Perpetual Innovation

Blog

  • Attributes of Successful Sustainable Leaders

    Great article on Sustainable Leaders: The 8 Attributes of Successful Sustainable Leaders by Bob Langert over at GreenBiz.org.
    In our experience and prior research, communications is key to success for the sustainability professional. Yes, communications is a tool, but the first skills needed are communications: both internal, external and collaborative. Marketing internally is simply rallying the troupes, and demonstrating the case, including the value proposition. Externally, it is some combination of public relations, promotion, marketing and sales in order to demonstrate the value to customers business partners and the public.
    Getting the government to work with, not against, sustainability is often very tricky since there are often many players with very short term interests that run against sustainability (real estate developers, coal and oil, for example).
    So let’s gauge the 8 attributes (although I don’t think they were in any particular order) by Langert toward the level of communications involved:

    • Courage. Courage to speak up for what is the right thing to do.
    • Conviction. 
    • Cleverness. 
    • Contrariness. 
    • Collaboration. This is the one factor that fully requires communications at all levels. Plus it is one of the main attributes of traditional leadership: collaborative vs. authoritative. 
    • Cheerfulness. Funny, but true.
    • Charisma. A traditional leadership approach/style that has been demonstrated to work in getting people to follow a leader.
    • Humility. Being humble does require a special kind of communications. 

    We are all in the world of sustainability together. The trick is to get people to think long(er) term and then back up to best decisions for everyone in the present. Although you can’t argue with Langert’s list of 7 Cs and and H, you have to admit that it doesn’t really capture the full nature of a successful leader in the world of sustainability.
    It does give those of us who are trying to be successful in sustainability efforts, something to think about.

  • Internet will be underwater sooner than you might think

    Found this on the Weather Channel, where it discusses a study that discusses the impacts on rising oceans on… The Internet.
    It makes sense. Population centers are, what, 80% within a few miles of oceans. All the phone and Inet cables would run along roads through population areas…
    Business Insider discusses so called Sunny Day Flooding from high tied and kind tide.
    As the sea levels rise there will be more flooding. Flooding will start to hit lots of underground cables (including Internet cables) that are water resistant, but not waterproof.

    With all the analysis of Global Warming, most of the scenarios assume that we take some action to avoid the worst cases. Also, there had been expectations for 20-30 years that we would start to run out (or at least low) on the fossil fuels, and thereby increase costs from shortages would result in “conservation” efforts. But Fracking and horizontal drilling has changed all that. Ten years ago, noone, not even the oil baron Boone Pickens, could expect that the world would reach 100m barrels of oil per day. It was not conceivable. But we have made it. Happily burning away, even with generally more fuel-efficient vehicles.

    But the Business as Usual (BAU) models that were considered the absolute worst case in climate models, seems to be where we find ourselves. The general thinking was that we probably had about another 50 years before big problems from global warming come home to roost. Well, this study figures otherwise. Within 10-15 years these problems, and the associated plethora of costs, should start showing up with a vengeance.

    The water issues will be massive and devastating. Salt water intrusion will become really expensive. Imagine entire cities moving from lots of fresh water and fresh water wells, to no fresh water. Desalinization is obviously possible, but requires lots of energy, plus massive amounts of plant and infrastructure.

    And, we have not even begun to talk about the devastating impacts of hurricanes when the sea levels are a couple more feet above “normal”.

    No pretty pictures on the waterfront here!

