Sometimes volunteer efforts are the most effective way to lead companies to change

Green teams: Silicon Valley employees use peer pressure, creative ideas to help the environment - SiliconValley.com

If you're going to build...

It's hard to imagine (for dedicated greenies like me, at least), but even with the building downturn, buildings are going up, and they're not all green. Yet. If you're planning a building, please please go to the greenbuilding.com site now! Buy a book there while you're there, and save yourself some money now, and in the future.

Trading in the gas-hog SUV: It's not just about the money!

Or it shouldn't be. Just as Congress and some candidates are scrambling to outdo each other with plans to lower oil and gasoline prices, so too are newspapers reporting on their readers' strategies -- all while forgetting this spring's (healthy) obsession with the evident effects of global warming. So The New York Times, no doubt with the aid of Edmunds.com's PR firm or staff, has challenged the "Ditch the Gas-Guzzler" stampede from SUVs to more efficient cars, complete with a reference to Edmunds.com's online fuel cost calculator.

While the gullible majority of the U.S. public apparently believes that opening up more off-shore drilling will lower gas prices soon, Obama, among others, has gingerly tried to point out that we need to get ourselves off oil pronto, so drilling is not the solution.

So what about that gas-guzzler? If your small business does need a vehicle of that size, look into the following strategies to lower your costs: switching to biodiesel, if you have a diesel engine. Use mapping software to plan your trips and routes more efficiently. UPS reportedly has been eliminating left turns because so many of them involve idling for minutes, waiting for a traffic signal or break in traffic. Keep tires properly inflated. Keep those hotrod drivers of yours from trying to beat sports cars away from the stop sign. And if it is time for a new vehicle, look for biodiesel or flexfuel, hybrid or all-electric delivery vehicles. Yes, watch your expenses, but also consider the value to the fight against global warming. And hey, maybe a new administration will give all current owners a tax break of some kind. You sure shouldn't be punished or deprived for having been a leader in your community or industry.

Starter list

Here's a great reminder list of what we (US, other countries) need to do. It's a bit bigger than (most) companies can handle, but it's good to know it's a feasible list:
Stein's list of next steps to combat global warming.

Turning "Green" Wishes into Products and Services

The whole spectrum for minimizing the impacts of global warming: research and monitoring, saving energy, developing new renewable, non-carbon energy sources, replacing existing energy systems, etc., presents so many opportunities for innovation it might not seem important to analyze the market. But for innovations to be successful, they need to make sense, and these folks are nothing but sensible!

Clayton Christensen, of the Harvard Business School, and his band of merry men and women at Innosight.com, have helped many companies understand the origins and ways to achieve disruptive innovation by formulating potential target markets not as psychographic profiles, or technological advances but in terms of a person's (or company's) "jobs to be done."

Others have been analyzing this approach, too, and one of the first, possibly preceding Christensen, is Strategyn.com, headed by Anthony W. Ulwick. In the May issue of Harvard Business Review (treading on Christensen's own turf!), he and senior consultant Lance A. Bettencourt show how to dissect a job into components that help uncover the specific opportunities for innovation. Their "job map" applies universally, although the time spent on each of the eight steps varies. The central step is the execution step, which is what most people think of as the "job:" performing surgery, for example, or washing one's hands. But before you can do the central step, you need to define or plan what you're going to do, locate or gather materials, prepare, confirm all is ready. And afterwards you need to confirm, adjust, perhaps troubleshoot, prepare for the next iteration.

As you look more closely at each of these steps, you might come up with these questions on your own, but Ulwick and Bettencourt give some suggestions:
* Can the job be executed in a more efficient or effective sequence?
* Do some customers struggle more with executing the job than others (for instance, novices versus experts, older versus younger?)
* Is it possible to eliminate the need for particular inputs or outputs from the job?

And so on. What ideas have we sparked already?

Trying to involve lots of people, and make money at the same time?

Try "Smart Startups: How Entrepreneurs and Corporations Can Profit by Starting Online Communities" by David Silver. David is an angel investor who thinks 10,000 social networks will blossom in the next two years, and wants his readers to be among the ones who start them. He'll invest, it seems, if you follow his guidelines, and you'll avoid venture capitalists and make more money.

The key is to appreciate we humans' social needs (support, validation, status, etc.), then build a business that gives people enough value that they're willing to pay in advance, thus providing float -- one of the most beautiful words in the English language (paraphrased). Your cost of goods? Zero, if you have given people a reason to contribute.

