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Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Farron Levy, President, True Impact

Employee volunteering can be a powerful force for improving the lives of those in need, promoting community wellbeing, and supporting important social initiatives. At the same time, such programs can support core business interests, like employee engagement and development, sales, recruiting, and stakeholder relations. 

But too often companies invest in employee volunteer programs under the promise of these social and business benefits, with little follow up as to whether their particular volunteer activities are generating these results.

As with any investment, measurement is what enables managers to prove – and improve – the value of their volunteer programs.

First, objective measures enable you to report to leadership and other stakeholders on the social and business return on investment (ROI) of your volunteers’ time, often crucial to attracting and retaining support for your program. Second, such measures enable you to identify what components of your program are working well, so you might replicate them, and what components are falling short of expectations, so you can intervene and improve them.

But how do you measure the impacts of your volunteer program in a way that is both practical and compelling? Here are a few practical tips:

Measuring Social Value

The most common way to convey a volunteer program’s social value is to monetize it: that is, calculate how much money nonprofits saved by not having to pay someone to perform the services your volunteers provided for free.  To monetize the value of services provided by your volunteers, calculate the total number of reported service hours, multiplied by the value (rate) of the services they provided. 

One of the best sources of data for this calculation is the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which maintains a comprehensive database of job functions and mean wages from across the country. The Independent Sector’s annual average value of a volunteer hour calculation is derived from this database, however, your own calculations will be more accurate – and you will be better positioned to steer your own programs towards higher-value activities – if you track value at an activity level rather than on a composite basis (e.g., where Food Service is $11.28 per hour and software systems development is $54.07, compared to using the Independent Sector composite value of $21.79 for all activities).

Another way to measure social value is to gather feedback on how the volunteer service helped improve the capacity of the nonprofit served. Options include:

• Increasing efficiency: helping a nonprofit to use fewer resources – such as man hours or materials – in performing its operations or delivering its services
• Increasing effectiveness: helping a nonprofit increase the success rate of the services it provides (e.g., for a nonprofit fighting homelessness, the percentage of homeless people served that ended up sustainably housed)
• Increasing reach: helping a nonprofit to serve more beneficiaries

Traditional volunteerism (applying non-specialized skills, such as tutoring or food preparation) is often most appropriately measured via monetization or reach numbers, while skilled volunteerism (applying professional or professional-level skills) can more frequently be translated to efficiency and effectiveness gains.

Measuring Employee Satisfaction and Engagement 

Employee engagement is an important driver of productivity and retention, and as a result many companies regularly gather survey feedback from their employees to monitor whether corporate practices and policies are keeping engagement levels high.  Volunteerism – with its ability to engage employees with social issues they care deeply about, while interacting with colleagues or learning new skills – can be an powerful tool for bringing a more well-rounded sense of fulfillment and engagement to the workplace.

So, instead of simply gathering feedback on how satisfying employees find their specific volunteer experience, consider going one step further and asking how important such volunteerism is to their overall job satisfaction.

Using categories and questions that match how your company already tracks employee engagement is a powerful way to convert your results into a “currency” that your company already uses and can immediately relate to. Immediate post-volunteerism surveys and exit surveys from departing employees can be effective data collection tools as well.

Measuring Skill Development

Volunteers often apply professional skills when they volunteer, but that’s not the same as developing skills.  Volunteer programs that put employees in a position to “stretch” – for example, to gain capabilities and experience with project management, client relations, or other job-related skills – are more likely to earn the attention (and participation!) of your human resources or talent-development departments.

As with engagement impacts, look to track skill development effects in the same terms – such as skill types and proficiency levels (either formally or informally) – that are already used within your company. 

For those looking to monetize the value of skill development, options include:

• Calculating productivity gains by estimating the resulting efficiency improvement (e.g., how many hours are saved multiplied by the average salaries of those who realize the improvement)
• Calculating avoided cost by estimating the price of having employees trained on the skills that were gained through the volunteerism experience

The data for either of these calculations tend to be easily available from an HR department. 

Measuring Sales, Recruiting and Stakeholder Effects

Volunteerism can help your company attract or retain customers in much the same way that it can also influence the behavior of recruiting prospects, business partners, regulators, legislators, advocacy groups, and other stakeholders: through brand enhancement and relationship development.

Generating positive PR can put your company “top of mind” or improve perceptions among stakeholders. Many companies measure performance in this category by tracking the number of media impressions they earned (i.e., how many people viewed or heard the story generated by the media outlet).

This may be another type of acceptable currency within your company, yet it’s not itself a measure of bottom-line value. For that, you need to look at what kind of behavior changed as a result of the brand enhancement.

For example, is there a change in the number of customers or what they purchased, or the number of applicants or their job-offer acceptance rate, or the nature of regulatory action and the effects on the company’s costs?  Brand effects can be powerful and generate substantial bottom-line value for a company – effects that tend to be most easily tracked by the functional area being affected (e.g., sales and marketing, recruiting, and government affairs).

That said, one must be realistic about the potential impact of an individual volunteer activity – or even an overall volunteer program – in its ability to “move the needle” on stakeholder perceptions in a way that will translate into these kinds of behavior changes. 

Whether your company is likely to benefit in these ways depends on the dynamics of your industry and your specific company: it is a determination you may be able to make via discussions with the internal departments that would be potentially impacted, based on their experience with related interventions.

Next Steps

One of the wonderful things about volunteerism – and corporate citizenship activities in general – is the many positive social and business ripple effects that can result. And while none of these individual effects are particularly difficult to measure, trying to take on all of them at once can feel overwhelming.

Instead, try focusing on one or two impacts at the beginning, and use as light a touch as possible in whatever data collection approach you take (piggybacking on existing management systems is often easiest). The best solution is the one that runs in the background, requiring little if any extra effort among administrators, accumulating data for when it’s time to generate that report for leadership (to prove value) or identify strengths and weaknesses for strategic planning (to improve value).

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Metrics, measurement and their effectiveness will be discussed in depth at the only conference dedicated solely to employee engagement – the Charities@Work best Practices Summit taking place on April 3 and 4 in Manhattan. Learn more about the conference and register.

About the Author:

Farron Levy is president of True Impact (www.trueimpact.com), which provides web-based tools and consulting services to help companies such as Deloitte, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Wells Fargo, and their nonprofit partners to measure the social, financial, and environmental impact of their corporate citizenship activities.

At some point there is a transition from trying to avoid the collision to bracing for the impact.

That could be an excerpt from a driver’s education manual. Then again, it could be the outlook for the business climate given the now inevitable changes and effects of global warming.

