Often, here on EarthPM, even though we’re intentionally very project-centric, people ask us about how they – as individuals – are doing, and how they personally could do better to ‘green up’.
This posting is just a simple link to a new survey put out by Philips NV which helps you determine your “energy color” based on a set of questions which are accompanied by stunning photographs and slick sound effects.
http://www.asimpleswitch.com/b2c/survey/intake
On the site, you’ll find some interesting facts about your own personal consumption that will probably surprise you, and that you could extrapolate to your project work as well. Consider this (from the above site):
“How much water is needed to make one cup of coffee? You might say anything from 30-50 milliliters for an espresso to, let’s say, up to half a liter for a supersized latte. While it’s true that this could very well be the amount of liquid that ends up in the cup, the actual number of liters (yes, plural) used to brew precisely one standard cup of coffee is a staggering 140. Hard to believe? Perhaps, but ever so true.
This is how it’s calculated: it costs roughly 21,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilo of roasted coffee. A standard 125 ml cup of coffee requires 7 grams of roasted coffee, so that single ‘cuppa’ costs 140 litres of water to make. And it’s not just coffee that takes a lot of water to produce, the same goes for other stuff we eat or need. Rice: 3,400 litres for 1 kilo. Cotton: 2,700 litres for 1 cotton shirt. Beef: 15,500 litres for 1 kilo. If you didn’t know it already, you’ve just learned something about the size of our water footprint. We’re not walking this planet leaving Cinderella-sized footprints; we’re leaving marks that would make Godzilla’s seem petite.”
So visit the site, get your own personal color reading, and enjoy the wealth of information available on the site as well. It may not be directly project related, but we bet you can make at least one discovery if you spend some time looking at your own energy usage!
le of a recent article in our local paper (The Portsmouth Herald). It was subtitled “Timberland (one of the companies featured in Top of their Game in our new 
Whether your TV tastes run to Fringe, 24, or the serials, like My Friend Flicka, or The Lone Ranger, there is always a recap from previous episodes. So here goes. “In our last episode,” I talked about how Steve Fludder from GE and Richard Cohen from Bank of America are embracing green efforts because they are good for the bottom-line. In this post I will look at the view from “big oil”. Peter Voser, Royal Dutch Shell, was interviewed for ECO-nomics. U.S. CAP (the U.S. Climate Action Partnership); he believes that market-based energy legislation is needed in this country and others and only by participating with the other stakeholders will it be effective. His thinking is that to be effective, “energy legislation (must) drive supply security, drive lower fuel emissions, drive new jobs and preserve old jobs.” “We will quite clearly look out for natural gas developments, which we see as a long-term source of energy that has a lot of positives.” (new projects)
Wind Power Super Highway
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“.