Newspapers want to be green too

Newspapers have a big green problem: to produce their main product means taking something green (a tree) and spending a lot of energy (and water, and toxic emissions) to turn it something white (paper), then spending more fuel to transport it to each city from the paper plant, then more fuel to deliver it to each household -- and then hope that it gets recycled -- albeit at a lower value point than the original white paper. Many papers have found at least partially recycled paper sources, but even that still has to be shipped in bulk and then redelivered by gas or diesel powered vehicles.

So what to do?

The Newspaper Association has a CD for sale with a roundup of tips from member newspapers: Green Ideas.

Among the ideas are ones for just lowering the energy consumption and reducing waste: thinner paper (also cheaper), managing the press runs better so that there's less immediate waste of spoiled papers off the press, switching to soybean ink (if they haven't already), and turning off lights and improving energy management in general in their buildings.

Other ideas include switching to hybrid or biodiesel delivery vehicles, cutting some long-distance deliveries out altogether (which were probably money-losers before $4 gas anyway), and offering recycling to their own customers.

Then there is replacing the print edition with an electronic edition. This hasn't gone as well, because free web sites can't seem to earn enough money to cover the nut of editorial salaries, and subscription-required sites just haven't got much traction, in the sea of free news and advertising resources. But it's a start.

What are the "crown jewels" of U.S. R&D doing against global warming?

The nation's federal laboratories got their start with nuclear bombs (well, really with agriculture in the late 1800s), spread (a little) to encompass nuclear energy -- and starting from studies of the effects of radiation on human body tissue, joined the biotech races. In fact, putting aside the nuclear weapons work (not an easy thing to do), the weight of federal research funding overall has been towards human health for decades now.

And despite the Bush Administration's lack of interest in science generally, the labs have kept an eye on real world trends and are well aware of the need to show some progress on technologies to combat global warming.

So the magazine about lab inventions of commercial interest, "Innovation," published by TVC, the tech transfer via venture capital affiliate of Sandia National Laboratories, devoted most of its February-March 2008 issue to the subject. I'll highlight a few over the next few posts.

Sandia: "Reversing combustion." The Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5 for blessedly short -- now do you have any doubt these guys are scientists?) can take apart the carbon-oxygen bond in carbon dioxide, turning it into carbon monoxide. They had started with a plan to free hydrogen from water for the so-called Hydrogen Economy, so now they have the raw ingredients for making a liquid petroleum-like fuel. Now I remember this much from chemistry classes: there are a couple of energy hills there. So Rich Diver and his colleagues will use solar energy.

Unfortunately, they think the process is 15-20 years away from commercialization. Maybe if they got a bit of funding, say private funding, it could go faster? Contact: Craig E. Tyner, manager, licensing and IP management, cetyner@sandia.gov, 505-844-3340.

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Greenwashing vs. Green Being

For a while there I just couldn't cope with, much less compete with the flood of green references as Earth Day approached, and even now as it slowly recedes, so I'm rethinking the value of this blog. More specifically, over the next few days while I"m on vacation in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, I'll be letting thoughts come into my mind without pressure. I'm hoping I'll come up with a new distinctive focus, and one hopes, value for it by then.

In the mean time, let's talk about greenwashing. Companies have clearly read the (green) tea leaves, and every media outlet from Advertising Age to Fox Television to The Harvard Business Review has a green glow to it these days.

While the Google Trends (nee zeitgeist) search doesn't yet have enough data to track the term, there are already sites devoted to debunking or at least tracking the claims. I like Greenwashingindex.com for its "advertising academic" approach to ads spotted by readers

, but there are plenty more.

Of course this is important, and I hope companies that are caught are exposed and punished in the marketplace for it, but I also hope it doesn't turn everyone cynical. There's plenty of cynicism as it is. In fact, I think that even greenwashing is on balance a good thing, because it means that companies are aware that's what their customers and prospects want. Naturally, some companies late to the party will try the quick and dirty approach, but I think the movement is real enough to withstand a certain amount of failures, even cynical ones. What do you think?

See you soon!

