We’ve tend to stay neutral when it comes to the global climate change debate, although we have tried to arm you with the information we believed you, as project managers, need to make sure you can take advantage of any projects that may arise as a result of any mitigation strategies.  Today, we heard about a couple of disturbing reports due out over the next several months.  Their titles were pretty ominous so we decided to dig a little deeper.

Take a look at some of these headlines and reports to be released and see if you don’t agree that they are unnerving;

NOAA: Past Decade Warmest on Record According to Scientists in 48 Countries 

Earth has been growing warmer for more than 50 years.

And this one a report that is indicative of what is to come.

The Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.

The title says that those extreme events we have been experiencing, a major snow storm in the northeast in October 2011 for instance, are going to continue and we need a risk mitigation process to address them.  Further, we will need to “adapt” to these changes.

Another report coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC);

Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation

And finally, an interview from a scientist who has not only been one of the questioners of global climate change, but also his study was partially funded by an organization made up of climate change skeptics.  Dr. Richard Muller, professor of physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Foundation, undertook an independent two year study of global climate change.

It was not that he himself was a sceptic, he just didn’t believe the likes of Tom Friedman and Al Gore because Dr. Muller believes their contentions were not truly science based.  Here is part of the interview between Dr. Muller and Eleanor Hall with Bronwyn Herbert from the Australian Broadcast Network (ABC).  You can hear the entire interview here.

BRONWYN HERBERT: Richard Muller says he wasn’t convinced the earth was warming, and set out two years ago to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong.

RICHARD MULLER: Sceptics had raised legitimate questions. Many of the thermometers were of very poor quality and poorly placed. There were  djustments being made to discontinuities in the data. There was perhaps undue influence from warming of cities, which was warm, but that’s not global warming.

BRONWYN HERBERT: He says he was particularly surprised that his results so closely correlated with previously published data from other teams in the US and the UK.

RICHARD MULLER: Somewhat to my amazement, none of the effects changed the answer. We wound up getting the same answer that the other groups had previously gotten for the amount of warming. It’s about 0.9 degrees Celsius over the last 50 years. The poor temperature quality data, even though it was at bad locations, the change in temperature I recorded was accurate. The urban heat island, just not that much area of the earth is urban. The temperature adjustments that people made, well those adjustments were made with more care than we could know, and in the end the adjustments didn’t bias the data. We picked five times as many stations as they did. Their selection of stations was sufficiently representative that it didn’t change the answer. So, in the end, the amount of global warming is what they said it was.

BRONWYN HERBERT: So do you now believe that global warming on earth is occurring?

RICHARD MULLER: Oh yes. I certainly believe that now.

And finally, from a report Agence France-Presse (AFP) states that a draft UN report three years in the making concludes that man-made climate change has boosted the frequency or intensity of heat waves, wildfires, floods and cyclones and that such disasters are likely to increase in the future.

“The document being discussed by the world’s Nobel-winning panel of climate scientists says the severity of the impacts vary, and some regions are more vulnerable than others. Hundreds of scientists working under the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) will vet the phonebook-sized draft at a meeting in Kampala of the 194-nation body later this month.

“This is the largest effort that has even been made to assess how extremes are changing,” said Neville Nicholls, a professor at Monash University in  Melbourne, Australia, and a coordinating lead author of one of the review’s key chapters. Mindful of an outcry by climate skeptics over flaws in an earlier IPCC text, those working on the document stress that the level of “confidence” in the findings depends on the quantity and quality of data available.

But the overall picture that emerges is one of enhanced volatility and frequency of dangerous weather, leading in turn to a sharply increased risk for large swathes of humanity in coming decades.”

“Its publication coincides with a series of natural catastrophes around the world that have boosted the need to determine whether such events are freaks of the weather or part of a long-term shift in climate. In 2010, record temperatures fuelled devastating forest fires across Siberia, while parts of Pakistan and India reeled from unprecedented flooding. This year, the United States has suffered from a record number of billion-dollar disasters ranging from flooding in the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to Hurricane Irene to the ongoing Texas drought. Large swathes of China are suffering from intense drought as well, even as central America and Thailand count their dead from recent diluvian rains.

Most of these events match predicted impacts of manmade global warming, which has raised temperatures, increased the amount of water in the atmosphere and warmed ocean surface temperatures — all drivers of extreme weather.

