We, project managers, love indices, benchmarks, or anything else we can use as a number for quantification.  When we, EarthPM, were researching our book, we looked for company facts and figures to show how much savings can be realized by greening your projects and greening your organizations.  We found this “index” that provides a measurement of how well the world does with sustainability as it relates to our well-being, something we are all concerned with.

According to the website http://www.happyplanetindex.org/ “The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an innovative measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered around the world. It is the first ever index to combine environmental impact with well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which country by country, people live long and happy lives. The second compilation of the global HPI, published in July 2009, shows that we are still far from achieving sustainable well-being and puts forward a vision of what we need to do to get there.

The Index doesn’t reveal the ‘happiest’ country in the world. It shows the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens. The nations that top the Index aren’t the happiest places in the world, but the nations that score well show that achieving, long, happy lives without over-stretching the planet’s resources is possible.

The HPI shows that around the world, high levels of resource consumption do not reliably produce high levels of well-being, and that it is possible to produce high well-being without excessive consumption of the Earth’s resources. It also reveals that there are different routes to achieving comparable levels of well-being. The model followed by the West can provide widespread longevity and variable life satisfaction, but it does so only at a vast and ultimately counter-productive cost in terms of resource consumption.”

The emphases in the above statements are ours.  We wanted to point out some parallels with our own thinking and how that relates back to us project managers.  Resource, resource, resource, has almost replaced the PM mantra communicate, communicate, communicate, especially when it comes to one of the more important concepts in green project management, and of enterprise project management, protecting and efficiently using limited project resources.  Project resources in the case of green project management include environmental resources.

I was especially interested in the map detailing the environmental footprint.  Interesting to note that the most developed nations, US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand had the largest footprint, as much as 4 planets worth.  It says a couple of things; (1) those developed countries have the resources to reduce their footprint if they have the inclination and (2) developing countries are going to have lots and lots of projects to do, building and upgrading infrastructure being one of them.

Because projects use resources, projects are where ideas become real, and project managers implement the reality, projects will have to move forward cautiously so as not to follow the “West” model.  So what can be done about reducing and controlling the environmental footprint?  That’s what we are hoping to provide with our book and blogs, the information for the project manager to lead the effort because Assertion 1 says “A project run with green intent is the right thing to do, but it also helps the project team to do things right.”

We really like this quote from The Washington Post (the editorial copy) last November; “Let’s agree that there is debate about climate change and that we don’t know exactly when oil will run out. But let’s also agree that man has an impact on his environment. I don’t need a fancy degree or any reports to know that; I can see it every day in the litter lining our roads, in the murkiness of the Chesapeake Bay and in the smog hanging over our cities.”

The quote continues, “Yes, the environmental movement includes some elements of extremism, nannyism (the word is probably an outgrowth from Dean Baker’s The Conservative Nanny State, May 2006) and self-righteousness. But environmentalism is simply a desire to protect nature and our health and to preserve resources for future generations (our emphasis).  What’s so bad about that? What’s wrong with trying to invent technologies (projects) that are less polluting than oil? Is it unreasonable to want fewer pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals dumped into waterways (projects)? Are people who recycle newspapers, buy organic foods or carry reusable grocery bags all part of a vast left-wing conspiracy?”

Sometimes, with all that is going on, and plenty of fodder for our posts, we need to revisit the real reason we became involved in our projects, the book and the website.  As a project managers, and founders of the website you are connected to right now, this quote speaks to us.  It says that the founding principles, or “assertions,” of EarthPm are relevant, important, sound, or whatever positive adjective you want to use.

We won’t reiterate our assertions here; you can see them by going to the “Mission” area of this site for full details.  To capture them all in one statement, it is “simply a desire to protect nature and our health and to preserve resources for future generations”. One of the assertions we make during our presentations in that we are not tree huggers, or nannyists.    And, we are not trying to make you that way, either.  However, we do strongly believe that projects are where ideas become real and that by running a project with green intent is the right thing to do, and every project can benefit from green intent.  Project managers are the “resource police”.  To “protect and serve” project resources is in our DNA, so who better to advocate for preserving resources, including environmental resources, than a project manager?  We’ve proposed some changes to the next edition of the PMBOK and are getting lots of support.  Check out our proposal in the “Community” section of this site and we welcome your comments.  Soon we will post an update incorporating comments we’ve received so far.

As is our modus operandi, we provide this tongue-in-cheek look at:

The Nanny Zone

In our book, we use the example of an earthworm as almost perfect sustainability.  GIGO, only in the earthworms case, the garbage that goes in as it eats its way through the earth, comes out the other end as better “earth” than what went in.  That is sort of the way GPGT works.  A garbage truck picks up at curbside.  After it makes its rounds, the truck heads to the landfill where the garbage is dumped and covered.  The garbage decomposes and forms, among other byproducts, methane.  The methane is tapped off, processed and used to fuel the garbage trucks.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  When you put it that way, it is, however, there were lots of complex projects undertaken to make it happen.

There’s plenty of stuff to decompose in a landfill, from food scraps to lawn trimmings.  It has been happening for years and as natural gas and propane become more and more expensive, a project to recover methane from landfills became more attractive.  From the altruistic point of view, not allowing methane to escape into the air, or being burned off to contribute to green house gases improves air quality.  But face it, the incentives from the government, and the savings from not having to buy fuel on the open market are pretty good project drivers.

