We were recent guests of The Sustainability Learning Centre - a partner of the prestigious Network for Business Sustainability.

We gave a 45-minute presentation and took some questions.  And they captured the whole thing on WebEx, for you to view for absolutely free – here.

Click here to watch and listen to EarthPM in action!

The saying applies to today’s post in that it geographically (at least on a global scale) is in the US Northeast, as is something called the Atlantic Wind Connection.  We think of it (of course) as a project – which it is.  We also want you to think of it as an enabler.  It’s an enabler of many other projects.

This is newsworthy because the project cleared a major hurdle today.  According to the AWC website and the Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON – A 380-mile underwater power line to serve wind farms planned off the East Coast cleared a regulatory hurdle Monday, though construction is years away.

The Atlantic Wind Connection would enable up to 7,000 megawatts of electricity to be produced at offshore wind farms from Virginia to New Jersey. Google Inc. and other investors have pledged up to $5 billion for a network of transmission lines for offshore wind farms.

The Interior Department said no competitor had proposed a similar project, allowing Atlantic Wind to move forward knowing it is likely to secure a federal right of way. Construction could begin as soon as 2014.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes called Atlantic Wind a first-of-its-kind project that shows industry interest in developing offshore wind power. No commercial wind power is produced offshore in the United States, though the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts could begin producing electricity as soon as 2014.

The idea is this (taken from the AWC website):

America needs an offshore wind energy industry off the Mid-Atlantic states. This emerging industry will create thousands of jobs and improve consumer access to clean energy sources.  The Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC) backbone transmission project is an essential foundation to this new industry. Designed to accelerate offshore wind development, the project is led by well-established independent transmission company Trans-Elect and sponsored by Good Energies, Google and Marubeni Corporation.

So you can see that this is about enabling any future offshore wind farms to transport their power to population centers.   Without this connection, you can’t get the electricity from they-ah to hee-yah.   Here’s a little more technical detail about the AWC project:

The Mid-Atlantic region offers more than 60,000 MW of offshore wind potential in the relatively shallow waters of the outer continental shelf. These shallow waters, which extend miles out to sea, allow for the development of large, distant wind farms, mitigating visibility issues and allowing for greater energy capture from stronger winds. With few other renewable energy options ideally suited for the Atlantic coast, this transmission project will help states meet their renewable energy goals and standards by enabling the local offshore wind industry to deploy thousands of megawatts of clean, cost-effective energy.

Without a transmission backbone, offshore wind developers would be forced to bring energy to land via radial lines that can make balancing the region’s existing grid more difficult. In addition, a single offshore backbone with a limited number of landfall points will minimize the environmental impacts of building multiple individual radial lines to shore. The AWC project not only reduces the need to build many lower-capacity transmission lines, but relieves grid congestion in one of two National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors which were deemed to have significant transmission network congestion and need speedy creation of transmission capacity.

When complete, the AWC backbone will be able to connect up to 7,000 MW of offshore wind, enough power to serve approximately 1.9 million households. The system is also scalable and can be expanded to accommodate additional offshore wind energy as the industry further develops. The use of High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology allows for easier integration and control of multiple wind farms while avoiding the electrical losses associated with more typical High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC) lines. With this strong backbone in place, larger and more energy efficient wind farms can connect to offshore power hubs further out to sea. These power hubs will in turn be connected via sub-sea cables to the strongest, highest capacity parts of the land-based transmission system.

In addition to enabling the production of thousands of megawatts of clean power, the AWC backbone will help spur the creation of local jobs. Development of wind energy off the Atlantic coast could create between 133,000 and 212,000 U.S. jobs according to Oceana, an ocean-conservation group. The U.S. Department of Energy also estimates that more than 43,000 permanent operations and maintenance jobs would be created if 54,000 MW of offshore wind turbines were installed by 2030. For comparison, the offshore wind industry in Europe is expected to create 215,000 new jobs by 2030.

There’s a lot to this.  From a PM point of view, you can see that it’s  a situation in which a portfolio of projects is enabled by some long-term (very long-term) thinking.  And as we’ve been saying, employing that long-term thinking even in your own single project is going to reap rewards.

So…with apologies to our friends in Maine – maybe you can get they-ah from hee-yah!.

The report (588 pages, full report link here) details ways in which the trend could be reversed.

The key word in reversing the trend?

Projects.

Lots, and lots, and lots of projects.

Many of these projects are triggered by something called the CDM, or “Clean Development Mechanism”.

