People, Planet, Profits & Projects

We’ve always said that, while the altruistic reasons for greening up your projects is a good thing, keeping in the spirit of people, planet, profits and projects, money is also good.  We’ve also stressed the importance of keeping your ears to the ground for rebates and other incentives to green up your projects and processes.  To that end, there is an organization called Green Launching Pad we think you should know about.  From their webpage: “The green launching pad is a public and private sector initiative that enables local start-ups to bring green solutions to market. We discover New Hampshire’s best and brightest, and then support them with the financial resources, business infrastructure, and academic expertise to succeed”.

The LDI Corporation  of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, just received an award of a grant from Green Launching Pad (GLP).  LDI manufactures upholstery fabric for architects and designers who are looking for green products for their facilities.  According to LDI VP of Sales and Marketing, John Dame, “We have developed an energy efficient environment and environmental-friendly process that will allow us to offer a wide variety of decorative print patterns to our customers.  The GLP funding will be used to help us purchase some of the required equipment to launch this new initiative.”  Last year LDI experienced a 3o% growth that Dame attributes partially to a changing market place.

GLP is an effort funded by federal stimulus funds through the Department if Energy and hosted by the University of New Hampshire.     On GLP’s “about” page, they say that they want to be the hub of green activities and under the heading of “community” even has a button for “find a project”.  This round of GLP funding was specifically targeted for manufacturing companies.  This is a state effort, funded by the feds, and by targeting manufacturers, the message is that manufacturing is an important segment to New Hampshire’s economy.  According to John Lynch, New Hampshire’s governor, “It only makes sense to do what we can to bolster this important sector of our economy, and that’s exactly what we are doing by working aggressively….” 

To LDI, it validates that the work they are doing is important, because there were 18 companies that applied for the grant.  The application and review process was rigorous and LDI is one of 3 companies to  received a grant

Bottom-line or should I say quadruple bottom-line, is that there are grants available out there to help defray some of the costs of greening your company.  Make sure that you explore all of the options, local, state, federal, as well as private funding. 

Half a trillion dollars.

That's a lot of money -a lot of projects - and clearly a lot of opportunity for project managers.

And that is the amount of money (about 3 trillion yuan) to be spent over the next 5 years on clean energy initiatives in China, such as a solar power generation system covering 100 counties in the country.

According to a nice feature article in PM Network magazine by Sarah Fister Gale, China has the dubious distinction as the leading contributor in the world to CO2 emissions.  So it is launching a program to cut its carbon intensity by 16 to 17 percent by 2015.

Using a combination approach - both of which launch projects and programs - to reduce pollution and increase efficiency of existing plants (power and otherwise) and to initiate more renewable energy creation, the country is launching projects to:

• update coal-fired boilers
• improve effieciency of the energy-supply network
• promote green buildings
• install lower-carbon-impact public lighting systems
• increase the percentage of energy generated by solar and wind sources

We suggest you read the whole article here.

And, as we have for years, we urge all project managers to develop their conversancy in the area of sustainability - because many of the projects, not just in China, but in the world, will be triggered by efforts such as this.

Half a trillion dollars is a pretty good incentive!  Or as our Chinese colleagues may say:

Click here for translation.

In this nifty article from this past Sunday's Boston Globe, you can read about several companies in the Boston area and the projects they've initiated to harness the power of microbes.

As you remember from the infamous H. G. Wells story, The War Of The Worlds, microbes have helped us before (in fiction) and now they are helping us again (in fact).

These micro-organisms are being engineered and "hired" to clean waste water, produce fuel, or to sterilize hospital equipment.

Project development time has increased orders of magnitude, even since the 1990s.  Where it used to take 10 or 15 years to develop a new biological product, this can be done "at a much more accelerated pace", challenging not just the scientists and engineers invloved, but of course the project teams and necessarily the project manager.

The companies involved here are  Manus Biosynthesis, Cambrian Innovation, Ginkgo BioWorks, Novophage, and others.

Cambrian, for example, is cultivating colonies of naturally-occurring bacteria that can serve as catalysts for chemical reactions, making them significantly more efficient.  They activate with electrical impulses.  These microbes were only discovered in 1999.