- It is “virtually certain” — 99-100% sure — that the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes will increase over the 21st century on a global scale;

- It is “very likely” (90-100% certainty) that the length, frequency and/or intensity of warm spells, including heat waves, will continue to increase over most land areas;

- Peak temperatures are “likely” (66-100% certainty) to increase — compared to the late 20th century — up to 3.0 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050, and 5.0 C (9.0 F) by 2100;

- Heavy rain and snowfall is likely to increase over the next century over many regions, especially in the tropics and at high latitudes;

- At the same time, droughts will likely intensify in other areas, notably the Mediterranean region, central Europe, North America, northeastern Brazil and southern Africa.” © 2011 AFP

One look at the huge ship (612 feet long) and you knew it was something special.  It was backed up to the middle bridge of the Piscataqua River and loomed over the roadway.  How to handle the ship and its cargo is a project.  The Port Director at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, considered the project as a new opportunity, and we considered it as spawned from a Green by Definition (GbD) project.  First a little about the GbD project.  Granite Reliable Power Park is a wind farm project in northern New Hampshire.  It consists of 33 Vesta V90 3 Mw wind turbines, only the second U.S. wind project to deploy these turbines.  It will generate 330,000 MWH, enough to power 40,000 homes and offset 332 million pounds of carbon dioxide.  In addition, the project will generate more that 200 jobs.

The port project itself; offload the cargo to be used for the wind farm from the Salmaagracht, a Swedish registered massive vessel docked at the State Pier in Portsmouth.  The cargo:

• 22 nacelles (gear housing) measuring 32 feet long and weighing 81 tons each, about the weight of two humpback whales.
• 69 fixed blades, each measuring 149 feet long or about the length of 4 school buses and weighing 17 tons.
• 22 hubs (part of the rotor assembly) and 22 spinners

What makes the ship special are the 3 huge cranes that can lift up to 120 tons.   Further logistics for the project included one tractor trailer for each blade, 80 workers, and 45 minutes to unload each blade.  It was a pretty amazing project that had never been done before in Portsmouth Harbor, unique, one time effort, consumes limited resources, has a fixed start and end date, you know, a project.  What we didn’t see is the greenality of the port project itself.  Yes, it was related to a GbD project, and we bet that by now, you know the questions to ask to evaluate the greenality of the project itself.  So here is the challenge.  Tell us the questions you might ask by commenting on the post.  We’ll start you out with one.  What kind of lighting do they have at the State Pier?

When the going gets tough, the first target that gets shot at seems to be the environment.  Aren’t we really cutting it close, shaving away sustainability.    The new governor of Maine, my governor, Paul LePage, is a “Lightning Rod for Critics” as headlined recently by Jenna Russell in Boston Globe.   And among other things, “…the new governor has offered up a more substantive cause for controversy: a plan to streamline state environmental protections, eliminating or reducing more than 60 regulations on pollution and development.”

I’m not going to get into a political debate, here, and whether or not you are a “tree hugger”, doesn’t really make a difference.  Is this true?  “The governor is not suggesting we turn our backs on what makes Maine great,’’ said Demeritt. “It’s about finding middle ground and the right protections, and why it takes a million dollars to get a project approved.’’ I hope so, but there are some concerns.

“It’s a wholesale retreat from the values Maine people hold dear,’’ Mike Belliveau, executive director of the Environmental Health Strategy Center, a statewide public health organization, said of LePage’s proposal. “Everyone knows the essence of Maine is the quality of its environment. It resonates deeply in the psyche of Maine people, and it’s the backbone of the economy, drawing tourists from all over the world.’’ You have to realize that Maine benefits from tourism to the tune of $15 billion per year, which makes it a leading industry in Maine.  Do we want to jeopardize that?  It’s not tree hugging it’s dollar hugging.

Now I’m all for reducing redundancy within the governmental departments.  I believe there probably is quite a bit of that.  Depending on what statistics you use,  between 34% and 45% of those employed in Maine work for some sort of federal, state, or local government.

There is some precedent for this scrutiny according to Ms. Russell. “In New Jersey, to similar outrage from environmentalists, Governor Chris Christie previously introduced many of the same proposals put forth by LePage: establishing a fast track to approval for development proposals, shifting authority from environmental boards to administrative judges, and prohibiting state standards that are stricter than federal regulations, as well as reducing governmental job redundancy.

Florida’s new governor, Rick Scott, used his recent budget recommendations to eliminate funding for the state’s land conservation program, Florida Forever, and to drastically downsize the state agency in charge of managing sprawl, the Department of Community Affairs, by slashing its budget from $779 million to $110 million, according to Sarah Bucci, a field associate with the advocacy group Environment Florida.”  One size does not necessarily fit everyone.  What one state does doesn’t necessarily meant it is relevant to another.

One of the more controversial remarks from LePage, couched as a “joke gone awry” by the governor’s office, was linked to the “proposal that has received the most attention would suspend the Kid-Safe Products Act, a law overwhelmingly approved by legislators in 2008. The law, which has yet to take effect, would ban the sale of baby bottles and other products containing biphenyl A, or BPA, a chemical compound linked to health concerns in animal studies. Supporters of the law say LePage is catering to out-of-state corporations who helped fund his campaign. Demeritt said the governor simply wants “sound science’’ to be the standard for state regulations, and with BPA, “the science is not there.’’  The worst side effect of exposure to it, he (LePage) asserted at a press conference, might be women growing “little beards.”