According to the world’s largest professional services firm, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), “Now one thing is clear: businesses, governments and communities across the world need to plan for a warming world – not just 2C, but 4C or even 6C.”

Their warning comes as the result of an assessment of the global community’s inability to make the needed reductions in carbon emissions to avoid the greatest effects of global warming. PwC’s latest report claims that a reduction in carbon intensity of 5.1 percent per year is needed if we are to meet the target of limiting temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. However, last year, despite the economic slowdown, we saw a reduction of only 0.7 percent, which has been typical of every year since the turn of the century.

“We have passed a critical threshold,” says the report.

Earlier this week, Admiral Samuel Locklear, told the Boston Globe that global warming, “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.”

Even if we were somehow able to double our rate of de-carbonization, we would still be on track to hit a 6 degree increase by the end of the century. The only chance we have to hold temperatures to 2 degrees, would be to come up with a six-fold reduction in carbon emissions, which may be possible eventually, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

So, given this cheery prologue, what are the challenges and opportunities that businesses should be preparing for as we look forward to a destabilizing climate thanks to the effects of global warming?

1. Uncertainty

Without a doubt, the number one impact on business will continue to be uncertainty. Businesses will need to become far more agile and far more strategic, with contingency plans in place that must look bravely into the upcoming crisis without blinking and relegating as little as possible to the realm of the unthinkable.

According to Malcolm Preston, PwC’s global lead on sustainability and climate change, “Even with progress year-on-year in emissions reduction, the reality is that the level of corporate reduction is nowhere near what is required. The new normal for businesses is a period of high uncertainty, subdued growth and volatile commodity prices. If regulatory certainty doesn't come soon, businesses' ability to plan and act – particularly around energy, supply chain and risk – could be anything but 'normal.'”

Of course, uncertainty and risk are two sides of the same coin. According to John Steinbruner, Professor at the University of Maryland and Chair of the Committee on International Security Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, speaking at the World Affairs Council Summit on Climate Change last week (video), “The consequence of climate are certainly going to be very large. We know that without any uncertainty whatsoever. But unfortunately, the character, magnitude and timing and location of those consequences cannot be predicted with sufficient confidence to really tell us what to do about it.”

2. Crowded

If we hit the 6 degree Celsius increase we are now on track to meet by 2100, even if we double our current rate of carbon reduction, according to Mark Lynas, author of the book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, southern Europe, north Africa the Middle East, and the American Midwest will be uninhabitable due to excessive heat and drought. At the same time, inundated coastal cities will need to be evacuated. Roughly one-tenth of the world’s population live in low-lying coastal areas. Admiral Locklear spoke of entire nations being displaced by the rising sea level. All of these climate refugees will need some place to go. It’s likely that there will be some negative feedback effect as we pass 2 degrees at mid-century, as the latest Shell scenario report predicts. This will hopefully lead to substantially enhanced efforts to deal with the problem, once impacts have become truly undeniable, which could steer us more towards a 4-degree increase, if it’s not already too late by then.

3. Disrupted

All of this dislocation will put a tremendous strain on all kinds of services unless action is taken in advance that anticipates the challenges. Robust and resilient systems need to be put in place that can withstand the weather impacts while building in enough capacity to serve all of those who will be in need. Heavy weather events will cause injuries, deaths, days of work missed, as well as damage to infrastructure such as bridges, tunnels, roads, power lines, hospitals, power plants, etc.

4. Wet and dry

Water will be the primary vector through which climate change will make its presence known. Because a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, precipitation patterns will change dramatically, with the trend being towards more water coming down at once, leading to increased runoff and flooding, with less water being absorbed into the ground. Other areas will be deprived of rain altogether, becoming deserts as a result. There is a saying, “You don’t miss your water till your well runs dry.” The same can also be said for the precipitation patterns that until now, made such a large portion of the planet viable for human activity.

5. Hungry

In addition to existing farmland falling prey to heat waves and drought, low lying coastal regions also face contamination from salt water. All of this will place tremendous stress on our ability to feed a steadily growing population. This, in some regions of the world, has already led to social unrest.

These will be the primary impacts. The secondary impacts, which are the human responses to these conditions, could potentially be even more severe, depending on our abilities to navigate through these challenges. Secondary impacts will include:

6. Civil unrest

People are going to be unhappy. They will protest, they will demonstrate, they will riot, they will sue. As Admiral Locklear said, “If it goes bad, you could have hundreds of thousands or millions of people displaced and then security will start to crumble pretty quickly.” People will want someone to do something about all of the things that are making them unhappy.

7. Government action

Given the increasing severity of these impacts, and in some cases, you might say, finally, governments around the world will have no choice but to issue increasingly stringent regulations in an attempt to manage continuing emissions, as well as any scarcities of food and water and other services that might be occurring, while at the same time maintaining security. These regulations will undoubtedly add to the unhappiness of a great many people. It will certainly strain our leaders' ability to lead, far beyond anything that is being seen today.

Rather than end on such a gloomy note, I would add that there are a few positive impacts that might be expected as well. These include:

8. Longer summers

This will not only provide more time for outdoor recreation, but more importantly, given the increasing population, a longer growing season. This could well prove to be critical in meeting the demands of feeding all these people.

9. Milder winters

According to some studies, warmer winters will mean lower mortality from disease. One Stanford study says, "Most people would enjoy higher temperatures, and the evidence supports the proposition that humans would live longer and avoid some sickness."

10. Open trade route

A melted Arctic will provide an open trade route from the Atlantic Ocean to Asia. This will allow much shorter transit times and will, somewhat ironically, save energy.

It’s not too late to try and avoid the collision, or at least reduce its severity, and at the same time, it’s not too soon to start bracing for the impact, either. As Admiral Locklear said, “The ice is melting and sea is getting higher. I’m into the consequence management side of it.”

[Image credit: Andy Lederer: Flickr Creative Commons]

Submitted by Guest Contributor

The Civic 50, a groundbreaking initiative launched in 2012 by the National Conference on Citizenship, Points of Light and Bloomberg News, identified the top 50 community-minded S&P 500 corporations that best use their time, talent, and resources to improve the quality of life in the communities where they do business. The ranking is based on seven dimensions - community partnerships, measurement and strategy, leadership, design, employee and civic growth, cause alignment, and transparency.

In part three, Jackie Norris, Executive Director of Points of Lights' Corporate Institute, decodes the third dimension: cause alignment.

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 A few years ago, Bladimir Martinez, then 16, was chosen as one of 10 high school students to run a real Capital One bank branch inside Parkdale High School in Prince George’s County, Maryland -- a county where only 44 percent of high school graduates are considered college or career ready. In the few years since then, Martinez has transitioned from an ambitious kid who was “not much interested in school” into a bank teller and college student studying business.

