To Puerto Rico: Forget the Grid

To Puerto Rico: Forget the Grid

 Begin not with inventing, but with forgetting. You must let go of what you've learned …    - Govindarajan & Trimble in Reverse Innovation, 2012 .              

Puerto Rico may be ready to forget about their old, rickety power grid and embrace the future. Elon Musk has offered the vision of a future with distributed, renewable energy, using Tesla batteries and solar panels. 

At least one official of the island is interested.

Huffington Post reports that Governor Ricardo Rossello  has responded to Musk’s offer, tweeting “Let’s talk”.

Puerto Rico has the advantage of a complete wipe out of their power grid. This blank slate creates an opportunity to build something different and better-- if only the leaders and people of the island can forget the central power grid, and resist calls to resurrect the old system with “stronger poles and wires” (Mark Mills, WSJ, Oct 6, 2017). --if only they can focus, instead, on the vision of a distributed, renewable energy system.

Tesla and German microgrid maker, Sonnen GmbH, have already stepped into the void. Tesla has sent hundreds of power wall battery systems and accompanying solar panels.

Bloomberg reports German Micro grid maker, Sonnen GmbH has donated small scale (microgrid) systems, combining solar panels and batteries, to 15 relief centers. In addition, the company has said they will donate profits from sales of their systems to build more.

Houston-based Sunnova, Inc., Puerto Rico’s largest rooftop solar provider, is also ready to help create a transformation in the power system.

If Puerto Rico can nurture these seeds of change, they have the chance to become a model distributed, renewable energy system.

Puerto Rico is now an excellent incubator for innovation precisely because they do not have a working established power grid. If only they can forget  the past and embrace the vision of a different future that is being offered.

I do not want to minimize the suffering of the people of Puerto Rico, nor the difficulty of their road to recovery. But I can’t help but be excited about the opportunity for this part of the USA to take the lead and create an energy system that may become the envy of the rest of us.

Trudy Heller, Ph.D.

catchthegreenwave.biz

October 6, 2017

Trump Presidency Doesn’t Change Everything for Greens

    The election of Donald Trump is earth shaking. Yet it feels somewhat familiar.  I am reminded of an experience at an international conference on the Greening of Industry in Seoul, South Korea.

It was just before the 2010 midterm elections of Obama’s first term, and I was the only American in the room. The speaker at the podium was speculating about the upcoming elections in the US. Would the Congress remain in pro-environment Democratic hands? or would environment- skeptic Republicans gain control?

Then the speaker said something I will never forget:

“We (the rest of the world) will carry on our efforts to accelerate the transition to a green economy regardless of the outcome of the US elections”.   

And so it is for those of us in the US who work to accelerate the transition to a green economy. We will continue to advance our agenda, with a sense of urgency, whether or not the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency is a climate denier.

We have never enjoyed a federal government with an explicit “state vision of ‘low carbon, green growth’…. supplying clean energy and jobs as a new engine for growth” as they have in South Korea and other countries.

We have always done more with influence than authority. 

The Mother of All Market Signals?

Unpublished letter to the Wall Street Journal

To the Editor: The Mother of all Market Signals

I agree with Greg Ip that pain and disruption comes when investors put their faith in beliefs that are proven wrong (“Behind the Pain: Misplaced Faith”, January 14, 2016, (p.A1). But his list of erroneous beliefs of the past decade omits an important one: the belief that oil prices and markets generally have nothing to do with climate change. My fear is that investors who believe that they can understand oil markets WITHOUT factoring in climate change will be proven wrong.

Actor Mark Ruffalo has called the Paris Climate Agreement:  “the mother of all market signals”.  What if the drop in oil prices is ushering in a transition to a clean energy future where oil deposits will be left in the ground becoming stranded assets, estimated by Citigroup analysts to be valued at $US100 trillion? What if investors divest from fossil fuel companies and reinvest in carbon-free assets? No wonder investors are ditching money managers when those managers fail to even consider the rising tide of investment strategies that take the risks of climate change seriously.

Trudy Heller, Ph.D.

Philadelphia, PA  USA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Great Turning in Business

       “…we call it the great turning and see it as the essential adventure of our   
         time…This transition is well underway. “  -Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone in 
                                            Active Hope: How to face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy.

The quote goes on to say:

“It involves the transition of a doomed economy of industrial growth to a life-sustaining society committed to the recovery of our world.”

I suggest a Great Turning is underway in the business world as well. It is what, in Business School, we called the process of “Creative Destruction” -- the term popularized by economist, Joseph Schumpeter in 1942. Schumpeter referred to the “perennial gale of creative destruction”, the process that puts business strategies to the test.

What is the evidence of a great turning in business? Evidence that the “perennial gale of creative destruction” is blowing in a direction and with enough increasing force to drive a great turning to a sustainable society?

Consider this:           

•     The Wall Street Journal, as the voice of conventional business, roasts Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, for his public support of renewable energy. 
•       The Wall Street Journal skewers Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors whenever his company receives a subsidy or tax break for the development of electric car and battery manufacturing. 
•       The Wall Street Journal slams the clean-tech community with such headlines as, “So Much Promise; So Little Return.” 
•     Meanwhile, cleantech entrepreneurs develop game changer technologies, such as Ecovative Design’s biologically-manufactured and biodegradable packaging material that could replace the ubiquitous, petrochemical product, Styrofoam.  
•     Serial entrepreneur, Gunter Pauli, provides 100 examples of zero waste              production systems in his book, The Blue Economy, published in 2010.        
•       I could go on……

Thomas Kuhn notes that in scientific revolutions two competing paradigms, the current dominant one and a newer less established one, exist side by side for a while. At some point, the balance tips, and the dominant viewpoint flips from the old to the new. –not through analysis of which perspective is a better fit with reality, but rather, through dueling perspectives. I suggest the duel is on between the traditional, fossil fuel driven economy defended by the WSJ and the greener economy represented by such business mavens as Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, Tom Steyer, Sir Richard Branson, and Ray Anderson.

You may not find a coherent statement of the new greener economy delivered to your door each morning in a well-written and well-reported set of articles assembled into an attractive newspaper. There is no blast of well-produced and slick broadcasting at noon on CNBC to provide midday updates on which companies have achieved zero waste and which clean-tech entrepreneurs are on the cutting edge. No 5PM programming to update us on how much progress toward a sustainable society was made during this business day.

The news of the new green economy, instead, comes in dribs and drabs throughout the day, mostly through emails and e-newsletters, through webinars and conferences on clean technologies and business models, through technical trainings, and LinkedIn groups; through conversations and speakers at green drinks gatherings and sustainable business network events; Through one on one networking and discussions with fellow green biz folks and in occasional university courses; Through books – new ones coming out every day. 

So, yes it is possible to spend all day, to live one’s life, in the green business bubble, and I do. But for people who have a day job, and time to get their business news only from reading the WSJ and/or glancing at CNBC while playing with the kids after work, the evidence of the greener economy may not be apparent.