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

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that there is more to life than just work, work, work.  In 1890, Yosemite National Park was created.  It’s not that a beautiful place did not exist prior to 1890, it did as shown in the 1878 watercolor of the Digger Indians by Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming en, Indian Life at Mirror Lake.  National parks are great stress relievers.  No matter what your preference, camping, fishing, hiking, birding, photography and more, you can do any or all of it in the myriad of state and national parks scattered across our country.

Although, we certainly can’t get away from projects no matter where we go.  Not only is the designating of a state, local or national park a project, especially for those directly involved in a project like Yosemite, like Galen Clark and John Muir, or the president at the time Benjamin Harrison, but it will create more projects.  Fast forward to present day and the jobs initiative.  While we have not read all of the text of the proposed jobs initiatives, we haven’t seen anything on improving the infrastructure of our national parks.  While it may be that it is buried in there someplace, it probably isn’t.  Maybe it is because it only affects a specific, and small, group of people who use the parks.  We have a feeling that the number may be larger than we think.  According to the latest (2010) figures, more than 281,300,000 people visited our national parks.  Just like this website, however, they may not be all “unique” visits.  But still, 281+ million people per year is nothing to sneeze at, since the total population of the US in 2009 was approximately 307 million people.

But let’s not lose sight of the real issue here.  The question is, if there were infrastructure projects instituted as part of a jobs initiative, what is the economic, social and environmental ripple effects.  Just to give one example:  how many people would be employed during the infrastructure improvement?  If there are improvements, how many additional people would use the facilities?  How many people depend on the visitors themselves; e.g. restaurants, camping/rv suppliers and hotels surrounding the parks?  What are the effects on the environment?  Most importantly to us, these projects will need to be managed.  The different projects will lie along the green spectrum, from green by definition to green in general.

Let’s keep an eye on any jobs initiatives.  They will create projects! 

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?

One of our project management author colleagues – one Kimberly Wiefling – she of Scrappy Project Management and other great Scrappy books, recently posted on Facebook on the subject of men leaving the toilet seat up, and how that might disqualify them from ‘running the world’.

We refuse to get into THAT specific argument with her, especially since a full and detailed survey of all EarthPM male employees and their spouses revealed a 100% compliance with toilet seat etiquette.

However: she did bring “up” (excuse the pun, but this is a semi-lighthearted, semi-tongue-in-cheek posting anyway) a very interesting point which actually has a takeaway message for project managers.

Let’s look at the “project” of using the bathroom for, well, we’ll call it, elimination of waste.

The project (hopefully) is of fairly short duration, and has a very specific outcome.  The outcome: you leave the bathroom refreshed, relieved, and cleaned (and a little lighter).

So if you’re a male, and you are taking care of your “project” in a standing-up fashion (see, we’re keeping it clean here), after you flush and wash your hands, you’re done with the “project”, right?

No sir, you are not.

Not if there are other stakeholders in the living or working space who are seated for their “projects”, no.  You are not really done, because you have considered only the outcome of the project. You should be thinking beyond the project and toward the overall objectives of the living/working space – which includes a good relationship with persons of all genders!

So, if you remember to put the seat back down, you have made that connection that must be made between strategy/objectives and steady state operations.   By putting the seat down, you have thought about the environment of the project (the bathroom, and the living space) rather than simply your “project”.  You have thought about sustaining stakeholder relationships and not just relieving pressure on your internal organs.

This is what we’ve been preaching, and it took Kimberly to put it forward in a concise, graphic sort of way.

In fact (and this is for the sake of comedy) we have already said that the “People, Planet, Profits” expression needed another “P”, and we did that by adding Projects to it – to get the quadruple bottom line.  I wonder if Ms. Wiefling has discovered the quintuple bottom line – the fifth P being, well, er, Putting The Seat Down.  Ha!  You thought we were going to say something else, didn’t ya!

You really should give Kim Wiefling’s books a shot.  We use Scrappy Project Management in our Essentials of PM training class, as a counterpoint to the PMBOK® Guide.  Her new book is called Scrappy Women in Business: Living Proof that Bending the Rules Isn’t Breaking the Law.