Through Capital One’s student-run bank program, students like Martinez are not only responsible for operating a bank branch and offering savings products to their fellow students and faculty, but also for teaching their peers about money management topics such as budgeting and saving. The program provides real-world job experience – all of the students receive professional job training, entry-level bank teller salaries, mentoring, and career – and college preparatory experiences through colleges and universities.

Strategic Community Development: Connecting Education with Empowerment

The program, which focuses on schools in low- to moderate-income communities, has already paid off for many of the students. To date, more than 90 percent of the program’s alumni have since enrolled in college – a decision that could be worth a million dollars in income over the course of a lifetime for each of those young adults.

Martinez traces his turnaround to one of his first interviews with a Capital One Bank mentor who left a lasting impression on him. “That was the moment I thought, ‘To be this guy, I have to go through this.’ I realized that nothing happens overnight. School is a must in my life now.”

Financial literacy, education and workforce development are among the goals of Capital One’s Investing for Good strategy, which aligns the bank’s community engagement programs, funding decisions and employee skills with its core business capabilities as a bank.

“We believe that strong business and strong community go hand in hand," said Carolyn Berkowitz, Managing Vice President, Community Affairs; and President of the Capital One Foundation.

"We recognize that creating thriving communities doesn’t happen overnight – it requires a long-term focus and commitment, coupled with deep partnerships with effective nonprofit organizations and community leaders, to drive lasting economic outcomes.”

“Our community engagement goes beyond ‘checkbook philanthropy’ – we don’t just write a check and walk away,” Berkowitz adds. “We focus on making strategic, long-term investments – through philanthropy, lending, and volunteering -- to catalyze economic growth in our communities.”

This approach helped Capital One earn top honors in cause alignment last year from The Civic 50, a ranking of America’s most community-minded companies.

The Civic 50, a partnership between National Conference on Citizenship and Points of Light, ranks corporations on seven dimensions of local involvement. The cause alignment dimension requires a firm to show that it uses its workers’ professional skills in community engagement programs that are consistent with its core business competencies and objectives.

Investing for Good: Focusing on Scale

One way Capital One does this is through its Investing for Good pro bono volunteer program, through which its employees in departments such as Brand, IT, Legal, and HR leverage their unique business skills to help local nonprofit organizations enhance their ability as a business to address local community needs.

For example, last year Capital One employees stepped in to help the Legal Aid Justice Center of Charlottesville, Va., find a solution when the economic downturn flooded Legal Aid with requests from new clients just as the organization’s government funding was cut by 20 percent. Legal Aid lost half of their staff attorneys as demand for their services increased by nearly 60 percent. 

“We’d send emails and faxes and call lawyer after lawyer after lawyer” trying to match each client in need with a volunteer attorney somewhere in the state with the right skills for the case, said Alex Gulotta, executive director of the Legal Aid Justice Center. “Calling and calling and calling is not very efficient.”

Capital One sent a team of 15 volunteers from its legal, systems analysis, supply chain management communications and information technology departments to find a new approach.

The result of that collaboration was Justice Server, an electronic data management system that gives volunteer attorneys across Virginia easy access to Legal Aid’s computerized files on all the cases needing help. 

“This is now our primary case-management system, and other states are looking at the model,” Gulotta said. 

The Center “needed a different kind of technical solution for organizing their work, the kind of thing Capital One people develop all the time,” said Berkowitz. “And our people got involved in ways they feel really great about.”

When Capital One channels its employees’ talents to solve community problems, “they bring back to the company new leadership skills and are better employees,” Berkowitz said. In fact, more than 90 percent of Capital One managers said their associates' leadership development skills were demonstrably improved after engaging in pro-bono work.

And when Capital One brings more to the community than just donations, it “helps make people in the community confident that we’re the kind of folks they’d like to bank with and it fosters long-term economic growth in the community that is also good for business. It’s a win-win for us," added Berkowitz.

Previously:

The Citi Foundation Finds New Ways to Measure the Impact of CSR Efforts

The Civic 50: Why IBM's Integrated Commitments Make it America's Most Community-Minded Company

In the third CSR Breakfast roundtable, hosted by Ethical Performance and London-based consultancy Lumina CR, an invited group of senior media industry professionals discussed the ethical issues facing their companies. Chatham House rules applied and none of their quotes are attributed. Reporter: Nick Spencer

The media, in all its manifestations, is playing an increasingly dominant role in all our lives. Sometimes visibly, whether via apps, 4G mobile phone technology or the streaming of films and TV programmes. And, occasionally, as in the case of certain phone-hacking News of the World journalists, so subtly that their exploits remained undetected for years.

When Lord Justice Leveson was charged with examining ‘the culture, practice and ethics’ of the press, some may have wondered whether he would find any. But while arguments rage over Leveson’s recommendation for statutory regulation of the press, CSR professionals in the wider media world have a raft of ethical issues to consider.

Media companies hold vast amounts of data on their customers – with potential to use it for good or ill. Should their programmes attempt to lead society or reflect it?  And where does that leave questions of editorial independence, responsibility and sustainability?

Meanwhile, the proliferation of media platforms has resulted in a fragmentation of audiences, while Twitter and the explosion in social media begs the question as to how one actually defines what a journalist is any more.

As one speaker noted, the media’s role in the digital age – with implications for regulation – is a conversation for the whole of society to have. And it is a conversation that is only just beginning.

‘The only way is Ethics’
The sanctity of editorial independence is a good starting point, with one head of CSR outlining the problems of telling programme makers what to do – even if the subject is something as important as, say, climate change.

“It’s very hard for a company to say, ‘you will devote five per cent of airtime to environmental issues’,” he said. “I can’t change editorial policy but I can educate staff about what they can do here or at home. So what I’ve tried to do is put our house in order here.

“When I started, we didn’t recycle anything but I have seen instances where the ideas we have here do end up on screen.”

A stakeholder engagement manager at a TV company said the question of whether media companies should promote sustainability on their channels polarised opinion, both for and against.

“We have been doing programmes around rainforests and climate change for over three years. We have been trying to learn what makes a programme watchable and how it inspires people in a way that doesn’t make them switch over to the sport because it’s all doom and gloom.

“We are still learning about how you make the subject entertaining and inspiring but we are getting better at lifting our ratings.”

There was no dissenting from the view that a celebrity name was a good way to attract viewers but it was pointed out that important issues can be included subtly – there is no need for a sledgehammer.

One speaker said: “You can’t switch one of those house building programmes on without hearing about solar panels, so I think those issues are very well covered.”

The head of sustainability at an advertising company indicated a way in which his business, which is all about aspiration, could help.

