Greetings!
With all the turmoil and uncertainty in the world these days, you'll need a clear eye and a steady hand to chart your course, read the signs, and make it go.
In this and succeeding newsletters (and my blog and tweetstream), I'll be sharing some thoughts and questions to national and corporate leadership about intelligent and effective action (in the face of medieval strategies like trying to settle science by momentary legislative majority).
With best wishes,
Gil Friend
President & CEO
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Six Energy Questions For Two CEOs
Looming behind the earthquake in Japan and turmoil in the Middle East is the persistent question of US energy policy, or (as Thomas Friedman so eloquently reminds us) the lack thereof.
There are many ways to wade into this issue: national security, balance of payments, economic stability and of course climate change and environmental impact. But for the moment, let me just offer three questions for the CEO of the United States and three more for the CEO of your company.
You see, like many, I was startled (though in truth, not surprised) to see that one of President Obama's responses the Japanese nuclear crisis was to reaffirm his commitment to US nuclear policy in his budget request for an additional $36 billion of loan guarantees (on top of $18.5 billion previously authorized under the Energy Policy Act of 2005) to finance new nuclear power plants. Contrast that to $12.2b in subsidies for "traditional renewables".
Hence, these questions:
1. Why invest so much money in nuclear generating capacity when energy efficiency and renewables are much better investments, in terms of both effective energy yield and net financial yield?
2. Why continue to subsidize a 60+ year old industry?
Public investment is usually justified as a risk-sharing kick-start of new technologies or new industries that the public interest requires but that private markets are not yet prepared to support.
The Union of Concern Scientists estimates that "legacy subsidies [to the nuclear indusry] are estimated to exceed seven cents per kilowatt-hour (¢/kWh)-an amount equal to about 140 percent of the average wholesale price of power from 1960 to 2008, making the subsidies more valuable than the power produced by nuclear plants over that period. Without these subsidies, the industry would have faced a very different market reality-one in which many reactors would never have been built, and utilities that did build reactors would have been forced to charge consumers even higher rates." Or as the Heritage Foundation (which I'm not in the habit of quoting) put it in recent congressional testimony, "Limited loan guarantees can help overcome some near-term financing obstacles, but they are subsidies. If not used prudently, they will only act to prop up non-competitive industries."
Isn't 60 years long enough for the nuclear industry to either succeed on its own two feet or to fail and be outcompeted by more appropriate technologies?
3. In a time of major budget struggles, and pressure on government programs or all kinds, why provide what are essentially transfer payments from taxpayers of the United States to the shareholders of these companies?
The answers, as is so often the case, go to money, power and deeply ingrained habits of thought. And those problems don't just make for crazy in Washington. Hence, these questions for your CEO (or you, Mr./Ms. CEO, if you're reading this):
1. What is your company's potential exposure to significant increases in energy price, wide fluctuations in energy prices, or significant disruptions in energy supply? If you don't know, shouldn't you?
2. Do you have systematic plans in place to reduce that exposure and to do so in ways that simultaneously strengthen product performance, brand and profit? If not, do you have plans to get those plans into place?
3. Do you know what KPI's you need to track in order to drive your company's performance across the risk studded, carbon constrained landscape of upcoming decades? Are you and your colleagues in the C-suite tracking those KPI's? Is your entire organization managing to them? Do you have the systems in place to support that? If not, when will you? (Do you even know where to start?)
One additional question, for both of you:
What is the value to you and your shareholders (and your family) of good answers to these questions? |
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Our Offer to You
These are critical questions, because business is on a collision course with a set of global shifts that almost no one has adequately prepared for. These inevitable surprises are coming fast.
For those who are ready, these shifts will be platforms for change. For those who are not ready, they are traps.
Natural Logic offers you a reliable way to prepare yourself.
We will show you how to make a powerful new assessment of the situation at your company and your extended supply chain network.
We will work with you to design new ways to build profit, resilience, competitive position, share value, and satisfaction for shareholders, customers and employees -- all at the same time.
We will work beside you as you get into action to respond to what you find and to ensure that you effectively and consistently harvest the value that you identify.
Guaranteed. |
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Natural Logic
designs, implements and measures profitable sustainability strategies.
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Trending Topics
Sustainability In Practice, the eLearning version of The Truth About Green Business, is now available for preview. These engaging, on-demand courses bring interactive sustainability learning right to your employees' desktops. Let us know if you'd like to arrange a preview.
Our special February coaching offer has ended, but your need is still there. If strategic sustainability coaching could help you -- or a colleague, boss employee, supplier or customer -- visit here or contact me directly at 1-510-248-4943.
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Where to Start:
Natural Logic can help you and your organization:
Assess your Sustainability Plan, and help you refine it to achieve greater real world impact and greater executive buy-in.
Provide "Rapid Diagnostic" assessments of your gaps and opportunities in relation to Risk, Carbon, Metrics, Operations, Capacity -- and prioritized recommendations of how you can move against them.
Develop a strategy, plan and budget that will catapult your sustainability initiatives -- and your marketing of them -- to a new level (and help you sell it to your C-suite and Board).
Deliver executive briefings to help your leadership understand "The Mysteriously Elusive Sustainability Business Case."
Coach your sustainability team -- and company leadership -- in the personal and business practices that are essential to fulfilling the commitments that you've made -- to your board and your boss, your family, and to yourself.
Interested? Read about our Full Cycle Sustainability™ approach, and contact us today to determine which of these programs is right for you.
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Events
The next event in our In Conversation has been postponed to April (details soon). You can purchase the audio of our last two hour dialog right here, featuring Bryan Franklin & Gil Friend discussing Cracking the Door to the C-Suite with Your Sustainability Message.
The Mysteriously Elusive Sustainability Business Case, Association for Strategic Planning, March 22, San Francisco
Keynote: Making the Business Case for Sustainability, March 31, Shanghai, China (by video)
Earth Day at discussion with Rebecca Costa (author of The Watchman's Rattle), April 22, SF Public Library
The ROI of Sustainability (pre-conference workshop), and other sightings TBA, Sustainable Brands '11, June 7-10, Monterey CA
Check our complete speaking schedule regularly; we update the page as events break. And contact us any time for keynote speakers for your next event. (Need some persuasion? Check out these videos of recent speeches to the Commonwealth Club and the Clean Tech Open and on our video pages at YouTube, FaceBook and Natural Logic.)
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