According to  Jennifer Andrews, Director of Communications for Waste Management Inc, there are more than 300 trash trucks (the industry likes the name trash truck rather than garbage truck) fueled by garbage, or rather the methane produced by “trash”.   Waste Management (WM) Inc, the country’s largest provider of waste management services, along with Linde North America, a world leading gases and engineering company, built a liquefied natural gas (LNG) landfill gas designed to purify and liquefy the landfill gas at WM’s Altamont Landfill near Livermore, California.  It has a capacity to produce up to 13,000 gallons/day of natural gas to fuel the WM’s trash collection vehicles.

This project is also part of the company’s environmental sustainability initiative to double its waste-based energy production from the equivalent of 1 million homes to 2 million homes by 2020. WM is also directing capital spending of up to $500 million per annum over a 10-year period to increase the fuel efficiency of its fleet by 15 percent and reduce fleet emissions by 15 percent by 2020 as well as investments in new technologies to enhance their business according to their website www.wm.com.

WM and others are continuing to explore landfill gases as alternate fuel sources.  We’ll keep you informed of other projects in the future.  WM is certainly going to make our next “At the Top of Their Game” list for companies who are doing their sustainable best.

According to today’s Portsmouth Herald, in an article by Rich Beuchesne headlined “Chief: Go Green”, Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui, of the Surui tribe indigenous to the Amazon Rain Forest, is on a high tech quest to help stop climate change and global warming by protecting the rain forest.  “A green economy, we believe, can bring great benefit, clean air and water, and it can also deliver the food we need.”  He further states, “So we’re not saying that the forest has to be untouchable, but it needs to be used sustainably to bring a better future for our people.”  That is what we are saying about project management, and this effort is certainly a project; we’re not saying that greening projects is a must, but what is a must is that sustainability be considered all along a project’s journey.

The Amazon leader has teamed up with Google (Earth), one of the companies we deem “At the Top of Their Game” in our new book.  Google Earth is  mapping  the tribe’s sacred and cultural sites where tribe members hunt and fish as a “way to show the world my culture.  Information is power” says the chief.  The philosophy is spreading to other tribes in the region, too.  The chief also teamed up with Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) to create an economy based on sustainability practices”, something else we at EarthPM strongly believe in.  “Three years ago, my people began discussing carbon credits as part of this sustainability message,” said Chief Almir. “Many people believe this will not work, but I see it as an opportunity to better manage our forest and, by extension, to manage the world.”  Exactly!

A couple of more things he said that particularly resonate with us, “There’s been a lot of deforestation in the name of development of our country,” he said. “When we sat down and talked about our future, we saw how important it was to bring our knowledge to the rest of the world.”

Many people “do not believe in the message of sustainability, so we bring scientific research to prove it can bring a healthy economy and well-being to the world.”

Chief Almir’s 1,300 tribe members are all vested in a green future, he said.  “We get courage and strength to do what we do in the belief that in the long run, we are right in what we are fighting for,” he said, “to create that green consciousness for our future. Resistance can be done through armed struggle, but we believe it works better through awareness.”

We’ll be listening and watching for more information coming out of the region.  You can also check out ATC’s website, and here’s more information on Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui, including a video.

We’ve all heard the buzz about alternative energy; clean coal, wind power, tidal power, solar power, and nuclear power to name a few.  Traveling around Ireland last year, there was a noticeable increase in wind farms.  The talk around the county is to try to get most, if not all, of the power from the wind.  Everyone in Ireland and those who visit know that it is a windy country, surrounded by the North Sea, in an area of constantly changing weather patterns.  Power generation by wind is still in its infancy.  It may work in a small, unique area like Ireland, and generally on a smaller scale, we need to look to other alternatives for larger applications.

In today’s article in the Wall Street Journal On-line it states that, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), “Nuclear energy is one of the key low-carbon energy technologies that can contribute, alongside energy efficiency, renewable energies and carbon capture and storage, to the decarbonization of electricity supply by 2050, said IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka. I could provide as much as 25% of world-wide energy requirements by 2050. ” That would mean that “nuclear generating capacity to more than triple over the next 40 years.”

Nuclear energy is a proven technology, unlike some of the alternatives.  Director General Luis Echavarri of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) , a specialized agency within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of industrialized countries, based in Paris, France, says  “Nuclear is already one of the main sources of low-carbon energy today. If we can address the challenges to its further expansion, nuclear has the potential to play a larger role in cutting CO2 emissions”.

To achieve these numbers, there will be a multitude of projects throughout the world requiring project managers.  Beside the project management jobs in the nuclear power plant construction industry, there will be PM jobs in support of nuclear power like plant design, accident prevention and development of safety features.  Just like the oil industry, there will be risks.  Who better to help manage risks than a project manager?

Because we are all interested in the “next best thing” in terms of what the future job market looks like, EarthPm will continue to identify those areas, whether the projects are green by definition, project impact, product impact, or green in general.  We’re not advocating one source of power generation over another, but we do believe that you must be aware of all the alternatives and where the potential future jobs may be.