“It’s not about raising awareness among the public – which is already significant – it is about how we move them on to a certain way of behaving. The media has always led in this. It has made smoking uncool while it is really cool to put your seatbelt on.

“It is no good if Sky has fantastic programmes about, say, rainforests and all we do around it is sell cars that pollute the environment. Quite often good work by programming is undone when it is embedded in advertising encouraging a more unsustainable way of living.

“Ultimately we make stuff cool and sexy so we can sell it, and we can surely also do it around this topic.”

It sounded, said another speaker, like a risky strategy for advertisers. “Absolutely,” he agreed, “but I wasn’t hired to be boring. We are here to change these organisations, not to improve our recycling by one per cent!

“The big impact of media is on the attitudes and behaviour of people. If all we did was reflect society, that would be a sorry state of affairs.”

Mention of a successful project between Homebase and the Eden Project prompted an interesting exchange on the gap between consumers’ awareness and their behaviour.

Homeowners were given £1,000 to insulate their homes but subsequent research indicated that people from the lowest socio-economic groups made the biggest changes to their lifestyles, while people with the greenest values changed their behaviour the least.

According to the advertising company’s head of sustainability, the two biggest obstacles to change are routine and money/affordability. But routine is king: human beings are creatures of habit.

Supermarkets were full of greener and more ethical alternatives, he said. “Our task is to try to make sure it’s not more expensive to live slightly better and slightly greener, which it currently is. Ethical media should be about offering opportunities for behaviour change.”

The ways in which media companies can reach their audience has never been greater, so what is the trick to engaging consumers? “Make it normal, fun,” and “It all follows from education” were two comments.

More controversially, companies hold a lot of sensitive information on consumers. What they do with that data will be one of the big challenges of the next couple of years, according to one head of sustainability.

“For example, can we use the data to influence, guide or even sell to advertisers. We could help to influence content. As the landscape changes and consumers do more online, it is going to throw up all sorts of challenges.

“There are commercial opportunities but if there is some bad stuff on our network, we can use that data [such as IP addresses] to help solve crimes.”

‘Churnalism’
One consequence of the digital age is the advent of the citizen journalist, with implications for understanding where a message originated and a blurring of the line between fact and opinion. Does anyone know how to define journalism these days? And can anyone be one?

“The rise of new media and new technology means that we are constantly having to redefine what journalism and media is,” said a policy analyst from a business publisher.

“You may have journalist exemptions [under proposed EU legislation] regarding freedom of expression, but then what is a journalist? A blogger? Someone writing for a newspaper?”

She added: “If people come to trust advertising more, because they are being marketed to in a better way, through profiling, maybe they will be open to other advertising campaigns with, say, environmental points of view.’’

However, there are practical difficulties in actually reaching an audience when the number of TV stations has expanded from three to many hundred in the past 30 years. A media consultant said the reach of nightly news bulletins had almost halved, from a high of 25million.

“As a society, we don’t get stories framed in a single, collective way any more. We can seek out stories that are pre-digested into our particular framing.

“That sounds great on one level, but it means the debate becomes increasingly polarised, which I don’t think policymakers and media companies have quite got their heads round yet.

“We don’t have a national water cooler any more around which we all meet and talk.”

Meanwhile, research has shown that, over time, the number of print journalists had halved while the quantity of news stories had gone up by a factor of three. The implications for accuracy and “churnalism”  – journalism by press release – were obvious.

Lord McAlpine’s numerous libel actions – including against Twitter users - after a defamatory Newsnight report prompted a Project & Communications Manager to say: “We now have to think about what people want to do with the stories we produce, not just the stories themselves.”

When the discussion turned to practical examples of sustainable policies, there were several positive stories: Sky’s Sky Ride scheme, for instance. This has prompted one million more people to cycle regularly and complements their sponsorship of a successful professional team.

“It was about inspiring people to take action because we recognise that, as a media company, we had a broader role to play,” said a Sky representative. “We don’t talk about getting fit and losing weight because we know that it doesn’t inspire people, but we talk about getting on your bike and having fun and creating opportunities for people to do that. We know that it has resulted in change but it is fundamentally addressing sustainability in society.”

Today, people are as likely to be connected, digitally, to someone on the other side of the world as they are to talk to their neighbour. It is an exhilarating though unnerving thought. “People are now starting to think about the impact of the digital world on their families,” said one head of sustainability. “Child protection, sure, but also cultural changes: telly health, obesity, families not talking around the dinner table. People want to really understand what all this means for the families of tomorrow.”

A media consultant concluded: “We are at the beginning of a very complicated societal debate which is going to involve not just the media companies, but policymakers, commentators and society at large. It involves regulation, editorial independence and transparency, but we are right at the very start.”

CSR Breakfast is an invitation-only roundtable discussion of ethical issues. This report reflects the discussions at the third event, on the media industry, in February. For details, visit the CSR Breakfast LinkedIn group at www.linkedin.com

It’s been said that teaching is an act of love. For teachers who enjoy teaching privately, the proof of that truism is in the hours of extra work they do each week to prepare for the class. Those evening classes in cooking techniques, Spanish conversation and relaxing Hatha yoga come with their own share of after-hours paperwork … as well as student enrollment duties, door-to-door marketing, sales phone calls, student consults about payment schedules, and the many other potential headaches that makes it possible for teachers to offer great courses.

Meet WeTeachMe

WeTeachMe, a new Melbourne-based company, provides an innovative online method to schedule, promote and manage the booking of private courses. It fills those areas that self-employed teachers often find the most challenging and energy draining, by automating the process from a website that potential students can access freely.

According to co-founder Kym Huynh, the company was launched in December 2012 after some soul-searching reflections by several of its founders.

“One of my co-founders woke up and decided one day that he needed to change the oil in his car. The problem was, he actually wanted someone (else) to teach him how to do it, so he could have that experience. But finding someone who could do that was actually very difficult. So he thought, OK, wouldn’t it be good to connect with someone who could?”

At the same time says Huynh, a friend of his who showed great promise as an artist wanted to start a business, but had no idea how to handle the administrative end of the daunting process.

“I thought, if we could structure something that would help her share her passion, that would be rewarding both intrinsically and financially, then that could be a really powerful message we could send to the community.”

Interactive program for teachers and students

The WeTeachMe concept says Huynh, thrives not only because it fills a niche, but because of the interactive characteristics they’ve been able to build into the platform, and which complement both the teacher and the potential student, such as maintaining a list of students’ interests and preferences, and which of the instructor’s courses are the most attended.

“We found most people were running into the same problems over and over again, such as payment handling, how to market their courses, how to efficiently manage all the admin processes so they could just focus on what they love, which is sharing their knowledge.”