What’s the CDM?

From their own site:

The CDM allows emission-reduction projects in developing countries to earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits, each equivalent to one tonne of CO2. These CERs can be traded and sold, and used by industrialized countries to a meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.

The mechanism stimulates sustainable development and emission reductions, while giving industrialized countries some flexibility in how they meet their emission reduction limitation targets.

The CDM is the main source of income for the UNFCCC (United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change) Adaptation Fund, which was established to finance adaptation projects and programmes in developing country Parties to the Kyoto Protocol that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. The Adaptation Fund is financed by a 2% levy on CERs issued by the CDM.

Below is a graphic from the CDM website that shows the pipeline of projects for approval.  Note the trend (the red line) and remember – this is not a cumulative chart!  This is a snapshot of the number of projects entering the process to be validated for execution worldwide.

From the World Bank report:
Over the last few years, China has built the largest and most dynamic CDM program in the world.  Overall, Chinese CDM projects are expected to generate total carbon finance resources in excess of US$9 billion through 2012 (Nygard et al. 2011). As of April 2010, China had more registered CDM projects (751 projects, or 36 percent of the world’s total), and more registered CERs (205 million tonnes of carbon dioxide [CO2] equivalents, or 60 percent of the world’s total), than any other country. The breakdown of the projects is 49 percent hydro, 22 percent wind, and 10 percent energy efficiency projects. The leading provinces in terms of the number of registered projects are Yunnan (93 projects, mainly hydro), Sichuan (73 projects, mainly hydro), and Inner Mongolia (56 projects, mainly wind).  The types of CDM projects that support low-carbon investments in
and around urban areas include energy efficiency, landfill gas, and potentially such renewable energy sources as solar, biomass, and wind, if located in proximity to cities. As can be seen in figure 24.1, these categories of
CDM projects account for slightly less than 10 percent of all CDM projects in China. It is important to note that investment in low-carbon technologies in industries located in and around cities is also likely to have strong socioeconomic benefits, in terms of employment and reduced local air pollution.
For projects to be registered with the CDM, a set of specific conditions has to be fulfilled. In China, a project first has to be approved by the Designated National Authority (DNA). As of April 2010, there were 2,400 DNA-approved projects, far more than the 751 projects registered under the CDM. This means that 1,649 projects were still in the CDM registration process. CDM rules specifically require a project to demonstrate that it (i) reduces GHG emissions when compared to a baseline and (ii) is additional to activities in the baseline.

 2,400 projects!  That’s a lot of project teams and a boatload of project managers.

Here’s an example of one of the projects:

Tianjin Shuangkou Landfill Gas Project
Located 137 kilometers southeast of Beijing, the project is Tianjin’s first modern sanitary landfill, including impermeable liners and a collection and treatment system for liquid runoff. The state-of-the-art landfill gas collection system captures methane and other gases, such as carbon dioxide and non-methane organic compounds. By 2017, the project is expected to reduce GHG emissions by an average of 155,822 tCO2e per year and produce a total of 218,509 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity.

So – what’s the moral of the story?

A few:

• Project Managers stand to gain significant opportunities thanks to this vast number of projects
• PMs are best suited for these projects by understanding the issues of sustainability and the surrounding technologies – and certainly at a minimum, the vocabulary
• PMs can make a significant contribution in the area of sustainable development

If you’d like to learn more about the report or the CDM program in general, visit the links and explore.  It’s fascinating.

To read the little article which got us started on this whole schtick in the first place, click here.  You can see how cities like New York, Toronto, and Barcelona stack up against Tianjin, Shanghai, and Beijing.

Front Page Story, Boston Globe, Friday, 4-May, 2012: “Commercial food waste to be banned“.

The story says that starting in 2014, hotels, large restaurants, as well as big businesses and institutions will not be legally allowed to put food waste in the trash, starting in 2014.  In coming years, this could be extended to homes.

For me, this is nothing new.  Not by a long-shot.

You see, my family lived in The Netherlands for 2 years – about 10 years ago.  Already, back then, we placed food waste in a separate container which was hauled off each week by a service that took care of removing and composting food waste (rather than just dumping it in landfills).  Landfill capacity in Massachusetts is estimated to drop from 2.1 million tons in 2012 to only 0.6 million tons in 2020.

How much of this food waste goes into landfills currently? 1.4 million tons, yes that would be nearly 3 billion pounds.  THREE BILLION POUNDS.  A year.  A YEAR!