Businesses thriving on green practices

It's a good thing when marketing experts give examples of companies that are "Growing Beyond Green Marketing" -- and embodying sustainable practices in their products, services, and internal practices. Peppers & Rogers, of 1-to-1 marketing fame, give case studies (brief, but inspiring) of several companies, typified by Pizza Fusion, now with 63 branches delivering organic pizza in thoroughly-branded Priuses, pizza baked in ovens that convert excess heat into electricity and whose shops boast counters made of recycled soda cans. In addition to the wrapped Priuses, as much of their marketing as possible is done online, to avoid wasting paper. Find more at 1to1media.com/links/green.html.

What shade of green are top CEOs?

Let's see: seasick green. That would be Red (really) Cavaney, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute: "I think there's no question that there is going to be some successor fuel to oil and gas. The issues is that the transition, for which nobody knows the duration, be managed...[Ethanol] is going to play an important role, but it's got to be a longer transition..."

Envy green: "The U.S. ambassador to Sweden is raising money for Swedish companies -- and the U.S. is glad he's doing so." (Okay, so to call it "envy" is cynical; let's make it envoy.)

Forest green: Jim Jungwirth, CEO of Jefferson State Forest Products is the poster boy. "The same movement that drove towns like Hayfork, Calif. to the brink of collapse is now giving them a second chance at life."

And of course, money green: John Doerr, partner in VC firm Kleiner, Perkins: "The internet market, $100 billion or so; the energy market, $6 trillion. This is the mother of all markets."

--From The Wall Street Journal's special section drawn from its Eco-nomics conference.

Look out! If the Wall Street Journal is on the scene, someone will make some money!

Of course, it's hardly news to readers of The Wall Street Journal or other publications that there's gold in them thar green hills. Nevertheless, it must warm the cold black hearts of bankers and financiers everywhere ((it's a geojoke if you've seen the sculpture on B of A Plaza, San Francisco) to see a special section devoted to the topic:
"The push to curb global-warming emissions is starting to redraw the industrial landscape, and in doing so it has already begun to create new winners and loserhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifs.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif Job One for a CEO: Exploit the opportunities and shift the costs to someone else."

I have a feeling that you don't need to be a subscriber to read it online: Environmental Capital.

Greening IT: it's more than virtualization

Although that looks to be a big chunk of the solution.

Information Week (Dec.17/24, 2007 -- I know, I know, I dig into my reading stack without regard to the arrow of time) refers to studies by Jonathan Koomey of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that estimate energy use of servers doubled from 2000 to 2005, reaching parity with all residential TVs, requiring 14 1,000 megawatt powerplants. By 2010, add another 10.

So what's being done? In the same issue, the cover story is Innovators & Influencers, a list which goes beyond the "usual suspects." One of them is Larry Vertal, senior strategist for Advanced Micro Devices, and head of the Green Grid consortium of IT companies, many of them fierce rivals.

Virtualization has only been implemented on 2% of the world's servers. One subtle change that will help drive conservation in the server rooms: charging the electricity they consume to the IT budget! That will concentrate the CIO's attention.

Retrofitting existing vehicle fleet

It took me a while to find the Web site for Better Place, Shai Agassi's electric car company, since the Business Week and several other press mentions didn't see fit to include the URL. So I ended up publishing my blog post without the link. Finally -- here it is: Project Better Place.

And once there, what did I find in the discussion area, but a proposal for how to retrofit existing cars, just as I asked: Smart Electric Retrofit.

Note that a simple Google search did not turn up a freestanding site for these anonymous inventors, but it did turn up a couple of others: EV Power Systems and a reference to a site that actually has reported a number of efforts in this direction: Green Car Congress.

Okay, the potential carbon-free energy is there...

Just in case you were wondering, the potential wind and solar energy of the U.S. is sufficient to replace total U.S. consumption -- state by state. The calculations were done by Harvard environmental studies professor Michael McElroy and his graduate students, and summarized in Harvard Magazine, March-April 2008. In fact, even the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, of the Dept. of Energy, calculates the total potential wind-generated electricity alone at twice the nation's annual consumption. McElroy includes the energy requirements of conversion of a majority of the U.S. car and truck fleet to plug-in hybrids.

McElroy has a long and distinguished cv, so I'm willing to accept that all this is true. Two little problems remain: how do you store vast quantities of wind (and solar) to balance the production with the consumption? And two, how do we get from here to there? Granted, his goal was to show simply that the energy is there -- and to take away one specific argument from the ostriches, who retreat argument by argument. See McElroy's faculty page for links to his work.