At the same time, the website makes it easier for students to find classes and to network with professionals within their areas of interest. The Melbourne WeTeachMe page for example, provides classes ranging from walking tours to self defense instruction, although its most popular topics generally focus on cooking and the arts. Huynh points out that WeTeachMe is designed to accommodate just about any interest or venue there is, making it suitable for a wide range of student interests. This can be a powerful feature for independent teachers with niche specialties.

The Sharing Economy

The WeTeachMe concept also complements the goals of the sharing economy movement, which Huynh says has been gaining momentum in Melbourne.

“In Australia, what we’re seeing is there is a (shift) in collaborative consumption types of businesses where people share knowledge, people share resources. Rather than focus on the consumption of resources now, which can be seen as a selfish thing, what we see now is we can actually consume resources and share the resources at the same time. At least part of this movement is gaining quite a bit of traction in Australia, particularly with the number of companies launching under this (concept).”

But Huynh says that isn’t the only reason he’s put his support behind WeTeachMe.

“More generally why I work on WeTeachMe, and why I believe in it so much, is that in any instance in an economy where there has been significant improvement or advancement has always been underepinned by a free flow of knowledge and education in the community itself.

“And what we’ve seen is when people in the community are educated and are actively learning, and are actively passionate, are actively curious, what you see is this uplift effect. And now more than ever, we have the opportunity to empower individual members in the community to share their pockets of knowledge.”

United States and Canada markets

Since the launch last year, the four founding members, Cheng Zhu, Martin Kemka, Demi Markogiannaki and Huynh, have realized  that there is potential demand for their program not only in Australia (where it has already launched in more than four cities), but in North America. Huynh says he expects they will be able to open business in the U.S. in 2013.

As to cost, Huynh says the company takes a small administrative fee that is incrementally set according to the size of a course fee. A class that costs $50 AU per student for example, has an administrative charge of $2, whereas a class that costs $500 AU per student is charged $10. Huynh says the fees are deliberately kept low to be fair to beginning instructors who are just launching their careers.

“We're not doing it for the money itself. The reason we’re doing it is essentially changing the way knowledge is shared within our communities.”

He adds that as instructors gain more students and their revenue increases, he hopes that repeat users will keep the fledgling company in mind, and agree to increase their fees. It’s an attitude that is meant to reflect the ethics of the sharing economy, what he calls “paying it forward.”

It will be interesting to see how WeTeachMe fares when it debuts in North America. As one who has taught in both the public and private arenas, this writer can appreciate the challenges of the private marketplace, especially when it comes to teaching something you love to share. WeTeachMe’s first hurdle may be its financial conversion system: At present, fees are calculated in Australian dollars, something that may be a stumbling block to U.S.-based teachers and students.

Still, WeTeachMe offers a service that may be valuable to hard-to-market courses, and makes it easier for teachers who teach engaging courses to focus on what they do best. And that, as Huynh points out, gets to the core of what a functioning sharing economy is all about.

Image credit: Pexels

Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Carol Cone, Edelman Business + Social Purpose Global Practice Chair with Larry Koffler, EVP Business + Social Purpose

Dan Edelman’s passing had a profound effect on so many – his family, friends, colleagues, and our industry. While I have only been at the firm for two and a half years, it deeply touched me too.

I was extremely fortunate to have met Dan, as well as his lovely wife Ruth, a few times in recent years.  The most memorable was an intimate “interview” lunch at his home where we had a dynamic conversation to vet my joining the firm.

Dan peppered me with questions: How much did I believe in the strategy of business being a positive force in the world?  What were my greatest career achievements and what were my aspirations at Edelman? What was my work style? My biggest failure and what did I learn from it? My values?

After a half hour, Richard “rescued” me. While he knew his dad would be charming, he also knew he would relentlessly probe to see if I would be a strong fit for the firm. In his late 80’s at the time, Dan never missed a beat.

The Demanding Entrepreneur

That luncheon experience was pure Dan Edelman. He was demanding, tough and direct. He wanted to see if my values and work ethic, love of knowledge and events, matched those of the firm: collaboration, hard work, entrepreneurial spirit, imaginative thinking, courage, integrity and a singular focus on the client. 

When my colleague Larry Koffler, started as an intern 20 years ago, Edelman was an entrepreneurial, creative, hard-working family-owned mid-sized agency. The patriarch was firmly in charge.

Most memorable for him, he says, was Dan’s ability to articulate his vision for both the agency and the public relations industry while demonstrating the importance of sweating the details. His memos would highlight the big picture: observations from his global travels, how our independence would enable us to best serve our clients, and how our aspirations were always to be the best, regardless of size.

They would also outline in great detail what we were doing well and where we needed improve - from prospecting to pitching.

Dan was especially interested in why I had sold my company. He loved founders and entrepreneurs.  Persistence and curiosity were key attributes he sought in potential hires.

Staying True to Truth: From the Big Picture to the Finer Points

Core to his values and Edelman’s success was independence:

“Our major goal is client service not service to Wall Street. Our independence allows us to be feisty, hard hitting, creative and honest. We are the only ones in the position to tell our clients the truth,” versus an ad agency or holding company’s PR division, he added. “Public relations is a field onto its own. It can only be practiced properly from a position of independence.”

When Edelman became the world's largest PR firm, Jack O’Dwyer declared:  “Independence won. Edelman was the only big firm that stayed true to the craft and didn’t sell out.”

In 1997, recalls Koffler:

“Edelman won the United States Tennis Association account and part of our initial remit was counsel surrounding the naming and announcement of the new stadium at the USTA National Tennis Center. There were two major factions for the name of the stadium – one advocating for a corporate naming deal to help bring in revenue and one for the former US Open champion and humanitarian Arthur Ashe.

While we were strongly in favor of the latter, the momentum was drifting toward the former. The final decision was to be taken at a board meeting, which Dan was invited to attend. At the meeting, he made the big picture case for naming it after Arthur Ashe, successfully swaying the board members.

Several weeks later, during the US Open, Dan sent us a note diving into the details of the account, which included a summary of what John McEnroe could be doing better in the announcer’s booth! We treaded very carefully on that one.”

Leading with Love: Dan Edelman's Values for Work and Life

Dan was always available and extremely generous with advice to aspiring and young PR practitioners. His approach to life was grounded in a commitment to be the very best he could be at work, as a father, husband and community member. His advice to be the very best included:

• Read everyday. Devour important books, newspapers, magazines, blogs.
• Learn to write. Well.
• Remember the importance of networking.
• Volunteer for a hospital, museum or nonprofit.
• Continue your education throughout your life.
• Keep in shape and exercise regularly.
• Be creative. Strive for the big idea. Be realistic but dare to be different.
• Every good answer begins with proper research. Start with penetrating analysis of the problem and objectives.
• Work hard. There is no such thing as a shortcut.
• Work hard, but don’t be a workaholic. Be sure you have a rich and balanced social life.
• Love and be loved.  That experience keeps refreshing you and helps you to reach even higher levels of achievement.
• Have fun.