Initially this program is planned to divert a third of this (a measly 1 billion pounds) from landfills to composting sites and plants that can convert waste into energy, heat, and/or fertilizer.
Why is this showing up on a Project Management blog?

Shouldn’t take too much to connect the dots here.  A program like this is going to ambitiously require an entirely parallel waste system, including collection, transportation, processing, tracking, and so on.   On top of this, of course, is the creation of the plants to do the conversions to energy, heat, and fertilizer.  I can easily imagine hundreds, maybe thousands of projects being launched based on this effort.

So it behooves us as PMs to learn the vocabulary, the rationale, the logistics behind this.  Agree or disagree with the reasons for doing it – or whether we do it at all – knowing more about this may (ironically) feed your family.

Learn more about the food we throw away on this link.

Oh – one more thing… enjoy this wonderful video – an oldie but a goodie – about food waste -  by Shel Silverstein.

First, let’s orient everyone.

This story (taken mainly from this article in The Economist) is about Gujarat. 

Gujarat is a state in western India. It has an area of 75,686 sq mi (196,030 km²) with a coastline of 1,600 km, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula, and a population in excess of 60 million. The state is bordered by Rajasthan to the north, Maharashtra to the south, Madhya Pradesh to the east and the Arabian Sea as well as the Pakistani province of Sindh on the west. Its capital is Gandhinagar, while its largest city is Ahmedabad. Gujarat is home to the Gujarati-speaking people of India.  Ghandi was a Gujarati.  Gujarati is a very intricate written language, very distinct from Hindi.

Here is the phrase “Thinking in the long-term is an important consideration for project managers” in Gujarati: લાંબા ગાળાના વિચારતી પ્રોજેક્ટ મેનેજર્સ માટે ખૂબ જ મહત્વનું છે.

Gujarat is bordered by Pakistan and Rajasthan in the north east, Madhya Pradesh in the east, and Maharashtra and the Union territories of Diu, Daman, Dadra and Nagar Haveli in the south. The Arabian Sea borders the state both to the west and the south west.

The State took it’s name from the Gujjars, who ruled the area during the 700’s and 800’s. Dutch, French, English, and Portuguese all established bases on Gujarat’s coastlines by the 1600s.

So now, you are a little more familiar with the area and the background.

Flash forward (literally) to today.  From the article:

ON A salt plain near the border with Pakistan lies half a billion dollars’ worth of solar-energy kit paid for by firms from all over the world. A million panels stretch as far as the eye can see. Past a dishevelled brass band is a tent crammed with 5,000 people who cheer when Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, declares the solar park open: “I pray, sun god, that today Gujarat will show the way to the rest of the world for solar energy.”

There are reasons to be optimistic and there are some challenges to overcome as well.  We direct you to the article to learn more about the challenges.

But there are two main drivers for solar projects in India:

1.  Conventional power generation, which in India means burning cheap but dirty local coal, is in a tough situation. Power stations charge  3-4 rupees ($0.06-0.08) per kilowatt hour. The state, which has a local monopoly, cannot mine coal fast enough, and this causes power firms to buy more expensive coal from other countries.

2. The cost of solar power equipment has dropped 34% since 2010.  This combination of reduced pricing for solar and the premium for conventional power are making solar more competitive, even without subsidies.  2016 has been identified as the year in which solar will clearly overtake conventional power for India.

Again, from the article:

That should mean a building boom. Sunil Gupta of Standard Chartered, a bank, reckons India’s share of new global solar installations will rise from 1% this year to 5% by 2015. India’s central government has set a target for 20,000MW of installed solar generation by 2022, from under 1,000MW today. That would still represent a miserly 5% or less of total power-generation capacity in India, and cost perhaps $30 billion-40 billion to build—a fraction of the investment in new coal-fired plants. So plenty of folk think the official target will be smashed. D.J. Pandian, a civil servant in charge of energy policy in Gujarat, believes his state alone will easily reach 10,000MW of capacity in a decade.

This makes a lot of room for job opportunities for project managers who learn what they need to learn about solar power and who care to take on the challenge of leading Gujarat and India into a successful era of renewable energy projects.

Click on the picture below (from the article) to go directly to the Economist article.

Not really, as you can read in this recent news story from NOLA.com, where you will find this extract:

A NOAA-commissioned study of 32 dolphins living in Barataria Bay, an area of the Gulf known to be heavily oiled, found that many of them were underweight, anemic and showing signs of lung and liver disease. Nearly half were also found to have adrenal insufficiency, a condition that interferes with basic life functions such as metabolism and the immune system.

