to destroy environment
As we all know, greenwashing isn't limited to the energy industry or heavy waste-stream industries. It also isn't limited to the environment, when you can also violate principles of social justice at the same time!
Exhibit A: Nike celebrates its environmental street cred while continuing to focus its manufacturing in China
Exhibit A: Nike celebrates its environmental street cred while continuing to focus its manufacturing in China
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