Give it a chance.  Perhaps you can read it while…  never mind…

Bridge to Nowhere, Bridge to Somewhere

Our local project is certainly not a bridge to nowhere.  Portsmouth, New Hampshire and the seacoast area are popular commuter destinations.  However, Portsmouth is a very expensive area to live.  As a result, most commuters live to the west of Portsmouth.  Between the town and the suburbs is a major river and an estuary.  There is an old, narrow, four-lane bridge located about at the junction of the estuary, Little Bay, and the river, the Piscataqua, although it is really on the upstream side of the drainage from Little Bay.  The bridge has out lived its usefulness.

The bridge to the left is the old bridge.  The bridge to the right is the old, old bridge.  This is an extremely environmentally sensitive area.  To the right is Little Bay and if you travel far enough up the channel in Little Bay, you reach Great Bay http://www.armofthesea.info/.  There are also 7 major rivers that feed Great Bay, Lamprey, Squamscott, Cocheco, Bellamy, Salmon Falls, Oyster, and Winnicut Rivers.  It is a significant drainage area.  American Shad and Alewives head up those rivers to spawn.  Striped bass, bluefish and others transit through these bridges on their way into Great Bay.  All that said, let’s look at the bridges.

Ultimately, the new bridge combined with the rehab of the old bridge will carry 8 lanes of traffic (4 and 4).  So a new 4 lane bridge will be constructed between the old bridge and the old, old bridge.  The old bridge will be rehab to provide the added four lanes, and the old, old bridge will be rehabbed for pedestrian and bicycle traffic.  Whew that is a mouthful!

This is a rendering of the new and rehabbed bridges all together.  So what does that mean to sustainable project management?  We are not part of the management team for this bridge,  so we don’t know if the project will be management in a sustainable way, but we can hope.  What we can tell you from our research is that we applaud the efforts for a sustainable product of the project.  How can we tell, you might ask?  Well, by rehabbing the old and the old, old bridge, the thinking to us is life cycle assessment.  What will we do with the product of the project once it has outlived its usefulness?  In this case it is redesign, reuse, and recycle.

Again, we don’t know how the project manager will run his or her team, for instance will they minimize the use of paper, will the team be efficient with their energy use, cloud computing, laptops, etc.  But we can see that they are conducting environmental risk assessment in a reasonable way, “many design alternatives were evaluated to achieve the transportation purpose and need of the project.  The environmental impacts for those alternatives were evaluated to balance the transportation needs and the impacts to the environmental resources.”  As we’ve said many times, you may not necessarily go with the most environmentally friendly solution, but those solutions should at the least be evaluated.  There was wetland mitigation, stream restoration, and methods to reduce vehicle idling time, hard acceleration, and stopping time.  Also, consideration was given to the reduction of the overall footprint of the roadway crossing.  Additionally, there was lots of consideration of the human aspect of the effects of the project, keeping one bridge open while the other is constructed, shifting to the newly constructed bridge, a “Traffic and Incident Management Plan.”  I would have liked to see the “incident management plan” for BP, wouldn’t you?

So what are we missing?  A few of the questions we would ask is, how green is your project being run, for one?  The next questions would be about the product of the project like; what kind of surface material are you using? Is it from recycled material?  Is it designed to provide a minimum of drag on vehicle tires?  Is there a mitigation plan for the runoff from cars that are leaking fluids?  You can probably think of another hundred questions about the sustainability of the product of the project, but you get the gist!  I am sure that a lot of our questions could be answered by New Hampshire DOT and the Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc.’s Design Team. What we assert is that there is a lot to sustainable management including the product of the project and the process and that the project management team considers the breath of sustainability.

This is an interesting question we’ve paraphrased from a great article by Peter Singer in a recent Wall Street Journal.  Peter considers that we will not hurt the world’s poor as long as industrialized nations are willing to make sacrifices.  Bjørn Lomborg answers that we will harm the poor if we listen to the “green extremists”.  Who has the best argument?

This, to us, is a potential conflict with one of The Natural Step’s sustainability principles.  Principal Four states “eliminate our contribution to conditions that undermine people’s capacity to meet their basic needs.”  While “eliminating our contributions to progressive buildup of substances extracted, and chemicals produced, and physical degradation” are we depressing people’s ability to make a living?  That is the dilemma.  Can we stimulate those economies while trying to green the world?

