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Most of Asia's rice paddies are smaller than an acre, and most people who tend to them use methods they learned as children. Thirty years ago, a Jesuit priest invented a way to increase rice yields over traditional methods while lowering the cost of production. Perhaps 5 million farmers now use the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), a change that has lifted thousands out of poverty and food insecurity. It all sounds great until you learn that there are about 162 million acres of rice fields on the planet. So, why isn't SRI catching on faster?

This is the question that vexes the folks at Cornell University's SRI International Network and Resources Center (SRI-Rice), one of several organizations devoted to spreading the use of SRI. One answer, they say, is that it's hard to change cultural traditions. And making that change is even harder when it runs contrary to the strategic goals of international agribusiness.

"We're swimming upstream against a 30-year tide that wants to privatize every aspect of agriculture," says Dr. Norman Uphoff, a Cornell professor who has been promoting SRI since 2000. "SRI is free and open-source. It isn't sold. So, we're ignored or ridiculed by the corporations and their foundations, but nothing can change the fact that this works. Eventually they'll come around."

SRI's skeptics have said claims of improved rice yields are not backed up by empirical research. One reason is that SRI is a grassroots movement: It was invented in a village in Madagascar and spread largely through word of mouth. But scientists affiliated with SRI-Rice have been collaborating for over a decade, and the results are accumulating.

Small rice farms in the lower Mekong River Basin (flowing through Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam) doubled their yields when they switched to SRI, according to a two-year study of 62 sites conducted by Abha Mishra of the Asian Institute of Technology near Bangkok, Thailand. Paddies that used some SRI techniques saw a 60 percent yield increase, she says. And because SRI uses fewer seedlings, less water and homemade organic fertilizer, the cost of labor and materials is lower.

SRI improves the lives of village women to whom farming is just one thing on a very long to-do list, says Mishra. It should also become more attractive to bigger farms as the cost of water, seeds and materials increases.

Getting the rice from small, diverse growers to urban consumers has been another obstacle. But that is also changing as socially responsible businesses step in to develop supply chains. Lotus Foods now sells four varieties of SRI rice under the slogan, "more crop per drop -- water smart and women strong."

Image credit: Flickr/Roberto Foccenda

Many of us are tired of the grandstanding and platitudes that come from Washington, D.C., and have long been resigned to the sad fact that the nation’s capitol is often full of crap. But literally, any city home to 650,000 people is going to flush plenty of crap down the drain. Now the greater D.C area is putting some of that crap to good use, as in harvesting it to generate 10 megawatts of clean energy to lower a local wastewater treatment plant’s electricity bills.

Built at the cost of $470 million, this (mostly human) waste-to-energy plant will provide one of metropolitan Washington’s water utilities with a new way to meet a third of its total power needs, or enough to electrify 10,500 homes. The Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, which D.C. Water claims is the largest such facility in the world, provides wastewater treatment services to approximately 2 million people in D.C. and the surrounding area. More than 350 million gallons of sewage pass through this wastewater plant daily. And while the Blue Plains plant is seen as an exemplary wastewater treatment center, the processing of all those toilet flushes consumes its fair share of electricity.

This waste-to-energy project started construction in 2011 after a decade of studies, and finally launched last month. According to D.C. Water, the plant incorporates the use of a Norwegian technology, a CAMBI thermal hydrolysis process, which is now being used in North America for the first time at Blue Plains. Without getting into too deep a technological or scatological explanation, this thermal hydrolysis system incorporates high heat and pressure to “pressure cook” any solids remaining after the final stages of the plant’s wastewater treatment process.

These solids, in turn, undergo an anaerobic digestion process, which creates methane that can be captured in order to generate electricity. Three large turbines, each the size of an airliner jet engine, anchor this facility. Along with the turbines, this plant also includes a dewatering plant, 32 hydrolysis vessels and four concrete anaerobic digesters that stand 80 feet (24 meters) tall.

In addition, this waste-to-energy process creates biosolids that can be used as compost or topsoil. D.C. Water is evaluating whether this product can be brought to market, which would certainly create a new revenue stream that could help pay off the project’s costs (inquiries made to D.C. Water about the expected ROI were not returned, but the Washington Post quotes cost-savings to D.C. Water at running about $10 million annually). In the meantime, this byproduct is being used as compost in urban gardens and infrastructure projects throughout the D.C. area.

The project’s price-tag certainly raises questions about whether such innovations in clean energy are worth the investment. But as more cities search for ways to move toward a zero-waste and low-carbon economy, D.C.’s new approach to waste management could offer municipalities a case study on how to cope with a growing population, adapt to aging infrastructure and discover new ways in which to keep energy costs low.

