More Success, Better People, More Profits…The Eco-conscious Way

This post has been provided by my good friend Debbie Zachry

20 June 2009 

Plan Designed by Leading Architect to Revive Staggering Economy-
As the market recession rolls on, the housing industry is one of the many trades at a standstill. Founded by distinguished architect Edward Mazria, Architecture 2030 is a “One Year 4.5 Million Jobs Investment Plan” to help America invest in green homes building and revamp present homes to make them more energy efficient.

A place to start

Mazria claims that the private building division is the biggest solution toward enlivening the United States economy and creating green jobs, as the industry accounts for about 10 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. Construction produces demand in every division of the economy such as wholesale, retail, distribution, manufacturing, constructing, banking, development and professional services; utilizing expensive products such as rubber, steel, glass, insulation, lumber, electrical appliances, heating/cooling appliances, fabrics, paint, windows, tile and metal.
Apart from tax credit incentives applied to first time home purchasers, the $787 billion stimulus funds didn’t do much to support the housing market; causing many American residential home builders to feel the impact of layoffs. The Architecture 2030 Plan entails energy efficiency incentive grant offerings to “buy down the interest rate” on home mortgages used to buy new energy efficient homes or to remodel exisiting homes, proposing a 1 percent full interest rate buydown for a new home that uses 50 percent less energy than present energy standards, or a home energy modification that would lower energy consumption of an already existing residence to 30 percent below current requirements.

For example, if your mortgage interest rate quote is 4.75 percent, the plan would offer an interest buydown which would lower the interest rate a full percentage point, to 3.75 percent. The Architecture 2030 Plan is one of intelligence and fervor which may possibly guide the way out of America’s lingering recession; we can only wait to see how the Obama Administration and Congress respond to this powerful proposal.

My German heritage and close ties to friends and family in Germany allow me to stay in touch on topics regarding the issues of sustainability, business, and economics, besides other subjects. Every once in a while I receive some amazing documents (in German) that are worth translating and bring to the attention of my readers and followers.

Solar Roof of BMW-Welt

As we have heard over and over again in the media, the world is suffering from recession and a global economic crisis. The impact of this crisis is different from country to country, and region to region, mainly because the systems of commerce are different. When Americans can pile up credit card debt across multiple cards from Visa, Master Card, and American Express, purchases made with credit cards by German customers are paid in full directly from their bank accounts at the end of each month. There is no such thing like credit card debt.

Similarly, there was no real housing bubble in Europe, except for Britain, which uses a similar system like the United States. Still, economies across the globe are suffering and one of the biggest impacts has come to the auto-industry.

Double-Cone Munich

We have all read and heard the stories about GM and Chrysler. All the money that was provided by the US government ultimately didn’t avoid bankruptcy for both of these former giants. Now the question is: What shall we do and what should we safe? Where does it make sense to spend more tax payer money?

A highly respected German magazine (Focus Money) recently compiled a special edition looking into the impact of alternative energy industries, specifically solar energy. Compared to the sunshine state, or places like Arizona, Nevada, Utah, California, and New Mexico, among others, Germany is not particularly blessed with sunshine. Still it is dominating the world market in solar technology.

World Sunshine Distribution Map

Here are some perplexing facts from the special edition of Focus Money:

• While more than $11 Billion have been spend to support Opel (a GM subsidiary) and pay for new car incentive programs directly by German tax payers, government funds are provided to energy companies (similar to PG&E or Edison) to subsidize the generation of green power only when system actually produce.
• There are now more jobs in Green Technology in Germany (1.2 Million) than in all engineering firms (approximately 1 Million) and the automobile industry (about 760.000).
• The cost for an average household to pay for the government subsidies to green energy generation is 1 cent per KW/h on the utility bill.
• The prices for solar system installed on privates homes fall 8% - 9% per year while the companies providing the systems still keep a profit margin of 20% plus.
• The solar and green technology industry is growing, even in the current crisis, while all other industries are either contracting or stagnating
• Investments in technology and research pay huge dividends. While wages in Germany are high compared to competitors in China and India, the German systems have top market share because they focus on quality and efficiency versus lower prices.
• A recent test solar system at the cutting edge of research produced a world record efficiency of 41% while typical systems in use reach 15- 17% efficiency.