“State Senator Peter Mills, who ran against LePage in a seven-way Republican primary last year, said the governor’s deregulation plan contains important, necessary changes at its core, some of which are likely to be approved. But he criticized LePage for taking a “slash and burn’’ approach instead of focusing strategically on key reforms.”  We need to use a pair of scissors, not a straight razor to make cuts.

“You need to get people used to your perspective, instead of throwing everything against the wall,’’ said Mills. “It creates huge resistance and doesn’t get it done. . . . All he did was get environmentalists fired up.’’

We, as project managers, know that change is difficult, but something that is constant, and the primary reason we exist.  Everything we do involves change of some sort.  There is a right way to manage change and a wrong way.  We agreed with Senator Mills, your need to find a way to minimize resistance, not galvanize it.  Perhaps, as John Greenleaf Whittier, a poet who hailed from an almost neighbor of ours, Massachusetts said; “Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young.”  Let’s keep our traditions and continue to woo sustainability.

We just learned that EarthPM has been named as one of the “50 Resources for Students Attending Online Project Management Courses” by Online Schools a “premier portal for online education on the web.”  According to their website , ” Our goal is not to revolutionize the concept of education, but rather to help bring people into the 21st century in terms of the way they perceive learning. Education is no longer simply about teachers and textbooks. In today’s Internet age, education is now about infographics, blogs, e-books, web articles, youtube, wikipedia, and so much more. Thus, we at Online Schools do not propose to revolutionize education itself, but rather, we strive to revolutionize the way people think about and approach education.
That said, first and foremost, we do believe that all individuals should have a strong foundation in traditional learning, evidenced by our emphasis on providing honest, up-to-date and readily available information on accredited online schools.”

We are the first listing (#13) under “UNUSUAL PERSPECTIVES ON PROJECT MANAGEMENT.”  We couldn’t say it better than they do. “It’s important for prospective project managers to stay fresh. There are new and different aspects of the industry to consider. A little humor or thinking outside the box about the project management process is a good way to sharpen skills and define goals.”  And, our goal is to bring Green Project Management into the mainstream, keeping the humor and thinking outside the box, and make it part of the way we do business.  We are joined on the list by wonderful resources like our friends Elizabeth Harrin, A Girl’s Guide to Project Management and Peter Taylor, The Lazy Project Manager.  Check us all out!  With all of the sites out there, we’re proud to be included in this exclusive list.

We were hard pressed to think that we would ever write about the alignment of President Obama, Governor Schwarzenegger, James Cameron and the companies of Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Intel, but we are.  These and others, including the California Teachers Association, the American Lung Association, and the CA League of Women Voters,  are banding together to work for the defeat of Proposition 23 in California.  Proposition 23 would effectively suspend AB32, AKA the Global Warming Act of 2006.  Prop 23 ties California’s unemployment rate to AB32.  AB32 would be suspended until California’s unemployment rate sinks to 5.5% or less and stays there for a year.  AB32 is one of the initiatives we document in our book.

On the other side, in support of Prop 23, some strange bedfellows, too, like the CA Firefighter’s Association,  The Coalition of Labor, Agriculture & Business, and the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry, traditionally democrat, and the CA Republican Party (sans the governor).  According to http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/03/ab-32-ballot-initiative-global-warming-california-climate-change.html Ted Costa, head of the Peoples Advocate, withdrew initial support  in March 2010, saying, “”Big money interests have come in and shut out the people.”

There’s pretty big money on both sides of the issue.  Louise Bedsworth, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, predicted in April that total campaign spending on Proposition 23 could top the $154 million record set in 2006 by Proposition 87. (http://tinyurl.com/prop23-cost). The largest contributors on the support side are some CA based oil companies, oil refiner companies, or companies and associations supporting the oil and gas industry.   The largest contributors on the “Vote No” side are the companies listed in the beginning of this post.

To quote from our book, “There may be quite a debate around the true causes (of global climate change) are, but one only has to look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (2007) to answer the question on whether or not there is a significant change in the world’s climate….” the recent trend may or may not be part of a “much larger cycle”, but it is clear that something is going on and that green house gas emissions are contributing to the change.