Image credit: EPA

A central theme of SOCAP15 in San Francisco this year (Oct. 6-9) was the idea that, in this time of economic, social and technological transformation, we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to create a new social and technological infrastructure for creating value in the new economy.

For me, no session was more riveting on this topic than A New Social Contract in the Age of Uber. It was not about Uber. It was about setting new labor standards, such as the NDWA's new Good Work Code, and putting technology to work for the workers and not just for the businesses that employ them.

“By 2020 freelancers will be half of the workforce,” said panel moderator Courtney Martin. Under these conditions, what kind of new social contract for work do we now require? And how will technology play a role in the new workforce commons?

Panelist Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, who coined the term Web 2.0 and who started the Maker Movement, among many other things, will convene a new summit that addresses these topics on Nov. 12-13 in San Francisco, called Next:Economy.

O’Reilly calls it the WTF Economy summit. "WTF" stands for “What’s The Future,” but it also means what you think it means.

“It's a core notion I've been playing around with," O'Reilly said, "because when you say 'WTF,' sometimes it's an expression of wonder and sometimes of disgust. The WTF we are looking at today has elements of both. There is amazing stuff happening with technology and there is terrible stuff happening with technology."

I had the opportunity to correspond with O’Reilly shortly after the SOCAP session to dig a little deeper.

Julie Noblitt for TriplePundit (3p): I heard you say today that you hope Next:Economy will gain the same kind of traction that Web 2.0 did as a cultural meme for change. Will your new conference be in service of that goal?

Tim O’Reilly: Absolutely. There is a lot of power in telling an aspirational story that helps how people and companies think about what they are doing. Edwin Schlossberg once said, "The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." I try to apply that insight all the time. It's been key to a lot of the most successful things my company has accomplished.

With the open-source software movement, we reframed the dialogue around software from a political statement that made "free software" look like a fringe movement hostile to business, to an affirmative vision of how that same free software -- now renamed as open-source -- was at the heart of some of the biggest innovations driving the tech industry forward (notably the Internet).

With Web 2.0, we were able to revive interest in tech after the dot-com bust by showing what distinguished the companies that survived from the ones that failed, and articulating a vision of the new rules that would come to dominate the software industry in the succeeding decade.  (Those rules included "Data is the new 'Intel Inside,' harnessing collective intelligence, software as process rather than product, continuous deployment, and ad-based business models supported by network effects in usage.)

With the Maker Movement, we articulated a vision of people who make rather than just people who consume as a key to our future economy.

And that brings us to the Next:Economy Summit (also referred to as the WTF Economy Summit.)  Yes. I really do hope that this transforms the dialogue about technology and work.  There are many different elements that I want people to come to grips with, including:

• The parallels between the new on-demand jobs, and the way that traditional jobs are also becoming on-demand, requiring a deep look at the mechanisms of the social safety net, which is increasingly out of step with the way people work now


• An understanding that when you use technology to augment workers and give them superpowers, you can grow the market and become more successful than you can by treating workers as a cost to be eliminated


• An understanding that financial market value does not equal true economic value.  (That was the point of my recent piece about Unicorns.)


• An understanding that networks trump old forms of corporate organization


• Commitments by on-demand companies to do more for their workers, treating them more deeply as partners in value creation, partners who should be well rewarded for their role

And lots more!

3p: What market failures will the next economy introduce, and what do you think the intersectoral solutions will need to look like?

TO: That's a hard question. I prefer to look at the future through the lens of the present.  As William Gibson said: "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." It's very hard to see the future, but you can see the way that the seeds of the future are already all around us.

So, the market failures I see now include:

• The notion that you can cut workers costs and still somehow expect them to be consumers.  As Nick Hanauer said to me once, "Companies seem to have this 'econo-erotic fantasy' in which they can cut their own labor costs to the bone but everyone else will keep paying their workers enough to continue to buy everyone's products."


• The notion that it's okay for a company like Walmart to pay their workers so little that they have to go on government assistance -- and then spend that government assistance at Walmart.  Walmart is the ultimate welfare queen. They get their labor costs subsidized, and then their workers spend that government assistance at the company store.


• A tax system that favors capital when it's already clear that excessive returns are going to capital, and not to labor.


• A failure to invest in infrastructure.


• The notion that we need "jobs," when what we really need is work -- the difference being that work is solving real problems for real people. There is so much that needs doing!

3p: You mentioned infrastructure. James Fallows recently said that infrastructure is the one thing that determines whether people can use their talents or not. In the U.S. we are starving our physical infrastructure, but our information technology infrastructure now has global reach. When you say "infrastructure" do you mean physical or virtual, or are you referring to our economic infrastructure?

TO: I was referring primarily to physical (and virtual) infrastructure in my talk, but there are lots of other kinds of infrastructure. The GPS system is infrastructure.  The education system is infrastructure. But a fair tax system and the other rules by which we govern our society, quite frankly, are also infrastructure.