In comparison to what has been happening in solar energy research and system installations in Europe, the US market is still very small. Wind energy installations have caught up by annual installation standards, although they have been hampered by the fact that US banks don’t lend money but use government handouts to prop up their balance sheets, something that doesn’t just apply for alternative energy companies, but all businesses and even private home owners who want to get financing.

Today Market Watch reported that it has never been harder to receive a small business loan in the US than it is in the current environment.

We will need a modern and successful auto industry in the future. That makes it sensible to provide some funding for it, provided the money will be used to find new approaches, new technologies, and new systems to protect the environment. At the same time it is important to realize that we should pay way more attention to modern technologies like solar, wind, and others.

The regions and countries we have traditionally competed with, like Germany, Britain, Italy, etc. have a huge lead in these technologies, and they are joined faster and faster by countries like China, India, and Japan.

There is nothing wrong with having more people employed inventing new solar and wind systems, installing them, and providing all the services related to them, than will ever again work in the US auto industry. Yes, the workers in these companies will use cars and trucks to get to work and back home. If we want to be successful and competitive in the future, our focus should shift and our funds should be spend where the potential is high, like solar, wind, wave energy, etc.

Preserving the old industries is like hoping to regain economic leadership with steam engines and horse buggies. That wouldn’t have worked in the 20th century, and hoping to use the broken auto industry to restart the economy will not work now.

We will know that we are on the right track when the cars we drive generate part of the green, clean energy, that power our houses, together with solar panels and other suitable systems.

Every once in a while you wonder if members of your community actually recognize what you do or if things are just coincidence. In the last post to this site, my friend Dr. Charles Savage and I had spoken about peak oil and he had provided me something he had written about the subject for me to post. I added some additional data and created an article around the topic of peak oil and its fellow “Peak brothers”.

Today, June 7, 2009, when reading the local paper Santa Barbara News Press, I found a story that looked to me like part 2 of what I had started recently. Here it is for you to enjoy, written by a fellow consultant and adjunct professor, and one of his collegues from University of California in Santa Barbara. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but maybe we are on to something the public should be aware of and begin to take appropriate action.

A call to action: Peak oil should be at the forefront of global concerns

We are being lulled to sleep by temporarily low oil prices caused by the global financial crisis. In fact, low prices may lead to an increased level of consumption and accelerated exhaustion of oil reserves.

“Peak oil,” the point at which global oil production peaks and then rapidly declines, is still not sufficiently on the minds of the American public and policymakers. We don’t know exactly when peak oil will arrive, but it is very likely to occur within 10 to 20 years. Some say that it may even be here now. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for example, wrote in a 2005 report: “We are at or near a peak in global oil production.” Peak oil should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Here’s why:

As soon as the global economy recovers, we can expect oil and other fossil fuel prices to shoot right back to where they were last summer, and probably far higher. The International Energy Agency (IEA), formed in the 1970s to act as an energy watchdog for western nations, stated in its 2008 World Energy Outlook:

“Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable . . .The future of human prosperity depends on how successfully we tackle the two central energy challenges facing us today: securing the supply of reliable and affordable energy; and effecting a rapid transformation to a low-carbon, efficient and environmentally benign system of energy supply.”

This is a call to action of the most urgent kind and we dare not ignore it.

United States oil production peaked in 1970 and has declined ever since, apart from a small and short uptick in the late 1970s, and oil imports have increased steadily. We now produce half of what we produced at our peak and import about 60 percent of our oil.

What is the global situation? The United Kingdom struck oil in the North Sea in the 1970s and became a major world producer. But oil production peaked without warning in 1999 and the U.K. suddenly transformed from an oil exporter into an oil importer just seven years later. U.K. North Sea oil production is now down almost 50 percent from its peak.