The answer may truly lie with our ability to do both, and that we must.  It will be a vicious cycle if we don’t do both.  According to the article, industrialized nations must make sacrifices to lift the world’s poor.  If they don’t, then all of the issues that make things worse for the environment will continue.  The premise is that the poorer nations are the ones that have the most significant population growth, which put more pressure on the environment.  We pointed that out in our book as one of the “problem drivers and indicators” of the green wave, along with rapidly developing nations and resource degradation and loss of biodiversity.  These are all related.  Rapidly developing countries are where the poorer people are, and the pressure to harvest rain forests, for instance, to provide firewood, income, and farmland, is felt the most.  SO according to Peter, the easy answer is to reduce poverty.  The difficult question is how.

If we stimulate growth and we stimulate employment, we create projects that may be in conflict with environmental concerns.  If we build schools and housing, we take away land; maybe wetlands, old growth forests, and critical habitat.  If we stimulate farming to help people feed themselves, again, we potentially can destroy entire ecosystems.  Peter points out that “…there is no single currency by which we can measure the benefit of saving human lives against the cost of destroying forests that provide the last remaining refuges for free-living chimpanzees, orangutans, and Sumatran tigers.”

We can see that here is a bitter pill, here, to be swallowed universally, wherever you are on what we like to call the “Hugger-Hummer” spectrum.  Less is what we need to strive for, “less energy from fossil fuels, use less air conditioning and less heat, fly and drive less, and eat less meat.”  When we say universally, we mean the developing countries may need to compromise on what they are striving to do, too.  It is a global issue and needs to be dealt with, globally.  Green projects, or greening of projects if you will, go a long way to helping.  By leading the efforts to increase a project’s greenality, green project managers will increase efficiencies and reduce the use of those scarce resources we talk about in our book.  Remember, it is not just projects that are green by definition, developing alternate energy sources, as an example, all projects can benefit by viewing it through the green project manager’s environmental lens.

More about Bjørn Lomborg response in a future post.

You’d think we would be in favor of unplugging.  That is, saving energy, preventing waste…you know, being “green”.

And we are in favor of unplugging.

But there’s an exception - a big one.

That exception has to do with a huge source of power for Project Managers, a renewable source of endless project energy that often, as shown in the sophisticated schematic diagram on the right, goes untapped.  What is this power of which we speak?

It’s simple – it’s the power of your own organization. And it’s right there ‘above’ and ‘below’ you.

Let’s start at the top. We refer to the power in your organization’s Purpose, Identity, and Long-term Intentions.  These are the Top Leadership ideals that are often publicly stated, and always should be communicated to shareholders and employees.  They give “ideation” to  your organization.

Now let’s jump down to the bottom.  Your organization’s heartbeat, its flow, is its operations.  This is the day-to-day reality of your business.

And where are we, the project, program, and portfolio managers of the world?  We, dear friends, are where the rubber (the strategy that comes from Ideation) meets the road (the operations).

What’s all this coming from?

Below you see the Strategic Execution Framework or SEF (courtesy and copyright of IPS), which is used as the basis of Stanford University’s Center for Professional Development’s Certificate in Advanced Project Management.  We were lucky enough to attend one of their courses where this was presented.  It struck a chord with us because we have always preached that project managers can gain power by aligning with the organization’s strategy, and often overlook this.  Furthermore we have insisted that project managers often put on blinders when it comes to the “end” of their project, failing to connect with (or plug in to) the operations of the company.  Why?  We’re programmed to consider a project as having a definitive beginning and end – and that end occurs when we hand over the final deliverable.

Only “final” is not so final, after all.  When a project, say a bridge, is “done”, that only means that it can BEGIN sending pedestrians and/or vehicles over a river.  Does this mean we, as project managers, have to continue monitoring each car as it goes over the bridge?  Of course not.  But it DOES mean that we should think about the long-term disposition of the bridge in the steady state.  It will help us identify risk, connect with stakeholders that we mightn’t have thought of, and in general do a better job of creating sustainable projects.  In the bridge example, we assert that the project manager should consider the paving material, not just for its ability to provide improved mileage for vehicles, but also for its ability to withstand heating and cooling without breaking up and requiring repaving every year.  At least ask these questions.  It will help you connect to the operations ‘below’ and the ‘long term initiatives’ above.

Take a look at the SEF (you forgot already?  It stands for Strategic Execution Framework) below.  See how important it is for an organization to plug together all of the pieces if they want to get to a sustainable steady-state.  And guess who is at the center of it all?  You.  The well-connected project, program, and/or portfolio manager.