3p: Government is a great source/funder of disruptive innovation. How do we best protect these tools that have created the public commons on which these new business models rely?

TO: Stop believing that government is bad. Yes, we can improve it -- and I spend a lot of time working on just that -- but it is the one institution that has as its mission making a better society for all of us.  We need to give it tough love rather than the hate that we give it today.

And we really need to use lessons from tech to improve the user experience of government, to make it human-centered rather than an impersonal machine.  That's a lot of what we do at Code for America.

3p: Do you foresee a new kind of labor movement in the U.S.? Will the cloud be the platform for it?

TO: Yes, and yes. We're already seeing this through organizations like the National Domestic Workers Alliance, The Workers Lab, Coworker.org and OUR Walmart. And yes, this will be turbocharged by the tools of online networking.

Many thanks to Tim for allowing me to share this fascinating correspondence with Triple Pundit readers. To hear more from Tim O’Reilly and all the panelists on this topic, tune in to the SOCAP 15 session on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw-qThIpx-4

Image credits: Images used with permission of O'Reilly Media.

Follow Julie Noblitt on Twitter at @noblittje

Editor’s Note: This post is part of TriplePundit’s ongoing coverage of SXSW Eco 2015. You can read all of our coverage here.

By Heidi Travis

When something draws your eye and makes you cross the street to take a closer look, or connects you in conversation with the random person next to you, that feeling is art. Art is more than just an aesthetic creation -- it’s passion, movement and the beautiful thing that happens when we build a relationship.

Art demonstrates the ability to educate without it being obvious that you’re learning. It can be honest without using the word truth. With art you have the choice of interaction, of buying in.

Art is requesting your presence

One idea that resonated from last week's SXSW Eco panel on Taking a Stand: Pitfalls and Benefits of a Position on Climate was that environmentalists need a better message, one that connects with people personally. Speakers acknowledged that we’ve used the term 'sustainability' to the point that it’s become meaningless and ineffective in achieving the excitement that incentivizes people into action.

So, how do we touch people?

We need more examples of art inspired by culture and art inspired by nature -- with a common purpose: to build community. In Place by Design, SXSW Eco's public space design competition, artists shared their vision. Two of the projects stood out because they effectively impacted people’s engagement in the community. Both created a conversation about how space was being used in their respective neighborhoods.

The first project transported people to abandoned spaces in Detroit’s North End and to experience the musical history of funk. According to presenters Bryce Detroit and Anya Sirota, the area lacked the recognition and TLC it deserved, so they designed a symbol: The Mothership.

This giant deejay booth was a collaborative project through a bigger community culture group, O.N.E. Mile, to create significant, yet functional art that could be taken apart and remade repeatedly and used as a performance piece.

What’s cool is how the team created this huge music-sharing symbol reflecting pop culture (and hope) to lead you to a place you might not normally go. Their events and activities are well attended. Want to check it out to see for yourself?

The second, Field of Vision: A Garden for Others, highlighted an urban park space along the river in Louisville, Kentucky. This southern river region should attract more Monarch butterflies along their migration route. One of the issues for the butterflies is that their favorite food, milkweed, is being destroyed with herbicides. But for humans, why wasn't the riverfront park area providing a natural place to relax? Unfortunately the proximity to the freeway and lack of an attractive natural aesthetic made the space unappealing. This is where nature can attract humans!

To create appeal to both butterflies and humans, artist Jenny Kendler created an exhibit of reclaimed wood planters full of butterfly-attracting flowers and connected them with bright strings that also provided a lighted display to reflect butterfly night vision in the evening. The site was walking distance to office space, which encouraged people to come over. As people visited, they were able to see nature in action and access valuable information on planting beneficial flowers. Information was also available on how to communicate with politicians to request change.

Field of Vision: A Garden for Others was also created as part of an artist in residence program through the NRDC, Natural Resources Defense Council. This valuable program employs an artist to create beautiful, meaningful work connecting humans to the environmental experience in unexpected places and in interesting ways.

It’s magical when a work is able to make you pause and feel more connected with your life. Art is one of the most powerful ways to bring people together as a community in a public space.  Have you considered funding art as a way to share your message?

Image credits: 1) Used with permission of Anya Sirota 2) Used with permission by Kirk Donaldson 3) Heidi Travis

By Sheila Jackson

“When am I ever going to use this in real life?”

This is the time-honored refrain of high school students of every generation — used most often when they are confused or uninspired by science or math classes. But thanks to a groundbreaking partnership led by SAP, 30 students in the inaugural class of ‘C-Town Tech’ at Charlestown High School in Boston simply have no use for that phrase anymore.