The same pattern occurred in Indonesia, formerly a member of OPEC. Norway, Russia and the majority of other oil producers also are past their peak. This is why the IEA regards the situation as so dire: existing oil fields are declining very quickly and new oil fields are not coming online quickly enough to replace them. The IEA concludes that we need three or four additional Saudi Arabias to meet projected demand by 2015.

Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a respected oil forecasting firm that has been very skeptical of the peak oil discussion, also recently forecast that oil projects worth 8 million barrels per day have been canceled or delayed since the global recession hit, exacerbating the mid-term situation further.

Oil production is not the only issue, however. Natural gas production will follow a similar production decline, probably just a few years behind oil. Natural gas currently constitutes about one-quarter of the world’s energy consumption, so this cannot be forgotten in the discussion.

As we’ve seen with food exports such as rice, when fears grow over the domestic availability of key resources (like food, oil or gas), nations will change export policies overnight. Last year, Thailand, the world’s second largest exporter of rice, temporarily outlawed rice exports.

The same thing could very well happen in oil- and gas-exporting nations. As soon as the global economy recovers and the supply shortage becomes clear, major exporters can simply forbid exports, keeping their precious oil and gas for their own use.

Similarly, some countries’ oil and gas exports are already declining quickly. Mexico, while struggling with a major drug war, saw its oil exports plummet more than 20 percent in 2008 due to the decline by 33 percent in just one year of its major field, Cantarell. Mexico is the third largest supplier of oil to the U.S.

Mexico’s oil revenue has fallen off a cliff as its oil exports and oil prices more generally have plummeted; 40 percent of Mexico’s government funding is oil revenue. Clearly, Mexico is facing a formidable future and may not survive as a functioning nation, a conclusion also reached by the U.S. military’s Joint Forces Command in a 2008 report.

The time is now to invest heavily in alternatives to oil and gas, such as energy efficiency, conservation, renewable energy and more efficient transportation. Our own dream is a sustainable energy future powered predominately by solar and wind energy, backed up with energy storage and baseload geothermal, biomass and hydro power.

Much is happening in these areas already, and this is hopeful: the Obama administration has budgeted billions of dollars for these efforts and has made energy reform one of its three top priorities. Individuals and communities around the world also are springing into action through various initiatives.

But much more needs to be done. As the IEA concludes: “What is needed is nothing short of an energy revolution.”

Walter Kohn is research professor of physics and chemistry at UCSB and a Nobel Laureate in chemistry . Tam Hunt is a private consultant and a lecturer in renewable energy law and policy at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UCSB.

This site is always trying to provide useful information, raising awareness, and bringing useful resources to the readers and visitors. This time, Dr. Charles M. Savage, from Munich, Germany, allowed me to publish an article he has created recently. To learn more about Charles and the amazing things he does, take a look at http://www.kee-inc.com

“Failing to Notice” the “Peak Brothers?”

*In a Foreword by Stephen Covey for Alex Pattakos, Prisoners of Our Thoughts, Viktor Frankl’s Principals at Work. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004.

No one’s failed to notice the results on the election.  Undoubtedly, there is new energy and excitement that India will get moving again, and rightly so.  And certainly the ICMCI India community will be busy supporting many companies as they seek to grow domestically and internationally.�
Amidst this excitement, might there be something we’ve “failed to notice?” 

Perhaps we’ve not really notice the “Peak Brothers:” Peak Oil, Peak Phosphates, Peak Lithium and Peak Water?  Back in 1956 M. King Hubbert, a geologist for Shell, computed the availability of petroleum resources in the US and came to the conclusion that have of these would be used up by the early 1970s.  He was on target, as the US resources peaked in 1972.  Next he applied his model to the world and in 1976 showed this graphic:

Look carefully at this graphic.  King says if we go back 5 thousand years and ahead 5 thousand years, the “Washington monument like spike shows the episode of our discovery and use of petroleum projects.”  He added, “This is the most disturbing thing in human history!”   