Still, what I'd like to find is someone working on how to convert existing cars and trucks to using less carbon-based fuel. Just adding one of the Prius's neat tricks, turning the power off at stops -- and letting pressure on the accelerator restart, would help!

If You Bought Barron's Five Green "Cleaning Up" Stocks, Did You Clean Up?

On July 15, 2007, Barron's featured five companies that it said represented the non-frothy part of the green boom. How are they doing so far? Okay, to be fair, Barron's writer Mark Ververka said you should hold them for a decade. But life's too short not to peek at them a little ahead of maturity. Okay, a lot ahead of maturity.

Sunpower (SPWR): spinoff of Cypress Semiconductor, makes high-efficiency solar cells, and has the top spot in Spain, a big plant in Korea, and is building the U.S.'s largest plant. July price: $69.80, the 52-week high and 36 times projected 2008 earnings; Merrimack Curham's target is $75.00. Flash-forward to Friday, February 15: $79.44. Sounds good, right? Except one of those bumps Barron's warned about was a nice one: the stock topped $150 in November.

Environmental Power Corp. (EPG): "a big bet on...emissions caps and the trading of pollution credits in the U.S." July price: $8.63. Analyst Brian Tanous of MC has a target of $16, "or $23 if the value of carbon is twice what's expected." February 15: $4.72. Can they hang on until the new administration a year from now?

Fueltech (FTEK): air pollution controls that make power plants run more efficiently. $32.67 in July, heading to $41, said Tanous; $17.80 in February.

PICO Holdings (PICO): Buying up water rights. July price: $43.66. February: $30.80. Volatility is okay, says Tanous, since it's an asset play on its way to $58.

Composite Tech (CPTC.OB): An alternate windmill technology to GE's and carbon-fiber power transmission lines. $1.45 in July; $1.10 now...Barron's said it carried significant risk back in July, so you were warned!

We'll check back in a few years...if we can wait that long!

Composite Tech (

What does Natural Capitalism mean?

Natural Capitalism is the title of a 1999 book by Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins, founders of the Rocky Mountain Institute , and Paul Hawken, co-founder of Smith & Hawken garden and house retailer. But what does it mean?

The root is the observation that most businesses consume (transform, ruin for other uses) natural resources without having to account for them as they do financial capital or human capital. But nature, the environment, those forests cut down for paper, the oceans fished, and plains fertilized and pesticized (I think I invented that word!) for too much sugar (corn) and protein (beef), also provide other "services" such as "water storage, habitat and regulation of the atmosphere and climate." L, L & H reported calculations in the journal Nature "conservatively estimate the value of all the earth's ecosystem services to be at least $33 trillion a year. That's close to the gross world product, and it implies a capitalized book value on the order of half a quadrillion dollars. What's more, for most of these services, there is no known substitute at any price, and we can't live without them." *

In other words, if these services were on the balance sheet, companies would need to behave very differently. How should they behave?

1. "Dramatically increase the productivity of natural resources." With the incentive of measurement, companies have already found ways to reduce waste by factors of a 100.

2. "Shift to biologically inspired production models." Nature doesn't recognize the concept of waste; everything is feedstock for another process. Manufacturing can find many opportunities to do the same.

3. "Move to a solutions-based model." Instead of selling a car, which immediately begins to depreciate and deteriorate, sell personal transportation. All of a sudden, the need to lower the capital costs and production waste, and make sure the product can be recycled at the same or even higher value -- instead of lower (turning water bottles into park benches), becomes obvious to companies.

4. "Reinvest in natural capital...Restore, sustain and expand the planet's ecosystems." After all that's what businesses do with financial capital, and even human capital (training).

The article and the book continue with example after example showing how these can be applied: replacing a 95 hp pump with a 7 hp one -- a 92% reduction, for example. How? Replace thin pipes with fatter ones -- but wait, the smoother flow in larger pipes don't save enough to justify the higher capital cost. Right? Not if you also include "the lower capital cost of the smaller pumping equipment that would be needed...pumps, motors, and electrical components."

And then: straighten the path of the pipes. The engineer laid out the pipes first, then position the various tanks, boilers, etc. Bends increase friction, make installation more expensive, and cost less to insulate.

This is whole-system thinking.


*Quotes from the Harvard Business Review article "A Road Map for Natural Capitalism" from 1999, and now part of "The Best of HBR."