These words of wisdom permeate the company’s culture, which has become a magnet for amazing and dedicated people, as well as outstanding and longstanding clients.  Sure, Edelman is a hard driving business with high goals, but it also has a special global family feeling.

“Dan had a code of ethics and values that were unshakable,” stated Richard in the book he commissioned to celebrate the firm’s 60^th anniversary, Edelman and the Rise of Public Relations. It is a book I would highly recommend for those working in communications.

“Hire the best talent and retain them by giving them the chance to be entrepreneurial. Invest in proprietary IP and give clients access to it. Expand in new markets by reinvesting all earnings each year.”

“Dan was indomitable,” Richard continued. “He continually strived to be better, always humble, one client at a time, one office at a time.”

In the words of Pam Talbot, Edelman’s U.S. CEO from 1996 – 2008:

“Oddly business is about love.  You can’t lead without loving the people you are leading and loving the work that you do.”

Edelman has certainly changed over the past couple of decades – but most notably, it is now the world’s largest public relations agency with 66 offices and 4,500 employees. It remains, however, entrepreneurial, creative and hard working – just like Dan.

Dignity is a driving force for sanitation in India, alongside public health and convenience.

When former Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh complained, with characteristic pithiness, that there were “more temples than toilets” in India, he sparked a political storm with Hindu nationalists. But he also put his finger on one of the country’s most stubborn problems. Decent sanitation is far from a given: only 14 percent of the rural population have access to a latrine, and diarrhoea kills 1,600 people a day, mainly children.

“This is not just a public health problem,” says Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, Distinguished Fellow at TERI. “It’s a human rights issue.” Public education programmes can help, but they stand more of a chance of making a difference if there are public toilets too. Dasgupta points to the success of the Sulabh composting toilet, which captures and processes the waste so it can be reused as a fertiliser. Over 7,000 installations are in place around the country: typically men pay half a rupee, while women and children go free. Persuading people to pay has been less of an issue than some predicted, says Dasgupta: “I think it’s not simply a question of convenience but of dignity. People are prepared to pay for dignity.”

Clean water, too, is far from a given in India: over half the population lack access to it. This leaves them vulnerable to diseases such as dysentery, cholera and typhoid. Which means that effective, affordable water purification is a vital step in improving the health of hundreds of millions of Indians. The Pureit device, produced by Unilever, provides “as safe as boiled” water at a cost of around 26 paisa (about a quarter of a rupee) per litre. It does so through an innovative combination of a microfibre mesh, carbon trap and programmed chlorine release to kill germs and bacteria and clean water to international drinking quality standards. The water then goes through a ‘polisher’ to remove chlorine traces and and other odours.

A study by the National Institute of Epidemiology in the slums of Chennai showed that households with a Pureit had 50 percent less incidence of diarrhoea than ones without. Around 30 million people have gained access to safe drinking water by using Pureit since 2005.

Meanwhile, Unilever is extending its programme to encourage hand-washing, while simultaneously marketing its Lifebuoy products range. Health workers travel round schools staging demonstrations using a powder called ‘glo-germ.’ It works like this. The children wash their hands with water alone, and then the powder is sprinkled on their palms. The health worker shines an ultraviolet (UV) light, and the hands ‘glow’ where traces of dirt remain. Then they repeat the process with the soap, and the UV test comes up clear. It has proved a persuasive tool for people who had assumed that no visible dirt means no germs.

Make it easy, make it desirable, make it a habit

The scheme focuses particularly on children on the basis that they will ‘infect’ their families with good practice. It uses a range of tried and tested behavioural techniques (‘make it easy, make it desirable, make it a habit’) to help hand-washing become second nature, and so far the evidence suggests it does indeed take hold. Follow-up studies show that pursuing good hand hygiene practices can result in 25 percent fewer cases of diarrhoea and 46 percent fewer eye infections, compared with a control group. And children who do so miss over 25 percent fewer days from school due to illness.

The initiative has its distant roots in the early days of Lifebuoy in the 19th century, when William Lever, one of the company’s founders, launched it as a means of eradicating cholera from the slums of British cities. During 2010-2011, a new rural outreach programme known as ‘Khushiyon Ki Doli’ (‘Caravan of Happiness’), took hand-washing messages to remote areas, reaching around 30 million people. – Martin Wright

Submitted by Aman Singh

This series is about Earthwards, a Johnson & Johnson program. In part four, CSRwire's Editorial Director Aman Singh explores the right roadmap to become a fully sustainable company -- and what role programs like Earthwards play in shifting the entire culture -- from R&D and product development to marketing and sales -- of a complex organization like J&J.

A "fully sustainable company" remains an aspirational goal for many organizations - yet the road to this ambitious endpoint is filled with challenges waiting for innovative solutions.

To get started, a company must assess its environmental impacts and consistently work to minimize them. But can a company ever become a "fully sustainable company" and, if so, what’s the right roadmap to getting there? 

In last week’s post, Al Iannuzzi, Senior Director for Worldwide Environment Health and Safety at J&J wrote, "We believe in greener products." He was instrumental in mapping out Johnson & Johnson’s EARTHWARDS process to improve product sustainability and its successful adoption across the business units.

Earthwards is a proprietary process that guides Johnson & Johnson teams to holistically identify, address and improve their products’ biggest environmental impacts across a broad range of areas. For Johnson & Johnson, this accounts for a major leap in its journey to becoming a more sustainable enterprise.

Earthwards & GAIA: The Need For Tools

While Earthwards is now the criteria used to assess the sustainability of Johnson & Johnson products, it also requires business specific tools to help make products greener. A key tool for the Consumer Products division is the Global Aquatic Ingredient Assessment, or GAIA for short. 

I sat down with Ray Sharples, Manager of EHS & Product Stewardship for Johnson & Johnson’s Consumer Division, to discuss the impetus for GAIA.

According to Sharples, there was a need to develop a tool to measure the environmental impacts of the products Johnson & Johnson puts into the marketplace. To address this need, in 2010, the Johnson & Johnson Consumer Product Stewardship team set out to create a new tool to quantify the impacts of various formulas.

"We needed a way to assess which materials were “better” among our ingredients so we could make improvements in the environmental attributes of our products," Sharples said.