This September marked the launch of an ambitious six-year, STEM-focused program that allows participants to complete high school, earn a college degree in information technology and get hands-on exposure to IT careers along the way. In short, what these kids are learning in the classroom has immediate, real-world relevance that inspires their imaginations, encourages them to continue their education and impacts their future paychecks.

What’s good for business is good for education

While the C-Town Tech program is brand new, the idea of building strong cross-sector partnerships between for-profit employers, schools, community colleges and not-for-profit intermediaries like Jobs for the Future has already proven effective.

Let’s take a look at what happens when an innovative company like SAP participates in equipping youth with tools they need to thrive in the 21st century workforce.

SAP achieves bigger returns by investing more than just money

Historically, SAP’s corporate giving involved matching gifts at numerous organizations and promoting STEM education and youth entrepreneurship across the globe, as well as volunteering. But the company wanted to make a bigger impact. So it created the SAP Signature Education Initiative — unique partnerships in major cities across North America between high schools, post-secondary institutions, local SAP offices, community-based organizations and other key municipal stakeholders that work collaboratively to prepare students for range of future careers as STEM professionals and entrepreneurs.

By taking the long view, SAP is helping to grow the pool of skilled workers to fill its needs in the future.

Curriculum keeps current with technology, and students gain the networks they need

A key role SAP plays in these partnerships is to help school systems update their curricula to reflect workforce needs for 2020 and beyond. SAP works collaboratively with educational institutions, instructors and students to:

• Share and translate industry knowledge around specific skills and credentials required for occupations in the technology field


• Connect young people to a network of companies and professionals in the SAP ecosystem


• Empower high school students with the work-readiness skills that will enable them to be successful in future careers

Graduation rates go up, especially for low-income students and students of color

There is now 10 years’ worth of research and data to show that early college high schools significantly increase high school and college completion rates, especially among low-income students and students of color (AIR, 2013).

An overarching goal of SAP’s corporate social responsibility initiatives is to increase the number of young people that are prepared for career pathways in tech-driven companies, and students of color or from low-income families are typically underrepresented in STEM-related jobs.

The ‘early college’ model brings the connection between education and career to life for students

The C-Town Tech program is based on the early college model, which allows students to earn up to an associate’s degree at the same time they earn their high school diploma — an approach that employment experts at the national non-profit Jobs for the Future have successfully implemented time and again.

For many young people, especially those from low-income families with no history of higher education, high school often fails to prepare them to consider how they’ll get to college, what they’ll do when and if they get there, and most importantly, what they will do afterward. SAP education initiatives make those connections clear so students feel ownership over their professional futures, and have the necessary navigational support along the way.

Students become active participants in their education, and in the office

An expectation for SAP Education Initiative sites is to think creatively about integrating opportunities for career development and exploration into multiple aspects of the school day.

In Boston, C-Town Tech curricular activities include field trips to local SAP offices to job shadow and brainstorm ideas for industry-identified projects. SAP provides mentors who are in the careers students are being prepared to enter, and the program offers paid internships for juniors and seniors.

To learn more about C-Town Tech, or how your company can develop CSR partnerships for greater impact, contact Sheila Jackson at Jobs for the Future; sjackson@jff.org.

Image credit: Flickr/r nial bradshaw

Sheila Jackson is a program manager at Jobs for the Future, where she is responsible for researching and writing about effective strategies for building grades 9-14 career pathways and supporting the delivery of technical assistance to the Pathways to Prosperity Network. Recently, Sheila co-wrote a two-part brief with her colleague, Charlotte Cahill, about youth-access to the workplace with a focus on helping employers navigate the legal and liability issues of having students under 18 in the workplace. Sheila is also involved with JFF’s partnership with enterprise software company, SAP, which includes the development of an IT focused pathway called C-Town Tech at a Boston Public High School. She is currently writing a “blueprint” for SAP’s education initiatives, documenting the key elements of this employer-led initiative to prepare the next generation of young people for college and careers in technology-driven fields.

Prior to joining JFF, Sheila worked at community-based college-access program in San Francisco called Making Waves Education Program, where she supported first-generation college students prepare and apply for college and understand the financial aid process. Prior to her college-access work, she was a special education para-professional in the San Francisco Unified School District. Sheila holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and French from Wesleyan University and a Master’s degree in Higher Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The percentage of women employees at both Renault and Nissan has increased from a year ago - particularly in manager-level positions - following the car giant launching numerous programmes globally and particularly in its “home markets” to recruit, retain and advance women.

At Renault, 22% of global key positions are held by women while Nissan Japan has more than triple the national average percentage of women.

Renault aims to have women account for 30% of engineering or technical positions and 50% of sales positions worldwide by 2016. It also aims to have women account for 25% of its key global positions by next year.