  • Taking Liberty, A $3.5m copyright stamp of mistaken identity

    Putting the Status of Liberty on a US stamp seems like a no brainer, send someone out to take an original picture of miss liberty, stamp it and run. Or, get full rights to a picture, modify it to your hearts content — maybe make her happier to be holding up so well after most of a century in the New York weather! (Maybe add a Mono Lisa Smile!?)… But, often, copyrights may not be as simple as they appear.
    Rick Kurnit has a great blog about a copyright for the Status of Liberty stamp on Lexology.
    Here’s the backstory. The US Post Office got a picture of a Status of Liberty, but not THE Status of Liberty. It is a picture of the replica (although Lady Liberty is smaller, mind you) in Las Vegas.
    “Robert Davidson, the artist who created the model, upon seeing the stamp (after his wife came home from the post office and exclaimed ‘they put our statue on a stamp’) registered the copyright in his version of the statue and sued.”
    After 5 years and a 2 week trial… Davidson won $3.5m+. That’s a lot of forever stamps. Talk about making it BIG in Vegas!
    Kurnit takes the time to make this a learning moment by discussion the use of copyrighted materials, and even derivative works.
    You would kind of think that anything publicly owned and publicly viewable link the Statue of Liberty would be, well, public domain, including the photos thereof. Not so. (Generally, I own my photos, and the derivative works of those photos.)

  • Salt and Battery, When does Storage make Fossil Fuel Obsolete

    Last week the world’s biggest Electric Vehicle (EV) battery company made a big opening splash on its IPO. CATL is a Chinese company that IPOed with a massive 44% pop on open. The company offered up only 10% of the shares in the IPO, valuing the company at more than $12B. China has limits on how much a company can IPO at (price based on PE ratio) and a 44% limit on the amount an IPO can rise in first day of trading. Expect this company to jump continually for some time. CATL is now the largest EV battery company in the world, primarily with lithium-ion for autos.

    Of course, you can just use power as needed, when needed. With the rapid increase in efficiencies of wind (where the wind blows) and solar (where the sun shines) this is becoming ever-more critical. Once the infrastructure of transmission lines are in place, the renewable power plants are far more cost effective than any other options. Both wind and solar are now less than $.02 per KW, and the combined wind-solar is coming in at less than $.03. Such new power can come onboard in months, not years or decades required for other types of power.

    Still, the problem is smoothing out the power for night time when the wind is not blowing. Thus the reliance on storage if we are to move to total renewables. If – well, when – the combined renewable energy and storage costs are lower than coal, oil and natgas, there will be no need for fossil fuels, except maybe for those places where the sun doesn’t shine (much) and the wind doesn’t blow (much).

    There are many different options for storage of energy.

    Fixed storage can be in the form of solar that moves water (back upstream to a dam that is above the existing hydro power system). It can use mirrors to focus heat for molten salt, for example.

    The old lead battery technology has been tried and proved for a century and still is alive and well in the golf-carts.

    Many players are after the battery storage market. GE is fighting hard against Tesla (powerwall battery built in their GigaFactories for fixed and battery packs for their cars) and Siemens. Storage options that are as good, or better, then lithium are coming fast to market for different applications. See a great view of new battery technologies in Pocket Lint. Batteries technologies that contain more carbon, nickel or cobalt seem very intriguing. Hydrogen options using fuel cell has been right at the edge of mass breakthrough into the market for decades.

    When will certain storage options become a game-changer for existing “built economy” such as fossil fuels?

    At some point, the combined renewable and storage will be sufficiently powerful and affordable to render the old fossil fuel options obsolete. McKinsey report discusses this massive drop in price and trend in their battery report. In 2010 battery storage cost about $1,000 per kilowatt hour of storage; their June 2017 report shows it at $230 per kwh in 2016 and dropping fast. It should be well below $200 per kwh now. (Batteries for the Telsa Model 3 are supposed to be at about $190 per kWh based on mass manufacturing; estimates based on SEC filings are for $157 kWh by 2020.)

    So, what is the break-even point where storage becomes the game changer, and renewables with battery deflect the entire energy industry onto another course? Apparently, $125 per kWh is the disruptive price point. A scientist name Cadenza has developed battery technology at this price point using super cell and is now working on an extended version that includes the peripherals with the battery at, or below, the magical $125 kWh. She must demonstrate both cheaper and safer, so the housing is critical to avoid fires and short-circuits. “In March of this year, Cadenza published its report (pdf) saying that its super-cell technology can indeed hit that point.”

    The technology is already here, yet new improvements are leap-frogging each competing option. How long before fossil fuels are an obsolete option? For just plain generation, fossils are dead and dying. Combined is where the war is won, however.