Interestingly, this technical and scientific process at Johnson & Johnson spurred opportunities for innovation and got employees engaged in the development of greener products. As part of the Earthwards lifecycle thinking, GAIA now plays a role in helping products achieve Earthwards recognition.

Johnson & Johnson started the GAIA scoring system in 2010.  GAIA rates the ingredients in a Johnson & Johnson product. GAIA scores are primarily based on scientific issues such as persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity along with other factors, which, in some cases, can reduce the score of an ingredient.

"The intent behind GAIA was to guide product developers around the world to choose environmentally preferred ingredients," Sharples said.

“The use of ingredients that are readily biodegradable and have minimal environmental impact to the ecosystem allows us to reduce our global environmental footprint. By making this process more streamlined and quantifiable, we’re not only increasing our environmental successes, we’re making it a part of everyday life,” he explained.

Getting a Lift From Earthwards

GAIA was operating almost exclusively with R&D because it was a science-based tool with specific emphasis on measuring downstream ecosystem impacts, but Earthwards changed that.  

"Incorporating GAIA as one of the tools within the lifecycle thinking of Earthwards has been really important in mainstreaming GAIA across Johnson & Johnson Consumer group," Sharples said, pointing to the much broader implementation of Earthwards across the company's various business units and divisions. 

“GAIA soon took off in the Consumer group, as brand teams tried to obtain Earthwards recognition.  We're now using GAIA as a way of educating and engaging our employees on key considerations for sustainable product development," he added. 

Under the GAIA tool, a product with a score between 80 and 100 is considered environmentally preferred, which means the product consists primarily of biodegradable ingredients that minimize its impact on the ecosystem. "Sixty-five percent of our new formulations today achieve a GAIA score of 80 or higher. Our goal is to ensure that 80 percent of all new Johnson & Johnson consumer products score between 80 and 100 by 2017," said Sharples.

Why stop at 80 percent?

"One-hundred percent is just very, very difficult to reach. Even reaching 80 percent will be challenging because of the complexity involved in our formulations,” Sharples explained.

GAIA: Hidden Opportunity?

GAIA offers obvious benefits and some less obvious ones. The tool, for example, has often led formulators and R&D teams to find opportunities that they would have previously missed. And making product improvements first through GAIA can help a product development team uncover other lifecycle improvements towards an Earthwards recognition.

Examples of products that first went through the GAIA process and then advanced to achieve Earthwards recognition include Johnson & Johnson’s Baby First Touch Zinksalva (Nappy Cream) and Baby First Touch Shampoo, both marketed under the Natusan brand in Europe.

Creating Change

Sharples’ comments reminded me of a keynote speech by Jeff Swartz, Timberland's former CEO:

"Sometimes you have to stop wanting the consumer to dictate market trends, innovations and movements. Sometimes you have to take a stand and lead the market."

But not all issues are as easy to remedy.

For example, zinc oxide is a “red” ingredient under GAIA and therefore, one that Johnson & Johnson aims to avoid. But when it comes to sunscreen, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration [FDA] has approved zinc oxide as an active ingredient in these products and alternative sunscreen active ingredients have other potential environmental concerns.

So how does the company choose its next step?

Challenge the FDA? Continue with the status quo? Change its product formulation? And who takes on the cost burden of changing the formulation of a successfully tested product? The company? The government? The hospitals and health care institutions? Consumers?

These questions are complicated and require equally complicated solutions.

Like Johnson & Johnson, there are numerous companies aspiring to produce sustainable products, using renewable energy, pursuing zero waste and achieving other targets to ensure their impact on the planet and society is a net positive. 

So far, their responses have been piecemeal with Johnson & Johnson’s Earthwards serving as an excellent example of the holistic approach needed in the marketplace. But is there a truly “fully sustainable company” that has figured it all out? If you know one, drop me an email.

Next: Adam Cornfield, Product Manager for Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, Inc., explores how Earthwards is responding to the evolving demand for more sustainable health care products.

Previously:

Toward Greener Products: The Complex Journey of Product Innovation

Earthwards: A Front Row Seat to Sustainability in Action at Johnson & Johnson

Earthwards: Johnson & Johnson’s Drive Toward a Healthy Future

Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Dr. Thomas Osburg, Director Europe Corporate Affairs, Intel Corp. and Board of Director, CSR Europe and EABIS

Looking at the current issues in Europe, we might be a little misled by day-to-day news.

Undoubtedly, the ongoing financial instability in the Eurozone remains a serious issue for most European countries. However, the real long-term burning problems are in two areas, which are ultimately more interlinked than what one might think. And which CSR Europe aims to tackle in its new 2013-2015 work program:

Challenge 1: Europe's Unemployment Rate

First, the unemployment rate in Europe has hit record levels. In particular, the unemployment rate of people under the age of 25 is alarming and unacceptable with more than 50 percent of young people failing to find a job in countries like Greece and Spain.

At the same time, we witness an increasing dropout rate in schools and a declining interest among youth in STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). This is particularly worrying because Europe is missing more than 100,000 engineers and IT specialists; jobs, which could be filled if people had the appropriate qualification.

Challenge 2: Sustainable Living & the Urban Landscape

A second area of major concern is the challenge of sustainable living in cities. This is driven by a growing population and more people leaving the countryside to live in urban areas. This poses a significant challenge for housing, social welfare, energy consumption and related issues. It is no surprise then that businesses are being asked more and more to make a contribution to solving these problems.

The new Work program for CSR Europe that will officially kick off in April will address these sustainability problems in a much more focused way than before.

CSR Europe’s Board of Directors, which is composed of representatives from major companies globally, were clear that we need to support the EU and national governments in helping them to find and implement solutions to long-term challenges.

Shared Value, not CSR: The Potential of Social Innovation

One of the most promising approaches we've seen is the concept of Social Innovation. While it is broadly understood as a new form of cross-sectorial collaboration between governments, NGOs and private companies to create shared value for all stakeholders, the concept builds on the belief that the potential to tackle sustainability issues lies in the power of collaboration.

Explored with those nuances in mind, social innovation instead of becoming the next generation of CSR, takes on a different approach from the very beginning. Social innovation focuses on finding a joint, innovative solution to a societal problem and its subsequent implementation.

Happily, a lot of companies have already embarked on this endeavor.

Yet, taking a path of Social Innovation is not a mission with a guaranteed results; a number of companies aiming at delivering good results fail to do so by not generating a targeted impact or lacking long term viability. In particular, social innovations, which often get started with an enthusiastic but narrow, focus on the problem itself. Such an Invention-centred approach, without long term perspective planning fails to deliver a scalable Innovation.  

How Does Your Organization Approach Innovation?