While most of the dolphins were still alive at the end of the study, researchers have indicated that survival prospects for the sick dolphins are grim. Their prognosis is troubling because the Gulf dolphin population has been facing what scientists call an unusual mortality event over the last two years. Since February 2010, more than 675 dolphins have stranded in the northern Gulf of Mexico – compared to the usual average of 74 dolphins per year – and the majority of those stranded have been found dead.

But dolphins aren’t the only Gulf animals in trouble. Researchers looking at deep ocean corals seven miles from the spill source found dead and dying corals coated in a brown substance that was later chemically linked to oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill.

Well, aside from the environmental damage, the damage for the involved project teams continues, now for the first time on the criminal front.  And the lesson learned for project teams is that lessons learned should be – must legally be – preserved.  When they’re not, you put yourself and your company at criminal risk.  And indeed as reported widely today, this has led to the arrest of a BP Engineer.

Quoting now from a Christian Science Monitor report, “The U.S. Justice Department made it clear that the investigation is still going on and suggested that more people could be arrested. In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said prosecutors “will hold accountable those who violated the law in connection with the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.”

“Federal investigators have been looking into the causes of the blowout and the actions of managers, engineers and rig workers at BP and its subcontractors Halliburton and Transocean in the days and hours before the April 20, 2010, explosion.

But the case against Mix focuses only on the aftermath of the blast, when BP scrambled for weeks to plug the leak. Even then, the charges are not really about the disaster itself, but about an alleged attempt to thwart the investigation into it.”

We’ve blogged repeatedly about the Macondo Well – aka Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  We have implored project managers to learn from the event – and the steps leading up to it, including NOT including environmental and safety risks in the project’s risk register.  And now, even the lessons learned themselves are at risk.

Learn from this project and its errors, which have led to 11 deaths, still-being-tallied environmental damage, $40-50B in costs to BP and the other principals, and intangible damage to BP, a company which had to its credit taken some impressive steps into alternative energy and was trying to re-brand itself as “Beyond Petroleum”.

Learn.

Don’t burn.

Many of you will be familiar with the Johari Window.

If not, the basics are that it was developed in 1955 by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham (thus the name Joe-Harry, or Johari), and focuses on “awareness”, usually from the perspective of an individual from a psychological view.  That is, it captures what you know about yourself (and not) what others know about you (and not), and how those 4 areas present opportunities for improvement.

Above, we have provided a drawing which shows this.

Recently, at a PMI Seminar presented by Stanford University, we got to see this presented from the perspective of a project, rather than an individual.

After doing some team exercises in this area, it became apparent that this tool has applicability – in particular – to help project teams extract those specific areas where they have opportunities to find potential vulnerabilities in sustainability.

Let’s take a look at the four ‘panes’ of the window, but remember, we are looking at this not as an individual’s window, but rather as a project team’s window.

Open Area:  This pane contains project variables with little uncertainty and are public.  They are known to you, and known to others. Not much to talk about here – this is the usual area in which we look at project risks.

Blind (or Shadow) Area: This is a a biggie.  These are variables which are known to others but not to the project team.  For example, let’s say you are the project team from a petroleum company (one which has successfully been drilling for oil in ocean areas for years).  Let’s also assert that others are insisting that there are risks (threats) to watch out for in terms of safety and environment, and you consider these but do not include them on your risk register.  You are in this blind area. Asking for, and listening to feedback from SMEs and others is the only way to move out of the blind area (or as the diagram shows, to extend the open area further to the right).

Hidden Area: With respect to sustainability this would be the area in which you as a project team ARE aware of a sustainability threat (perhaps a toxic chemical your project will be using, or a non-recyclable plastic container which will be part of the steady-state operation of the project’s product – both of which we’ve discussed in this blog).  Yet, you have not revealed this to the proper stakeholders.  This may be a case where you are sacrificing your enterprise’s future for a better present.  This will probably not work out well in the long run.  Disclosure (transparency – telling the proper stakeholders) is the way to bring the “Open Area” down to the hidden area (see figure).

 Unknown (or Mutually Unknown) Area: These are items which are unknown both to you and to others.  This is the area in which it takes shared discovery and the area that we at EarthPM are trying to lead along with many others who are looking at sustainability in business from a fact-based, non-political perspective.  Stay tuned to this blog – we’ll help open your Johari Window!

Just a reminder that 22-April-2012 is Earth Day.