At Nissan, women accounted for 11.7% of manager-level positions globally in fiscal year 2014, up from 10.6% in fiscal year 2013. In Japan, women at Nissan accounted for 8.2% of such positions, up from 7.1% in the previous year and more than 5 times higher than 2004.

Nissan remains an industry benchmark in its home market of Japan, with the percentage of its women managers more than triple the national average for large manufacturers. Nissan’s goal is to have women represent 10% of managers in Japan and 14% of all management positions globally by 2017.

The Renault-Nissan Alliance, one of the world’s largest car groups, says it is making this progress through a variety of programmes including its Women@Renault internal support and career network and Nissan's “Ladies First” retail programme in Japan (which are dealerships managed and staffed mostly by women).
 

Picture credit: © Jovanmandic | Dreamstime.com

Palm oil is in about half of the packaged products in the supermarket -- everything from cleaning products to Pop Tarts benefits from the vegetable oil's viscous and visual properties. So we know that. And we know the heavy global demand for palm oil contributes to massive deforestation in sensitive ecosystems in Malaysia, Indonesia and other growing regions around the world.

The enormous demand and global supply chain mean that, historically, traceability is quite a challenge. Palm grown and harvested by small landholders and subsistence farmers gets collected and sold as a commodity, and it goes through many refiners and dealers along the way before it reaches your breakfast cereal.

NGOs and activist organizations have pressured food companies and other consumer-facing brands to adopt "no deforestation, no peat and no exploitation" palm oil policies, since these brands have the most to lose if their customers discover the problems in their supply chains. However, middle managers, palm oil refiners and dealers are the ones who actually have to do the work of cleaning up supply chains.

Which is why it's so exciting that IOI Loders Croklaan (IOI LC) is ramping up its traceability. The wholly-owned subsidiary of IOI Group (more on that later), decided to focus on traceability in 2012. This year it reached 94 percent traceability. That's traceability to the mill level (as opposed to the farmer).

Sourcing to the mill level only addresses part of palm oil's big problem problem, since each mill may procure palm from more than 100 local growers who are the ones doing the deforesting. However, it's a huge first step, since IOI LC currently sources palm from over 800 mills. "Once you know where the oil is coming from you can engage with your supplier," IOI LC's sustainability director, Ben Vreeburg, explained to TriplePundit by phone.  

Now that IOI LC has a high degree of traceability in place, the next step is to run a risk analysis using satellite imagery to identify hot spots: mills in sensitive areas. Once high-priority mills are identified, IOI LC will go in person to engage, meet with suppliers and encourage the mills to become RSPO certified. Sounds good, right? Yes, and ...

IOI LC is the downstream processing arm of IOI Group, one of the world's largest producers and manufacturers of palm oil, with hands on 10 to 15 percent of the world's supply. IOI LC does the processing and trading, but IOI Group has the plantations. So for palm oil experts, the fact that these traceability commitments come from IOI LC and not the parent company, which has large holdings throughout the supply chain, is suspicious. The direct control provided by IOI Group's holdings is part of the reason IOI LC was able to reach such a high degree of traceability in three short years, so why aren't they leading the sustainability charge?

What does "sustainable palm" mean, anyway?

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (of which IOI Group is a founding member) is the leading game in town when it comes to sustainable palm certification. However, NGOs and activists say that it's too weak. The Union of Concerned Scientists' Calen May-Tobin wonders, "How can something that causes deforestation and massive amounts of carbon emissions be called sustainable?" And he explained in a recent blog post:

"[UCS and] a number of other NGOs, including World Wildlife Fund, a founding member and longtime advocate for the RSPO (PDF), recognize that the RSPO principals and criteria are not strong enough and that to end forest and peatland destruction from palm oil expansion we must move beyond the RSPO’s minimum requirements."

Given that deforestation is the biggest issue when it comes to conventional palm, RSPO's weak attention to it is certainly problematic.

Deborah Lapidus, tropical deforestation expert and consultant to Rainforest Foundation Norway, stated, "RSPO gives lip service to no deforestation but has a definition so weak that it doesn't protect the vast majority of forests and it still allows RSPO certified companies to clear carbon-rich peatlands."

Vreeburg called RSPO a "dynamic process," explaining that it's the industry standard and the principals will continue to be adjusted to restrict growing in high carbon stock areas and sensitive areas like peatland.

I'm always reluctant to criticize a standard as too weak if it's the only thing going. When asked what alternative NGOs proposed, Lapidus explained: "We are calling on companies to adopt no deforestation, no peat and no exploitation policies. These policies have been adopted by the vast majority of major palm oil traders and large growers as well as dozens of consumer companies." She further elaborated that these stronger standards are currently in use by Wilmar International, which manages 45 percent of global palm oil trade. They aren't out of reach for global multinationals.