To overcome this shortfall and advance social innovation concepts, it seems more promising to first investigate companies’ innovation concepts. The traditional process predominantly focuses on economic sustainability for the firm, which means it should help the company to stay in business.

For many years, this was sufficient and doing good was an add-on to gain reputation or secure the license to operate.

Today, true Social Innovation is supplemented with a solution driven approach with every successful enterprise establishing a well thought-through process. This is key for continued competitiveness.

However, this too is changing now.

Following requests to companies for Triple Bottom Line reporting, that requires communication of economic, ecological and social sustainability; a pure economic focus of the innovation process is not sufficient anymore. In order to achieve the necessary ecological and societal sustainability, the Innovation process needs to change to allow for solutions contributing to the Triple Bottom Line and thus bearing potential for shared value creation, both for companies and society.

The European Business Campaign on Skills for Jobs and its reference initiative Enterprise 2020 strategy aim at including Social Innovation into the innovation process to help companies increase their own sustainability or – in other words - their capacity to endure. It is the dedication to social innovation, and shared value creation that made Enterprise 2020 the leading European movement for companies committed to developing innovative business practices and working together with their stakeholders to provide solutions to existing and emerging societal needs.

The next step: Evolving social innovation to create shared value for our organizations, community and the environment.

As we begin to move away from fossil fuels, it is important to recognize that those fuels provided two functions in one. They were both energy sources and energy storage systems. In the new world of renewables, those two functions will have to be provided separately.

The ability to store energy at times when the supply exceeds demands will be a key to the effective utilization of renewable energy. Because many renewable sources (e.g. wind, solar, tidal) are intermittent in nature, storage is useful, both for the times it is available, and not needed, as well as those times it is needed, but not available.

The basic idea is to keep harvesting the energy resource at a steady rate, regardless of the demand. Usually, this results in the most efficient operation. If the demand is less than full capacity, the excess is diverted into some kind of storage medium. Storage could take the form of charged electric batteries, compressed air, mechanical springs or rotating flywheels, pumped water, heat, ice, electrolytic production of hydrogen, or numerous other methods.

This DOE database contains 409 projects from 34 countries. The total represents 121,89GW of energy storage. The aim is to track all energy storage projects worldwide within the next year. [ed note: numbers updated as of October 2013]

Probably the first major modern application of energy storage was pumped storage hydro. In this scheme, excess energy that is available during off-peak hours is used to pump water back up the hill to an upper reservoir, where it can be added to the regular flow during periods of peak demand. Pump storage is one of the more efficient methods of energy storage (around 75 percent) though it has the drawback of not being instantaneously available.

Hydrogen storage utilizes excess electric power to produce hydrogen and oxygen from water by means of electrolysis. Energy can be retrieved by running them back through a fuel cell, or by direct combustion of the hydrogen-oxygen combination to power a gas turbine or other type of engine.

Energy can also be stored in compressed air, in which a motor-compressor is used to pump air into a tank, which is then reversed when the energy is needed, turning the motor into a generator, and the compressor into a turbine. Recent advances, such as the new regenerative device from Lightsail Energy, manages and utilizes the heat generated by the process, which has improved “round-trip” efficiencies into the 70 percent range.

Flywheel energy storage puts excess energy into a heavy spinning rotor, which, due to its large inertia, maintains a very constant speed. These are often used in a vacuum enclosure which eliminates air resistance, resulting in higher efficiency. Systems like this can be used to maintain frequency regulation in conventional fossil fuel plants, eliminating the need for additional fossil “peaker" plants, which are usually among the dirtiest, to perform this function.

Thermal energy storage involves storing the energy in a storage medium at a temperature that will be useful a later time. This is often stored as hot water, or heated rocks or gravel, molten salts or concrete slabs in solar heating applications. Some companies, like Calmac, use off peak energy at night to create ice, which is then stored and used to provide air conditioning in large buildings during the summer. Not only is the electricity cheaper at night, but it often contains a higher mix of wind power, making it cleaner as well. Thermal energy storage is currently second only to pumped storage in U.S. capacity. And is expected to keep going given the growth in solar energy.

Finally, perhaps the holy grail of energy storage is the quest for the perfect battery. Batteries are best because not only are they clean and extremely efficient, but they can provide the stored energy instantaneously. The development of new, very large, highly efficient batteries, suitable for utility scale storage, has become very big business. AES Energy Storage, for example, has, at this writing, some 76 MW of storage in operation or construction, with 500 MW more in development. EOS is another such company, just bringing their first products to the market this year. Their website claims the following elements in their value proposition:

• Electricity off-peak/peak time shifting


• Frequency regulation, spinning reserve and other ancillary services


• Capacity payments (reliability incentive)


• Load firming for renewables


• Transmission and distribution capital expenditure deferred

Like many facets of the emerging new energy economy, the biggest payoff comes as the result of the synergy of putting these elements together in a deliberately and carefully designed system: distributed renewable power generation, flexible baseload infrastructure, smart grid, demand response and rapid response energy storage. When combined properly, these elements will perform together like discrete components in an integrated circuit whose primary function is to reliably provide the cleanest and most efficient form of power possible, round the clock, day after day.

But there is one more component in this equation that we dare not leave out, for to do so would be to miss a great opportunity. That would be electric vehicles. EVs could eventually form, as a collective entity, the largest energy storage system of all. At night, when the windmills are turning and the EVs are parked in their garages, they could be using the EV batteries to gobble up all that carbon-free, clean output, while offsetting what had once been the exclusive domain of gasoline. During the day, these same cars and trucks could be connected to smart charging stations that can facilitate the give and take that will become the hallmark of communities that are interconnected by smart networks.

Examples of this vision in action have already been demonstrated in Japan’s Smart Cities program, Ford and Whirlpool’s MyEnergi Lifestyle collaboration as well as a multitude of efforts under the banner of vehicle-to-grid or V2G. A recent report found that these types of "machine to machine" synergies could cut as much as 9 billion tons of CO2 by 2020.

Energy Storage

Pros                                                                

• Facilitates effective utilization of intermittent renewable sources


• Can be combined into smart integrated energy system


• Reduces need for increased peak generation capacity


• Enhances grid reliability


• Performance and cost are continually improving


• Allows renewable and fossil source to integrate

Cons

• Energy lost in “round trip” inefficiencies


• Additional cost and complexity


• Additional infrastructure and space requirements

 

[Image credit: Radio Rover: Flickr Creative Commons]

RP Siegel, PE, is an inventor, consultant and author. He co-wrote the eco-thriller Vapor Trails, the first in a series covering the human side of various sustainability issues including energy, food, and water in an exciting and entertaining format. Now available on Kindle.

Follow RP Siegel on Twitter.