Greening Gateway

Welcome to PMI-SFBAC's Greening Gateway blog. Each month, this blog will feature new articles, links and other news for project managers interested in the green space.

June 30, 2010

Shoreline Amphitheatre Gone Green - by Rob Sidon (Common Ground Magazine)

This summer, whether your musical taste ranges from John Mayer to the San Francisco Symphony to Sarah McLachlan, or Rush to Rihanna to the Country Music Throwdown Tour or American Idols Live, you can experience your favorites at the iconic Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View knowing you’re an active participant in the greening of the music industry. Shoreline is the first major music venue in the country to be officially recognized with the Green Business certification, marking a milestone in a pilot program aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, and waste generated by music venues.  
 
Owned and operated by Live Nation, Shoreline, which attracts approximately 330,000 visitors per year, is also the largest outdoor concert venue to receive the certification. The Bay Area Green Business Program imposes an extensive verification process, thus making the environmental benefits of implementation significant at a venue such as Shoreline, given the size and frequency of its shows.
 
In order to understand the environmental impact of its business operations, Live Nation SF has been recording sustainability metrics for the last four years for all of its venues, including water and energy use and diversion of waste from landfills. Venues are thereby able to quantify the impact of sustainability initiatives.
 
According to Aaron Siuda, vice president of marketing for Live Nation in Northern California, Shoreline has implemented multiple initiatives to reduce its environmental impact, including:

Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.  Greenhouse gas emissions from audience travel are the greatest environmental impact of any concert. At Shoreline, carbon offsets are purchased for the emissions from audience travel, as well as employee commuting and artist travel to the venue.  Shoreline also purchases Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) for their electricity use.  For every megawatt-hour of electricity used, Shoreline purchases a megawatt-hour of renewable energy for the electric grid.
 
To reduce the emissions from artist trucks, Shoreline has installed shore power, which allows truck engines to be turned off and instead plug into electrical outlets at the venue. This reduces fuel costs and greenhouse gas emissions from idling engines.
 
Energy conservation.  Shoreline has insulated all hot-water pipes, water heaters, and storage tanks, as well as replaced 1,332 incandescent light bulbs with more-efficient compact fluorescent lamps. Light bulbs have also been replaced in exit signs for greater efficiency, and staff members in the office have been educated to conserve.
 
Water conversation.  Shoreline practices weather-based irrigation control. The system responds to weather forecast data using reclaimed water for irrigation. Mulch  ground cover is in place to prevent evaporation.  All 172 old toilets in the venue have been replaced with high-efficiency fixtures, saving 611,460 gallons of water per month.

Waste reduction.  The venue has recycling stations adjacent to every trashcan. From 2006 to 2009, diversion of waste from landfills increased from 27 percent to 39 percent.  In 2010, Shoreline expects to improve these diversion rates through a training program for all concert staff and educational materials for audience members. There are battery recycling receptacles in all backstage areas, and artists and their crews are encouraged to recycle batteries from electronic equipment. All toilet paper, hand towels, and napkins are made from recycled content.

Sustainable treatsLast but not least, to keep our favorite entertainers (and their roadies) happily fed and hydrated, organic, locally sourced produce is used in the backstage kitchen where possible.

Shoreline Amphitheatre is a founding member of Green Music Group (GMG), a high-profile coalition aiming to bring musicians, industry leaders, and music fans together to create widespread environmental change within the music industry and around the globe. This a great step forward. Common Ground magazine salutes you. Rock on!

June 16, 2010

Green ICT & Energy Efficiency Trade Mission

Green ICT & Energy Efficiency Trade Mission

As part of our ongoing efforts to support technology transfer and international trade in the green marketplace, the Green Technology Alliance (GTA) is proud to support the first ever Green Information and Communications Technologies and Energy Efficiency Trade Mission in Mexico City. This unique event is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce through their Commercial Service program that supports U.S. companies that desire expand their markets in other countries.

The U.S. Commercial Service in Mexico City flagship event this year is the first ever Green ICT & Energy Efficiency Trade Mission to Mexico City from September 27-29, 2010.

Learn more here... http://www.buyusa.gov/mexico/en/greenict_mission.html

June 14, 2010

Virgin Airlines: Powered by Pond Scum? - by Bruce Falconer (Mother Jones )

Virgin founder Richard Branson has set out to create a viable biofuel. Will his ecofriendly venture take off?

Before meeting with Al Gore over breakfast in 2006, Richard Branson, the swashbuckling founder of Virgin Ltd., an amalgam of over 200 companies sharing the Virgin brand, was long a global warming skeptic. But then the former vice president (and recent recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to combat climate change) spent two hours at the billionaire entrepreneur's home laying out his case. "Sadly, I'm now convinced that the world has a serious problem," he told ABC's Good Morning America that September with Gore at his side. Joining the former vice president in his environmental crusade, Branson pledged to funnel all profits from his rail and airline holdings over the next 10 years—an estimated $3 billion—into developing a non-ethanol-based, sustainable biofuel to power the world's cars, trains, and airplanes. Last fall, he and Gore went on to establish the Virgin Earth Challenge, a $25 million award for the development of technology that can suck greenhouse gases from the atmosphere for 10 consecutive years and "contribute materially to the stability of Earth's climate."