Do we know this or have we “failed to notice?” 

In a similar way, if we put “Peak Phosphates” into Google, we’ll find that this resource is about to peak just at a time when we need more fertilizers to feed another billion people coming in the next 14 years.�
Likewise, try “Peak Lithium” and we’ll find that the key ingredient for electric cars is more limited than we might have though.  And yes, there’s still a lot of water, but only about 1% is readily accessible, so “Peak Water” is a growingly troublesome challenge.  Certainly, as the glaciers on the Himalayas melt, one of India’s key rivers will be profoundly impacted.

Might the ICMCI Delhi “notice” the pending impact of these “Four Peak Brothers” and begin to help your clients prepare for the challenging times ahead?  After all, with wise judgment, we might be able to live on this planet for the next 800 million years.   But certainly not if we don’t “notice” these four challenges!
Dr. Charles M. Savage, Munich, 2009

If you like to review some more infomration on the topic of the “Peak Brothers”, you might want to start by spending 10 more minutes with this video:

Axel Meierhoefer

This course to attain “Crucial Leadership Wisdom” was provided to me by a good friend. Sadly he couldn’t tell me who the original author is. That’s the reason I can’t give credit to him/her. Nevertheless, you should pay close attention, as this is a course worth learning from, if you ever want to become a successful leader!

CRUCIAL LEADERSHIP WISDOM COURSE

Lesson 1

A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings.

The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs.

When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next-door neighbour.

Before she says a word, Bob says, ‘I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel.’

After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob, after a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 and leaves.

The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs.

When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks, ‘Who was that?’

‘It was Bob the next door neighbour,’ she replies.

‘Great,’ the husband says, ‘did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?’

Moral of the story

If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

——————————————————————————–

Lesson 2

A priest offered a Nun a lift.

She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg.

The priest nearly had an accident.

After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg.

The nun said, ‘Father, remember Psalm 129?’

The priest removed his hand. But, changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again.

The nun once again said, ‘Father, remember Psalm 129?’

The priest apologized ‘Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.’

Arriving at the convent, the nun sighed heavily and went on her way.

On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129. It said, ‘Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.’

Moral of the story

If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.

——————————————————————————–

Lesson 3

A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp.
They rub it and a Genie comes out.

The Genie says, ‘I’ll give each of you just one wish.’

‘Me first! Me first!’ says the admin clerk. ‘I want to be in the Bahamas , driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.’

Puff! She’s gone.

‘Me next! Me next!’ says the sales rep. ‘I want to be in Hawaii , relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas and the love of my life.’

Puff! He’s gone.

‘OK, you’re up,’ the Genie says to the manager.
The manager says, ‘I want those two back in the office after lunch.’

Moral of the story

Always let your boss have the first say.

——————————————————————————–
Lesson 4

An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing.

A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, ‘Can I also sit like you and do nothing?’

The eagle answered: ‘Sure, why not.’

So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story

To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.
——————————————————————————–

Lesson 5

A turkey was chatting with a bull.

‘I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree’ sighed the turkey, ‘but I haven’t got the energy.’

‘Well, why don’t you nibble on some of my droppings?’ replied the bull. They’re packed with nutrients.’

The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, and found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree.

The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch..

Finally after a fourth night, the turkey was proudly perched at the top of the tree.

He was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot him out of the tree.

Moral of the story

Bull Shit might get you to the top, but it won’t keep you there.

——————————————————————————–

Lesson 6

A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground into a large field.

While he was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on him.

As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, he began to realize how warm he was.

The dung was actually thawing him out!

He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy.

A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate.

Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him.

Morals of the story

(1) Not everyone who shits on you is your enemy.

(2) Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.

(3) And when you’re in deep shit, it’s best to keep your mouth shut!

THUS ENDS THE QUICK MANAGEMENT COURSE

I hope you enjoy your long weekend and take time to reflect on the important new wisdoms you gained from this crucial course.