From Sierra Club to Wal-Mart to Saatchi & Saatchi

Just caught up with the announcement from January 31 that Act Now Productions, the sustainability consulting firm founded by Adam Werbach, has been acquired by the world's largest (or is it second-largest) advertising agency, and renamed "Saatchi & Saatchi S" for sustainability. Check the videos at the launch site, and at the quickly rebranded ActNowProductions.com site.

Adam Werbach first became famous for being picked to head the 500,000 member Sierra Club at the age of 23, after being a Sierra Club organizer in high school and college. He was hugely successful in increasing membership and critically, in lowering the median age. Then he became notorious (on top of his fame) for deciding to accept a challenge from Wal-Mart to help them become a sustainable company. The clinching argument was simple: how could he turn down a chance to impact the largest company on earth, with one of the most extensive networks of suppliers.

His approach was to show the employees ("associates") of Wal-Mart why and how to make their own lives sustainable-- thus inspiring them to do their part to help change the company. This approach is being adopted by Saatchi & Saatchi.

The problem, of course, is parallel to the arguments against working with Wal-Mart: just as Wal-Mart's mission is to sell stuff cheap (and for recent decades, hang the consequences on suppliers and their staff, the communities in which they locate, and their own staff), S&S's mission is to help companies sell more stuff -- at whatever price. Both missions are fundamentally incompatible with a truly sustainable society.

And yet...IF, and that's not large enough --

IF

S&S takes on the mission of changing the mission of its clients...that would be impressive. To say the least!

Information is Power

Or information about power is empowering...or to be more precise: power-saving. That's the message of the Fast Company blog, quoting Dan Hill's blog, City of Sound. Meters that tell you how much energy you're using should help you save. Both links will um, link you to a selection of products you can buy.

Stop heat from going down the drain with the water

Business Week's "Green Biz" editor Adam Aston found this device, but didn't provide the link to the manufacturer. It must work on the same principle as the legs of Arctic terns and other birds that stand on ice but don't freeze: heat exchange. Two pipes (blood vessels, in the case of the birds) close together, one carrying cold up and the other heat down. Each has a temperature gradient, but in inverted relationship to each other, so the actual temperature difference at any point is minimized, and thus little heat need be lost. I learned this principle in theoretical biology class some time ago. Quite some time ago.

Do you think there's enough coverage of all things green?

It may seem pervasive -- but it's not. Yet. No mention in my February issue of Inc. "The Handbook of the American Entrepreneur." But wait, surely there's something on the Web site?

Yes, in fact. And it begins: "Imagine asking today how the Internet affects business. It's an absurd question, like asking how electricity changed business. Asking the same about sustainability, it turns out, is equally absurd. Like the Internet, sustainability spurs innovation in everything, from how you see your business model to whether you see your employees (why not let them work at home more?)."

The only problem? It's a link from Fast Company, now owned by Mansueto Ventures, as is Inc. It's entitled "50 Ways to Green Your Company" and it's worth the read. But it's not in Inc.

Coping with recession now vs. global warming later

The short-term crisis vs. the longer-term one has always been at the center of business management. This time the long-term issue is a little larger in scope.

What are some ways to resolve the conflict between the two?

1. Split time and effort. So Google allows its staff one day a week -- 20% -- for undirected, presumably longer-term research. Small businesses will say that every hour of employee time counts, and there’s no equivalent “slack” in the ropes as there is in a larger company. I’m not convinced! Not that you can sacrifice social interaction to this cause any more than you can sacrifice responding to customers, but as an example, think how much time is spent in personal conversations, gossip, shopping online, etc. Yes, everyone knows employees who arrive early, sit down and start working, and don’t change the rhythm of their work effort until the day is done. But the rest of us hate that person! I think it’s possible and even urgent to schedule time for two new activities: innovation and long-term thinking; and reducing your carbon footprint. Maybe start with an hour each a week? Work away from your regular desk, if possible, to reduce the rubber band pull back to your routine.
2. Find short-term benefits to make swallowing the effort involved in dealing with long-term issues go down smoothly. Not sure what those might be! If compact fluorescents cost more than incandescents, short-term accounting will resist. But maybe some of the time you spend in point 1 can be devoted to research: are there rebates available which deliver a short-term benefit? Does showing your staff that you care about an issue they care about inspire them to work harder/smarter, and lower turnover?
3. Do you have a third?

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