For more:  http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/01/virgin-airlines-powered-pond-scum

Disaster Capitalism - by Clive Thompson (Mother Jones)

LAST YEAR, Beluga Shipping discovered that there's money in global warming.

Beluga is a German firm that specializes in "super-heavy lift" transport. Its vessels are equipped with massive cranes, allowing it to load and unload massive objects, like multiton propeller blades for wind turbines. It is an enormously expensive business, but last summer, Beluga executives hit upon an interesting way to save money: Shipping freight over a melting Arctic.

Beluga had received contracts to send materials on a sprawling trip that would begin in Ulsan, South Korea, and head to the Russian port city of Arkhangelsk, located near the border with Finland. Normally, this trip requires Beluga's ships to navigate an 11,000-mile route around the south of India and through the Suez Canal. But in 2008, its executives decided that global warming had eroded the Arctic's summer sea ice significantly enough that their ships could travel the Northeast Passage along the north coast of Russia. Previously, a cargo ship could only safely navigate that route if an icebreaker went ahead, smashing a route through thick ice.

For more: http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/04/climate-desk-climate-change-corporations

June 07, 2010

Green Project Management by Claudia Girrbach

A green or sustainable project considers its impact on the planet and people while achieving organizational goals such as profits. Gone are the days where environmental goals are in conflict with organizational goals. In fact, sustainability will decrease costs, reduce risks, and enhance brand value.  

Wasting natural resources hurts the environment and the bottom-line. Projects focused on operational efficiency to eliminate waste will reduce your company’s costs. DOW Chemical has been working since the 90’s to reduce waste at considerable profit. For each dollar invested on environmental efficiency, DOW achieved a $5 return.

Poor environmental practices are risky. When they become known, poor practices could lead to fines and legal proceedings, hurt sales, poisoned relations with the host community, make recruiting talent more difficult, and trigger stock prices to crumble.  When Coca Cola who bottles its drinks in-country wanted to expand in India a few years ago, the local community objected given the excessive water required when bottling. That same water was needed to irrigate crops and provide drinking water. By finding ways to conserve water during bottling, Coca Cola is now welcome in the 50% of its markets where water is under stress.

Your company’s brand may be enhanced by either improving environmental operations or providing products that are environmentally sound. Wal-Mart who just a few years ago was considered least likely to be green by many environmentalists, is now lauded as a role model by investing millions of dollars each year in operating efficiency and promoting greener products.  Wal-Mart remains a competitive for-profit company who credits sustainability with improving its triple bottom line (people, planet, profits).

Project Manager’s Role
Sustainability is a new frontier. Similar to globalization or IT a few decades ago, methods are still evolving and environmental considerations are often overlooked. That’s why creative, entrepreneurial, and hard-working projects managers are required to embed sustainability into each and every project. 

Some areas that will pay green dividends are already familiar:
1. Scope. Ensure that features and functions that are deemed “must-have” will be used. Otherwise those functions are a waste of resources and development costs. The National Science Foundation completed a study a few years ago that found that 50% of system features were never used and a significant percent were used sparingly. Those extra features also make products more difficult to use and frequently add to the on-going operating costs.

Iterative or agile development is a useful technique to help your team focus on a limited scope to start. The team may find that the smaller scope achieves the project goals with even better ROI when compared to a bloated solution. Google often uses this approach as it did when developing its Google Docs product to provide the best of Microsoft while losing the rest. The features cut were not missed by the typical user.

2.  Design. Instead of adding more features, direct your team’s creative effort to ensuring that the remaining features are usable and hence used.  Apple excels at this by making its products appealing to kids, grandparents and all those in-between. 

Look to leaders in the industry or lessons from other industries for design inspiration. For example, Cisco took its engineers to a recycling plant to learn how dismantling costs directly correlate to recycling profitability and how to design for end-of-life.

3.  Implementation. When acquiring equipment or expanding infrastructure to support a new project, more environmentally efficient products will pay-off in the time. Often the expense to operate equipment is overlooked, which leads to higher total cost of ownership. For example, a less expensive unit that uses more energy, does not hibernate when not in use or uses constant power regardless of load will be much more expensive to operate than an energy efficient unit.  

In addition to energy consumption, also include green criteria for materials used, transportation, packaging, maintenance and disposal at end-of-life.

Deploy infrastructure whenever possible in phases to increase its utilization. Infrastructure tends to be overbuilt. In 2009, McKinsey reported that Data Center utilization is typically less than 20% utilization.  

4.  Administration. When managing a project, reducing travel and printing of project documents can also contribute to a sustainable project. 

To ensure that the project you deliver stays green throughout its life, include on-going measurements such as operating and environmental costs, utilization of features and infrastructure and the financial and environmental benefits. 

Your current skills are critical to delivering projects within budget, on schedule and with quality.  By adding a green mindset when controlling scope, ensuring that usable and encouraging a sustainable design, your projects will also provide more savings, reduce risk and enhance your brand while making a positive environmental impact.  

To continue the discussion, this blog will focus on best practices and case studies for green project management: 

· How sustainability benefits not only the planet and people, but profits
· How to better manage projects that are focused on the environment such as clean energy and resource efficiency
· How to make every project greener 

To enrich the discussion, please share your insights, questions and learning.