As I was waiting for my flight back from the PMI Global Congress in Washington, DC, I picked up a discarded Washington Post (…..REUSE..REUSE…). There was an article by Juliet Eilperin about Google backing a “superhighway” for wind power, subtitled Underwater Energy Grid. If that wasn’t exciting enough, there was a sub-subtitle $5 billion project would supply mid-Atlantic area. Project! This is definitely one of those projects we term green by definition, but it is a very intriguing one, and one that a company like Google is willing to partner with Good Energies, and environmentally focused international investment company. Google will provide 37.5% of the equity for initial development.
The project is dubbed the Atlantic Wind Connection and is intended to provide the transmission lines for a series of offshore wind turbines capable of supplying 1.9 million homes without taxing the already overburdened electric grid. It is very ambitious project covering an area of 350 miles with on-shore transmission nodes in Norfolk, VA, Lewes, DE, the proximity of Manasquan, NJ, and Newark, NJ. The article goes on to say that the water remains relatively shallow 10-15 miles offshore, far enough so as not to be seen from shore, one of the issue plaguing the Cape Wind Project.
How exciting to be a project manager on that project. One of the risks would certainly be that since it is the North Atlantic, there is always that possibility of the “prefect storm”. The timeline for the project looks like a deliverable in 2013 of construction start, complete in 2020, but with an interim milestone of the initial stage of construction complete in 2016.
Interestingly, Ken Salazar, Interior Secretary, said last month “Rather than develop transmission infrastructure on a piecemeal basic, we should – in close coordination with the private sector, states, and tribes – lay out smart transmission systems upfront.” Gee, a strategy for a change (sorry-editorial comment).
Anyway, we’ll keep an eye on this project and this is just another reason for PMs to be “surfing the green wave“.
best known for championing green energy projects (Green By Definition from our 
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“Green Projects” are being implemented at breakneck speed. It is hard to keep up with the sheer volume. That’s exciting news for project managers embracing the “green wave”. One particular project caught our attention, not only because it garnered national attention, Parade Magazine, April 18, 2010, but because it is local to Earthpm and my wife is an alum. The University of New Hampshire (UNH), and Waste Management (WM), are powering the college with garbage. Yes, garbage! According to the recent article, Waste Management, the operators of a landfill a dozen or so miles from the campus of 15,000 students, was dealing with surplus gas containing 50% methane. Most landfill operators are forced to burn the gas because it is a pollutant, but can be used as fuel. WM realized that UNH could use methane, but how to get it there was a problem. $49 million dollars and 12.7 miles of pipeline later, UNH has its methane.
Through a Sustainability Lens
As part of the “Smart from the Start” (that sounds like a good phrase for sustainability in projects, too) initiative by Secretary of Interior Salazar, there is a proposal for a 200 mile-wide wind energy corridor stretching from Canada to the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
While we don’t know yet about the other sustainable aspects being considered, we do know, at this point, that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) will write an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). “Wind energy is crucial to our nation’s future economic and environmental security. We will do our part to facilitate development of wind energy resources, while ensuring that they are sited and designed in ways that minimize and avoid negative impacts to fish and wildlife,” said Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe. “This EIS process gives us an opportunity to evaluate impacts to dozens of imperiled species at a landscape level to ensure that wind energy development occurs in the right places in the right way.”
The reasoning behind the EIS is that in order to accomplish the project, an Incidental Take Permit (ITP) needs to be granted. Section 9 of the Endangered Species Act and its implementing regulations “prohibit the take of animal species listed as endangered or threatened.” It doesn’t allow the harassment, harm, pursuit, hunting, shooting, wounding, trapping, capturing, or collecting or, an attempt to engage in those practices when it comes to endangered or threatened species. However, Under Section 10 of the Act, it allows for people to obtain an ITP as long as they are pursuing otherwise legal activities. The permittee is then provided “incidental take” authorization.
The applicant must submit a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) containing the measures that it will take to minimize, avoid, or mitigate incidental take. The Service will then review the HCP and issue an EIS that considers the impacts. The Service will also identify “potentially significant impacts on biological resources, land use, air quality, water quality, water resources, economics, and other environmental/historical resources that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of implementing the proposed action or any of the alternatives. Various strategies for avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating the impacts of incidental take will also be considered. Sounds like risk management to me!
“The proposed Permit Area is defined as a 200-mile wide corridor determined by defining the center line of the whooping crane migration based on the database of confirmed whooping crane observations from the Cooperative Whooping Crane Tracking Program and buffering that line by 100 miles on either side. This corridor spans the Gulf Coast of Texas north to the Canadian border and encompasses such cities as Houston, TX; Oklahoma City, OK; Wichita, KS; Bismarck, ND; Grand Island, NE; and Aberdeen, SD. In addition, the permit area includes the current and a large part of the historic range of the lesser prairie-chicken which extends the covered area beyond the 200-mile wide whooping crane migration corridor to include parts of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas.”
There are two important points here for a project manager. The first is that this will be one heck of a program, involving a huge amount of projects, wind energy projects including; the wind power generators themselves, transmission, distribution, support facilities, etc. Secondly, it involves looking at the project through a sustainability lens. In above case, a very narrow view because of regulatory issues (specifically the Endangered Species Act) one of the “drivers” in our book. There will be more and more of these opportunities for the project manager who is not only aware of sustainability issues, vocabulary, and problems and drivers, but also uses that knowledge and considers greenality* when approaching any project.
* The degree to which an organization (project manager) has considered environmental (sustainable) factors that affect its projects during the entire project life cycle and beyond.