IOI LC released a strong sustainability policy last November that happily does go beyond RSPO standards. However, Lapidus expressed concern that the policy came from IOI LC rather than the parent. Parent company IOI Group did agree three months later that it would be beholden to its subsidiary's policy:

But there does appear to be a bit of tail wagging the dog. While IOI LC is moving beyond RSPO, IOI Group is struggling to keep up and is currently at risk of being suspended from RSPO over compliance issues.   

While the battle over standards rages on, there are currently 12 million tons of RSPO-certified palm oil (a mix of mass balance certificates and physical palm oil) on the market, and current demand from companies is less than half that.

Lapidus chalks the weak demand up to the weak RSPO standard, pointing out: "Kellogg, Nestle, Dunkin' Donuts, General Mills, Mars and dozens more have set no deforestation, no peat and no exploitation requirements for suppliers."

"Consumer companies want to be able to assure their customers and investors that they are not selling products made on top of destroyed forests; RSPO can't provide that assurance and therefore can't give companies the protection from reputational risk that they are seeking."

So, the consumer-facing brands have moved beyond RSPO, but can the growers catch up? Vreeburg expresses concern over the lack of demand, stating: "If you want to drive change on the ground, the best signal is by buying [RSPO] certificates." He went on to describe the pressure growers are under: "It’s not motivational if you produce 12 million tons and the demand is only [6 million]." 

While demand is certainly a big piece of the puzzle, grower-level education plays a key role as well. IOI LC's "hot spot" approach to working with mills and farmers strikes the right mix of practicality and progress -- one hopes they'll be able to complete their mission before another Greenpeace campaign targets a beloved brand.

Image credit: Greenpeace

Despite the low prices of fossil fuels, the clean energy industry is still growing, with utility-scale wind power projects and residential solar installations catching on worldwide. And despite the oil and gas industry’s stranglehold on political power — evident in fossil fuel subsidies across the globe — clean energy companies overall still very much have the wind at their backs. Even stodgy organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) are bullish on the future prospects for renewables.

Nevertheless, the industry is still enduring its share of growing pains, as SunEdison’s current struggles demonstrate.

SunEdison had been riding high this year, with a market capitalization soaring to almost $10 billion just three months ago. But investors’ confidence had been wavering long before SunEdison reached what was a historic milestone for the company. Acquisitions of firms including First Wind and Vivint Solar worried analysts who saw that $4.6 billion buying spree create a sudden spike in SunEdison’s debt-to-equity ratio.

Not everyone was worried: The company attracted copious amounts of praise for becoming the world’s largest clean energy development company, and the MIT Technology Review, in fact, listed SunEdison as sixth in its rankings of the 50 Smartest Companies. But Wall Street became skittish over SunEdison’s fundamentals, and as July turned into August, its stock lurched into a rapid tumble.

In July, SunEdison’s stock price had hit an all-time high of $31.84 a share. It had fallen as low as $6.56 a share in late September before hovering at its current price of about $9; in turn, the company's market capitalization has taken a steep nosedive to what is now an estimated $2.6 billion.

Meanwhile, SunEdison’s transactions hardly slowed the company’s spending, whether it was to fund its countless divisions or to wow attendees at signature clean energy industry events. In addition to the financial strains, this newly assembled company also faced its share of work culture challenges as evident in the Vivint acquisition. Too many on the outside had become nervous about the rapid changes ongoing at SunEdison.

The recent pushback by investors has resulted in SunEdison’s decision to tighten its belt. Last week the company announced it would take several steps in an attempt to “optimize business operations in alignment with current and future market opportunities.” SunEdison has said it will focus on what it sees as lucrative markets in regions such as the U.S., China, India and Latin America. The company also promises it will “rationalize purchased services” in the name of greater efficiency. Furthermore, SunEdison has pledged to “remove duplicative activities.”

Key to this optimization is layoffs. SunEdison’s restructuring will result in a 15 percent reduction in its workforce. The company expects to take a short-term financial hit as it will incur charges of anywhere from $30 million to $40 million in the next quarter, with most of those funds going toward severance packages for fired employees.

The troubles besetting a marquee company such as SunEdison will certainly amp up catcalls from those who are skeptical about clean energy’s future. But reports of the demise of renewables are still far too early.

SunEdison simply became a company with too much on its plate. The organization had become many things, including a financier, a battery storage tech incubator, a project developer and an asset management company. Now SunEdison will have to sell off some its projects that are not a fit with this restructured firm, and that will certainly have an impact on a pipeline about which the company bragged comprised a total of 2 gigawatts of future clean energy capacity.