Visit this official site for details.

And if you want to take action, participate in “A Billion Acts of Green” by clicking here.

On Friday the 13th….oooooooh….. from 11:30 to 11:45 AM Eastern US time, we’ll be on an audio chat, their “Pre-Game Show” – sponsored by Kelly Project Solutions.

Click here for the dial-in and logistics for this audio chat.

We’ll be answering a few general questions from the hosts, and then getting into a Twitter-based chat session which goes from noon to 1PM Eastern US time.  You can follow the chat at the hashtag #PMChat on Twitter, or, better yet, use PMChat’s  Twebevent facility.

You will find a post we’ve revived from last year – and one that will form the basis for the chat discussion – here.

UPDATE: We survived Friday the Thirteenth, and ended up with a nice result.  Click HERE to listen to the replay of the Pre-Game Show (click on the BlogTalkRadio play button).

The #PMChat generated over 250 tweets and there was a good exchange of ideas.

eClean-up: A Look at Efforts to Clean Up Electronic Waste

Even if you regularly recycle your plastic and your paper, there may be another kind of waste that needs special attention: old electronics and batteries. While it is far harder to find places to recycle or properly dispose of electronics and batteries, it is important to do so because this category of waste presents unique dangers. Full of toxic metals, these products often should be disposed by someone who is properly trained. The knowledge levels needed to fully understand the sustainability issues involved may even require a masters degree. But this is often not the case as the world’s poorest brave toxic conditions to harvest the valuable metals that remain after electronics are discarded.

These electronics, referred to as e-waste when discarded, are hazardous because they contain heavy metals that begin to leak when packed into the acidic environment of a landfill. According to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, 40% of the lead and 75% of the heavy metals found in landfills are the result of improperly disposed of e-waste. There is such a high concentration of electronic waste in most landfills that if there is a leak or run-off, it would be incredibly toxic and could poison groundwater.

The dangerous materials associated with e-waste are several: lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, PVC, and brominated flame-retardants, all with varying effects on the environment. Mercury, for example, causes improper brain function in individuals who are exposed to it for an extended time period. Small amounts of cadmium can accumulate in the human body, particularly the kidney, and cause irreversible health problems, while lead is known to cause damage to individuals’ nervous systems.

Within the United States, there has yet to be a federal law that address electronic waste comprehensively, though there have been several attempts at a National Computer Recycling Act, though this has yet to pass into law. Therefore, currently, the clean up of electronic waste is dealt with on the state level, with most states banning or restricting dumping of electronics.

California’s comprehensive e-waste program dictates all electronic devices are to be categorized and assessed, then levied a tax upon purchase that goes towards funding infrastructure for independent recyclers to collect electronics within the state. Once a consumer of an electronic device decides to recycle the device, he or she gets a small payment, in other words, a reimbursement of a portion of the previously assessed tax, for having recycled the item. Moreover, in California, it is illegal for any electronic waste to be placed within a landfill or otherwise thrown away.

Unlike the United States, which is just beginning to implement ecycling, Europe has had comprehensive legislation in place for collecting electronic waste since 2003. In the European Union’s strategy, each member country provides many easily accessed facilities for citizens to recycle their electronic equipment, in the hopes that, with knowledge and availability, most electronic consumers will recycle the vast majority of their electronic equipment. Unfortunately, without any incentive, the program has not been highly effective – only about one third of electronic waste in Europe is properly recycled, which has lead to European Union leaders revisiting the regulation.

One of the primary problems, in both the United States and Europe has been the illegal exporting of electronic waste to countries that have fewer restrictions on its disposal. Two countries that seem willing to accept electronic waste are China and Nigeria. In fact, it is estimated that ninety percent all electronic waste from the United States ends up in Chinese landfills. While this may seem advantageous to the United States, it is troubling as a worldwide trend. After all, when improperly disposed of, electronic waste is truly poisonous. Whether it poisons Americans or Chinese, the ultimate result will be widespread birth defects, sickness and death.

While these effects may not take place immediately, within twenty to a hundred years, the areas that have the most electronic waste disposals may become unlivable. Although the best way to quell the waste problem is to reduce the demand and consumption of the toxins, ramping up our recycling efforts is imperative.

Meika Jensen is an aspiring graduate student and freelance writer who hopes to continue to expand and use her extensive knowledge of the plastic industry, public policy and communication to educate the public and create social change to help the environment.  You can follow Meika on Twitter @MeikaJensen .