As project managers, at the least, we need to know how the vote goes.  No one is really sure how many jobs (projects) are being created and maintained while companies work to comply with AB32, but we can speculate that if Proposition 23 passes, those jobs will vaporize, except for those companies who agree with our assertion that “a project run with green intent is the right thing to do…”

And this is no British fantasy comedy, but the largest solar project ever to be built on U.S. public land.  A $6 billion solar power project has been approved by the Obama administration.  It is the start of a boom in solar power on federal lands.  This project will be built in the Mojave Desert near Blythe, California.  “Today is a day that makes me excited about the nation’s future,” (Ken) Salazar said Monday at a news conference. “This project shows in a real way how harnessing our own renewable resources can create good jobs here at home.”

The Blythe Project, being developed by Solar Millennium, a German solar developer, is slated for more than 7,000 acres of public land near the Arizona border, some 225 miles east of Los Angeles.  According to Rachel Rossitto at www.tonic.com, this project alone will be generate 1,000 megawatts of power, is expected to take care of more than 300,000 homes as well as hire 1,066 workers during construction and create 295 permanent positions. The project is the sixth solar power development approved by the Interior Department this month – all in California and Nevada. Approval of a seventh project - also in California – is expected in the next few weeks. All could start transmitting electricity by the end of 2011 or early 2012.  At full capacity, the seven projects would generate more than 3,000 megawatts of power and provide electricity for up to 2 million homes.

The bureau opened federally owned lands in 2005 to solar development, but an examination of records and interviews of officials by The Associated Press showed the program operated a first-come, first-served leasing system that quickly overwhelmed its small staff and enabled companies, regardless of solar industry experience, to squat on land without any real plans to develop it.  To expedite environmental review and bureaucratic red tape, the Interior Department identified 14 of the most promising solar projects among the more than 180 current permit applications covering about 23 million acres of federally owned desert in the Southwest.  Those 14 “fast-track” projects alone would produce more than 6,000 megawatts, enough to power 4 million homes for a day at peak usage, officials said.

Final approval by the end of the year qualifies the solar projects for federal funds under the economic stimulus law approved last year. Solar Millennium is eligible to secure $1.9 billion in conditional loan guarantees from the Energy Department for the Blythe project.

And looking beyond the traditional boundaries of a project, the company will be required to mitigate the project’s effect on more than 8,000 acres of habitat for the desert tortoise, western burrowing owl, bighorn sheep and Mojave fringe-toed lizard, as part of an agreement with federal officials.

There are a couple of pertinent Green Project Management principles that come out of this announcement.  It is clearly a “Green by Intent” project and for sure part of the “Green Wave” of environmental awareness.  Additionally, it has the important element of considering what happens beyond the traditional deliverable of the output of the project.   While we applaud the green power initiative, we are just as excited about the green project management elements the project displays.

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“.

Our good friend and EarthPm/Green Project Management supporter Elizabeth Harrin has written a new book and is a must read for every project manager, and for that matter, anyone who is remotely interested in the phenomenon know as “social media”.  Having co-authored a book and just submitted a manuscript for another one, I am always interested in the process (surprise, I’m a project manager).  According to Elizabeth, here is how her book evolved: “I am part of PMI’s New Media Council and at the Congress in Orlando last year we did a presentation on the uses of social media for project teams.  It was really well attended – I was surprised at the turnout.  It made me realise that there was an appetite amongst the project management community to learn about how we can embrace new technology and specifically social media to help with the way we manage project teams.  There are lots of books written about how to use social media for marketing and communication with customers, but nothing about how to use it behind the firewall for collaboration and communication between colleagues.  That’s the gap I was trying to fill with my book, Social Media for Project Managers.”  In other words, the book is at the intersection of social media and project management.  Sound familiar?

Using social media saves scarce resources, time, human, and environmental, if it is used effectively.  It can increase your greenality! Elizabeth lets you in on her methods to help project managers be more effective through the use of the technology, understand how other teams and individuals use technology to be able to tap into that enormous resource, and be aware of their own online presence and use that awareness to improve career prospects.

You probably know that Elizabeth is a force to be reckoned with.  Her previous book,  Project Management in the Real World, is a case-study based book covering what project managers really need to know to make their projects successful.  She also writes a very popular, award winning blog  A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, and was named one of the Top 25 Online Influencers in talent management by HR Examiner.   We highly recommend this book and urge you to check it out at PMI®, Amazon, B&N or your favorite book seller.

“Opt Out of Print” screams the insert in the most recent PM Network Magazine.  “Do your part to conserve resources.”  That is a terrific idea with green intent.  And, conserving resources doesn’t only mean saving trees.  If everyone decided to read PM Network electronically, it would mean saving the human resources required to put together a print journal.  Even if everyone didn’t “opt out of print”, only if some did, it would save trees, transportation (reduce carbon footprint), human resources, etc.  Yet, the bottom-line is the bottom-line.  How much would going electronic with PM Network , even some of the readers, save in $ resources for PMI®?  Just like we say in our book, going green is good for the environment and good for the bottom-line.

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.