What we expound here are great general PM principles and practices, and by no coincidence, are great green (or better-stated) sustainable PM principles.  Even Stanford’s naming of the areas is important.  Notice “Long-term Intentions”.  Long-term.  Smacks of the word “sustainable”, doesn’t it?  How about “operations”?  Hmm, that word also implies ongoing, enduring…. yes, there it is – sustainability, again.

So why wouldn’t the middle portion of this flowchart (where we PMs live) not ALSO think sustainably?  We should!  We need to plug in!

• Connect upwards: You don’t have to be a top corporate HQ leader or CEO to know and live the organizations’ strategies.
  • Read and re-read your organization’s mission, vision and values.  Check messaging from company leaders.  Of course we would steer you to messages on sustainability and the environment, but you can derive power for your projects’ charters from any of the messages at the top of the SEF.

• Connect downwards: You can, and should, consider our discipline of PM as distinct from operations.  But that doesn’t mean we have to ignore them.
  • Get to know the people who will operate the product of your project
  • Understand the set of users as a stakeholder group and drink in their requirements and expectations as fodder for risk identification
  • Think life-cycle.  What happens to the final product of the operations of your product in the long term?  Can you learn anything with that mindset?  We assert that you absolutely can.

• PLUG IN! Peers in both directions are working towards sustainability, both economic and ecological.  We need to pair with these colleagues and learn from both.

Have a look at the SEF, we provide a large version below.

And think, really THINK about whether you are unplugged – and losing a precious source of project power.

So – are you unplugged?

Get connected.

Read our book – it has several chapters on these subjects.

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.

Dow Chemical, realizing the potential inventiveness and proximity to the process of their employees, has initiated a program to seed $100M worth of energy efficiency projects, fueled by employee ideas.

In this story posted yesterday at greenbiz.com, we find the following key bit: “Dow will split the $100 million among its business units and manufacturing sites that propose projects with the biggest energy and greenhouse gas reductions along with accelerated cost savings.  So not only is Dow looking to its employees for ways to be more efficient and conserve energy, it’s putting them in competition with one another, in a sense, to lure out the most promising projects.”

Note the prolific use of the word project - this is no coincidence. Should you – as a project manager – take note of this initiative?  No, absolutely not, unless you’d like to reap some of that seed money and find and/or keep a good paying job.

Of course you should ‘take note’.  More than that, you should be building your knowledge and vocabulary in sustainability and in sustainability project management  (and we would send you right here to do that).  Beyond any altruistic reasons (and there are also plenty of them) we argue that this is another example of the business reason to take notice, and even better, take action.  The leaders of your company get this.  So it’s simple: you need to get on board, too.

So…. aside from that, what do you think of our new, fresh web look?  Any comments?

With all due respect to the musical South Pacific, we were reading the Boston Globe the other day and saw an article on a technology that makes a lot of sense.  Why not get rid of the problem before it becomes a problem.  It would seem easier than trying to get rid of it after. It’s like we say about greenality, plan it in!

According to eassortment , “The technical definition of fossil fuels is “incompletely oxidized and decayed animal and vegetable materials, specifically coal, peat, lignite, petroleum and natural gas”.  The technical definition of fuel is “material that can be burned or otherwise consumed to produce heat”. In our modernized western world, fossil fuels provide vast luxurious importance. We retrieve these fossil fuels from the ground and under the sea and have them converted into electricity. Approximately 90% of the world’s electricity demand is generated from the use of fossil fuels. Combustion of these fossil fuels is considered to be the largest contributing factor to the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In fact it is believed that energy providers are the largest source of atmospheric pollution today. There are many types of harmful outcomes which result from the process of converting fossil fuels to energy. Some of these include air pollution, water pollution, accumulation of solid waste, not to mention the land degradation and human illness.”

According to several sources there is between 1.4 and  2.5 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas in the United States.  A significant amount and if managed correctly could greatly reduce our need for foreign oil.  However, even though natural gas may be one of the cleaner fuels, when it is burned, it produces carbon dioxide, water, and energy.  It’s just a fact of combustion.  However, a new technology (project) developed by a Canadian company, Atlantic Hydrogen Inc. of Fredericton, New Brunswick, may be able to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent and can capture that black gunk (solid carbon), “a substance that can be used in making tires, laser printer toner, and other products.”  Makes sense to us.  Let’s get it out before it gets in and, if we have a usable byproduct, all the better.  Read the full article here.  My question to you is: Where in the “green” spectrum is this project (Green by Intent; Green by Project Impact; Green by Product Impact, or Green General)?