SunEdison’s recent foibles aside, many multinationals and governments will continue to invest in renewables in the coming decade and far into the future as they become more cost-effective and scalable. The private and public sectors are both intent on securing a lock in energy prices, keen on ensuring energy security and are determined to meet their sustainability goals. SunEdison’s setbacks, while certainly daunting, will most likely be a mere hiccup on clean energy’s slow but steady path toward becoming an even more relevant and lucrative industry.

Image credit: SunEdison

Thirty-two members of Congress have written letters to the Transportation Security Administration asking it to upgrade its screening policies. For a federal arm known more these days for intractable gridlocks than unified action, the letter is notable in itself. But so is the topic that the lawmakers have taken up: updating screening policies to ensure that transgender individuals get equal and fair treatment.

Last week Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and colleagues from Massachusetts, New York and other states submitted a letter to the TSA's administrator, Peter Neffenger, calling for a "complete and thorough review of [TSA's] current procedures."

The letter came in response to a report that a transgender individual had been subjected to humiliating treatment while attempting to board a plane. The agency said in response to the complaint that screeners "are trained to properly screen members of the transgender community" and that a review of the video taken at the time "indicated personnel followed TSA's strict guidelines."

Airport security screening protocol

What the response didn't say is whether the guidelines were in keeping with what American travelers would expect as part of their traveling experience, or that it took into consideration the sensitivity that people often have to procedures that single out a person who doesn't fit the anticipated profile.

Flight security has never been a popular concept, certainly not in the United States. For much of the American public, flying in comfort is an assumed right; being subjected to probing questions, delays, pat-downs and changing criteria for boarding is not.

That's often a problem for the TSA, whose employees are tasked with figuring out whether a passenger could be a terrorist or another potential security threat -- while striving to follow what may seem to some as excessively narrow, and often incomplete, guidelines.

But as congressional members have pointed out, procedures that were acceptable in the past don't always keep pace with a changing society. The members have called for better public education about procedures and the public's rights; information that Shadi Petosky, the transgender flyer mentioned above, said was not made available at the time.

TSA: A history of challenges

This is not the first time that the TSA has found itself in hot water about its screening procedures.

• Last year the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint that black women with afros were being racially targeted for hair inspections. With mounting scrutiny and pressure, TSA discontinued the practice of hair pat-downs, apologizing for the tactic and announcing in April 2015 that it would implement new training procedures. Interestingly, it was never disclosed as to why this procedure had been initiated at several airports across the nation. According to the TSA, however, screeners are required to follow precise guidelines.


• Twitter has become the go-to place for gauging how the public feels about the treatment they receive at TSA security inspections. And apparently, the response isn't all warm and fuzzy. Airports in California lead the pack when it comes to negative experiences, which range from complaints about being searched, to delays in getting on the plane. One ingenious step the authors used to determine the root of flyers' angst was to track the most common words used in tweeted complaints. "Search" (in 25 percent of the tweets) and "confiscate" (approximately 12 percent) were at the top.


• Search methods, such as the manual shoe search that was introduced in 2001 following the arrest of "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, continue to prompt debate. In earlier screening instances, unarmed screeners were, in some cases, required to hold the shoe up to his or her face and examine it visually for evidence of incendiary bomb-making materials like the kind Reid had attempted to light mid-flight. At screening posts, law enforcement officers such as local police were supposed to step in quickly if there was a device detected and an arrest to be made -- not the security personnel facing down the suspect. The manual methods were later suspended, replaced by X-ray scanning machines. It doesn't seem to have lessened the complaints about taking off one's shoes.


• There have been plenty of attempts by members of Congress (and the general public) to change the way the TSA handles security.  The most recent include legislation entertained in 2014 to prohibit TSA personnel from "barking" orders at the public; a May 2015 letter signed by 133 members demanding TSA allow knives on board; and just recently, legislation by Rep. Thomas Rooney (R-Fla.) to prohibit any TSA employees "who are not sworn law enforcement officers with arresting authority" from calling themselves officers. It was introduced after an assailant opened fire and killed an unarmed screener. The incident was summarized by TSA Chief John Pistole as receiving "good response time" by local police and that "the tragedy could have been worse." The incident has prompted a re-think about TSA response procedures.

Flying without TSA?

The response to the most recent PR debacle by Congress, however, had a more terse tone to it. "We cannot countenance a security protocol" that subjects individuals to "indignity," wrote Rep. Pocan and his 31 colleagues. Those are powerful, if not intimidating, words to any agency that relies upon Congress' ink to ensure its existence. Could they mean the end to airport security? Some would hope so.

The truth is, the U.S. needs an agency like the TSA -- one that will conduct the difficult business of making sure planes, trains, and other business and personal transport are safe for the public. And oftentimes, accepting that fact may be a harder pill to swallow for Americans than whether we have to stand in line and subject ourselves to an inspection that the guy before us didn't have to endure.