When the microbes are grouped, they can convert CO2 into methane, making it easier to collect and therefore preventing CO2 from escaping into the air, and can also, in turn, generate electricity.

Read the story.  You can see the implications for large numbers of projects, and it reinforces our assertion that project managers should become more attuned to the language of sustainability and understand the opportunities it provides for PMs in fields such as this.

Oh, and one more thing.  Don't let the idea of engineered bio-products scare you too much.  It was beginning to creep us out a bit as we read through it, but the authors make a really good point.

Sitting in your house, or one very close to it, is an example of a genetically-engineered organism.  There's a picture of one below:

Yep.  Dogs are just genetically-modified wolves.  And we (generally) trust these even with our little kids.

In any case - check out the article and continue to build your knowledge in sustainability and project management; you may find yourself leading a project just like the ones in the story!

Continuing with the theme of Green IT, a consortium of major colleges in the Boston, including Boston University (where I am have currently developed and am teaching a course in Green IT), Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, U Mass (Rich’s alma mater) along with industry partners Cisco and EMC, together with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are creating a “world-class”, green data center in Holyoke, MA, on the banks of the Connecticut River.  Why there?  Because, there is a large hydro plant producing clean, renewable energy! 

To date, about $80 million dollars have been committed to the project.  This is really an unprecedented collaboration between industry, universities and a state government.  One of the major drivers for the increase in datacenters, and by extension increased energy use, is the need for scientific and engineering computing.  To do that properly requires a massive amount of computing power.  According to the Green High-Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) website, the facility will include “33,000 square feet of computer room space optimized for high performance computing systems, a 15MW power feed, and a high efficiency cooling plant that can support up to 10MW of computing load. The on-site substation includes provisions for expansion to 30MW and the MGHPCC owns an 8.6 acre site, leaving substantial space for the addition of new floor space. The communication infrastructure includes a dark fiber loop that passes through Boston and New York City and connects to the NoX, the regional education and research network aggregation point. Boston University initially will have a pair of 10 GigE connections from its campus to its resources located in the Holyoke facility.”  Some of the features will include:

• Modern, controlled data center facility for research computing
• 8.6 acre site and 90,000 sq. ft. building provide for future expansion
• High-performance networking between the campuses and the resources in Holyoke
• Inexpensive, renewable and clean power
• Efficient, low power usage effectiveness (PUE) design with a low carbon footprint
• Brownfield cleanup and remediation of an old mill site
• Economic development and revitalization in Holyoke, MA
• Opportunities for shared facilities and services
• Opportunities for collaboration with other institution

This is a phenomenal undertaking and a giant leap forward to green data centers utilizing clean, renewable power, lower carbon footprint, collocation, virtualization, and all the other things that go into a comprehensive greening of IT.  Hopefully, MGHPCC will be a model to emulate.

Earlier this week, US President Barak Obama gave the annual "State of the Union Address", which you can read about here. 

Timed to go along with this, is the GreenBiz.org "State of the Green Business Report". 

The report, which measures 20 aspects of environmental performance, from carbon emissions to paper use and recycling, and attempts to answer the question, "Are we bringing a green economy into being?"

The news for 2012: not so good.

The report shows a slowing of momentum -- or even steps in the backwards direction, in some cases -- on some of the indicators. Among the downgraded topics include investments in clean technology innovations, overall energy intensity, certifications of LEED buildings, and paper use and recycling.

We stress that project managers by virtue of their "Change Agent" mindset need to bring sustainability issues (economic, ecological and social) to the forefront.  Heck, it's even in the name of our blog - People, Planet, Profits, & Projects - so we think we as Project Managers should be stepping up here, and reversing this negative trend, getting the momentum back - all in the positive direction.

We suggest that an informed PM is the best PM.  You can download the full report here.

Want some good news? There is a short video clip from Joel Makower here, which explains how the CFOs of organizations are starting to take sustainability on as a traditional ongoing measure of success.

Of course if you want to be informed we also would recommend our Cleland Award-winning book...

The facts remain: good progress has been made.  Looks like we slipped a little over the past year, but we can regain this momentum and you as project managers play a key role in bringing sustainability thinking to the forefront.