    We argue that you really want to be careful with your oil and gas investments because you can find yourselves, like the oil patch (countries and companies and refiners) with stranded assets.

    Moore’s law is at work in the battery complex. How long before combined renewables with storage supplants fossil fuels? Five years? Ten? Twenty?

  • Babcock Ranch aims to be first solar-powered town in US | USA News | Al Jazeera

    Babcock Ranch aims to be first solar-powered town in US | USA News | Al Jazeera:

    This is in partnership with FPL (Nextera) for the power. The powerplant is already up and running that will support an almost 200,000 home community.  FPL has extended the solar to include 10 megawatts of battery, thus allowing the solar power plant to offer more flexibility to the power grid and on-demand peaking power.

    The 440 acres for the power plant (now with about 350,000 PV panels) were donated to FPL at the Babcock Ranch. The whole town is 100% electric with electric trolley and charging stations. They even have SolarTrees(tm) for you to charge your phone or laptop in the park and demonstrate how solar works.

    This city is west of LaBelle on the way toward Ft Meyers. Very sustainable. Now has several developers building and each home has the “option” to have solar installed.

    Here’s another take with a human touch from FoxNews. Talking about the first people to move into the “city” and the first baby to be born in Babcock Ranch.

    This is a very cool example of how a city can be built from the ground up as sustainable — zero carbon footprint, as it pertains to electricity. There is the obvious question, however, of urban sprawl to suburbia, that has had suburban sprawl.

    In a city, with lots and lots of impermeable surfaces (roofs and parking lots), it would be very possible to retrofit the sustainability solutions.

    Way to go FPL. Within five years (2023), FPL plans to produce more from solar than from coal+NatGas combined. Additionally, FPL’s sister company FPL Energy is the largest wind producer in the US, and 2nd largest in the world. !:-)  … NextEra is the publicly ~$75B market cap holding company (NEE).

    FPL does have some nuclear, with plans and approval for expansion. The Turkey Point plant has been problematic and has its own set of issues. Leaks in the cooling canals, and no real plan for ways to store nuclear waste, has the Sierra Club (a group that should generally be friendly to nuclear) up in arms.  They also don’t like some of the sweet-heart deals for FPL that have been approved (rubber-stamped) by the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC). The sneaky and deceptive amendment on the Florida ballet last year — a move designed to kill solar — by the southern power companies (in which FPL donated $8m) is still fresh in the minds of Floridians.

    Nuclear in general has issues in the future energy mix. Nuclear is wonderful for base load, but not great as a peaking power source. If/when we move seriously and definitively toward solar in Florida, there should be high renewable energy at various times throughout the day, and none during rain or at night, so nuclear continues to be less effective. See how California is planning the retirement of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant and looking for other forms of peaking power as more and more power comes from renewables. Nuclear plants seem to have no plan, of any kind, as to what to do with nuclear wast; the only plan seems to be to hold on-site forever.

    At some point the power monopolies need to deal with the reality that every home and every business can and will generate part or all of their electricity. This means that the future of the grid is connecting power creators with power consumers using a smart grid and dynamic pricing. Part of the day I may be a net producer, part of the night I may be a net consumer. One analogy of this type of Smart Grid is to think of it like the Internet. Sometimes I’m uploading content, sometimes I’m downloading. The Internet directs from where power is produced, to where it is needed. The Smart Grid power company will be more like the Internet Service Provider (ISP) of old by providing power as needed, where needed. The internet of things (IoT), but with power, is essentially what we’re talking about. Maybe the Energy of Everything (EoE)?:-)

    Power companies need a new business model (currently the model is based on ROE with the PSC assuring prices that justify a good return on investment). Producing and selling more and more electricity to make more and more money is a broken model. Building bigger and grander centralized power plants is horribly inefficient; about 60% of energy is lost in the production (steam) and distribution.

    We are really glad to see FPL’s effort into solar. Florida, and NextEra, could do more. Time for the power monopolies to make the change before they get overrun. The power model is changing… Trying to block this massive change is a little like stacking rocks in front of a glacier …

    ‘via Blog this’