There always will be controversies and debacles when it comes to public security. The job of airport screeners is to search and identify potential threats as a means of keeping passengers, crews and airplanes safe. And that means asking questions and subjecting people to searches that seem invasive and often controversial.

Solving the U.S. security experience: A two-way road

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) pointed out in February 2015 that the TSA excels in analyzing data and coming up with answers to public concerns. Where it often fails is considering the input of all stakeholders in its fact-finding efforts. Perhaps that's what passengers who lodge complaints like the Twitter storm that took off after Petosky's experience are really saying: They want to be able to give input in matters that have unique consequences to their lives.

But perhaps it's not just the TSA that needs to listen to feedback. Oftentimes we forget that that the airport screener's only personal protection is his cognition, training and exceptional skill in recognizing a threat before it can occur. No other federalized security personnel are required to do their jobs without the ability to protect themselves, nor in a setting where the murder of an unarmed security officer is termed as an acceptable loss in the face of a greater potential tragedy.

Obviously, security protocols must be able to keep up with a changing society. But I wonder if the reverse is also true and whether Homeland Security should consider a more vigilant public relations program that educates the traveling public about why the TSA does its job. Awkward questions that fumble on insensitive personal matters and time-consuming screening procedures are often the sign that, however difficult the process, someone is looking out for the passenger's safety.

Image credits: 1) R. Pavich; 2) Jun Seita; 3) Daniel Lobo 4) Buzz Farmers

The Volkswagen emissions scandal has taken a life of its own. Watch for Volkswagen to dominate news headlines for a long time, now that the U.S. Congress has become involved.

With a little over a year before the contentious 2016 presidential and congressional elections, Volkswagen’s misdeeds will foment plenty of grandstanding for politicians looking to profit off the “defeat device” fiasco. News clips of senators angrily grilling VW executives will add to the brand’s immolation and increased attention from consumers just when last month’s revelations have faded from memory.

Even more worrisome for the world’s largest automaker, however, is the flood of class-action lawsuits with which the company will long struggle. Automobile manufacturers have had to deal with such litigation for years, whether suits are filed due to defective parts or flaws in a car’s design or assembly. In turn, they retain the top legal minds in the country, and the hundreds of dollars per hour they spend fighting off litigation is accepted as preventive medicine. But as personal injury lawyer Spencer Aronfeld has pointed out, Volkswagen’s legal teams will have to confront a far more daunting challenge:

“What has many consumer claims lawyers excited is that unlike most cases involving automotive product defects, the evidence here points to a knowing and calculated commission of a fraud, rather than a simple mistake. Whenever a company intentionally commits a tortious act, such as misleading or manipulating data, they are potentially subject to punitive damages. Punitive damages are meant not just to compensate a victim, but rather to punish the wrongdoer, and awards can range to many times the amount of actual compensatory damages," Aronfeld said.

A bevy of lawsuits are already underway. Hagens Berman, a litigation firm based in Seattle, claims it has received thousands of inquiries over Volkswagen’s admission that the company installed software that allowed as many as 11 million of its diesel-powered automobiles skirt U.S. federal emissions rules. The firm was among the first plaintiffs to file a lawsuit in the U.S. with a Sept. 18 submission in California; that filing was followed in the same court three days later with another lawsuit, which includes class representatives from at least 22 states.

California, in fact, will be ground zero for litigation filed against Volkswagen. The legal maneuvering has already begun: The class action firm Keller Rohrback has already filed for a restraining order against Volkswagen’s U.S. division, asking the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to bar the company from sending any information to parties involved in a class action lawsuit filed in that court. Plenty of paperwork will be flying in this courthouse's offices for months, if not years.

The Central District, actually located in Southern California, is home to 19 million residents — and, according to attorney Alison Frankel, is home to many owners of the diesel-powered automobiles in which the emissions-cheating software were installed. California is also the location of Volkswagen’s U.S. emissions-testing evaluation center, and investigators from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) had a hand in revealing the manipulated emissions levels from VW and Audi diesel cars.

Meanwhile, other lawsuits have been filed nationwide, from Georgia to Texas to Wisconsin. As many as 40 different class action lawsuits have been filed in federal courts across the country, and whether they become consolidated or not, Volkswagen will face mounting costs in addition to a stained image from which it will take years to recover. Even litigators not involved in VW lawsuits, including the 40-year-old litigation firm Lieff Cabraser, are discussing the VW saga.

Not that anyone is really feeling sorry for Volkswagen. The sentiment of many VW and Audi diesel car owners, 55,000 of whom are in California, was summed up by a Sonoma County attorney who has also filed a lawsuit against Volkswagen U.S. and the Southern California dealership from which she purchased her 2010 Jetta SportWagen: “Every time I get in it, I cringe.”

Image credit: OXS via Wiki Commons