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By Marcus Barber

A recent article on TriplePundit suggested that Californians are keen to lower their water usage but don’t know how to go about doing so. That article (found here) also indicated that even the most ardent of conservation efforts don't seem to be helping the state meet its reduced water target, and that no one seems to know what to do next.

Which is why California might benefit from looking beyond its borders to the Land Down Under -- Australia, the driest inhabited continent on Earth -- for clues as to what happened last time one of its states (Victoria) experienced a decade-long drought.

Because if there’s one thing that California can learn from Victoria, it is this: People can change their habits, and long-lasting benefits will result.

First up, let’s start with the uncomfortable question that California must answer if it is to get through this drought relatively unscathed: 'Life' or 'Lifestyle'?

Please appreciate that, from now on, every choice you make about how you use water falls into one or the other category. Want to wash your car? That’s Lifestyle. Want to water your plants to keep them alive? That’s Life. A 10-minute shower? That’s Lifestyle. A four-minute shower with buckets to capture some run-off? That’s Life. Topping off your swimming pool? That’s Lifestyle. Leaving that water available so the municipality can water the local park? That’s Life

The choices you make determine how seriously you are taking this. And what the Australian state of Victoria also knows is that the policies were slow to recognize what was happening, how bad it was and what should be done. And, for that delay, our loss of habitats, parklands, wildlife, sporting fields and social pleasantness all evaporated to a larger extent than what could have occurred had we acted sooner. From where I sit, California isn’t moving quickly enough and now faces a problem I wrote about over a decade ago in my Journal article, A Drop in The Ocean for Foresight Practitioners, that assessed how different countries approached the way they used water

With that in mind, here are some tips for both personal and municipal use that saw Victoria’s disappearing water storage levels first slow their losses and then shrink to the point that losses were mainly evaporation driven as the occasional rainfall matched up with the volume of consumer use.

Personal use ideas

If it’s yellow, let it mellow: A simple idea that reduces your water usage for toilets by allowing the ‘just fluid’ to wait longer before being whisked away by a large dose of fresh water.

Increase usage but reduce consumption: If you have a shower, all of that water goes down the drain. If you have a bath and use it smartly, you can wash, then bucket that water onto your garden to keep your plants alive.

Just a shower?: You must use buckets to capture as much as you can for use elsewhere. If you use a bucket to capture that first run of cold water, that water can later be used to flush a toilet or for some other purpose.

Got a garden?: During summer take one of your showers outside under a hose. Two things will happen – one, you’ll tend to have much shorter and more efficient showers, and two, all of that water will keep some part of your lawn or plant life alive.

The four-minute shower: This target was introduced in Victoria to encourage the second largest area of water use in the typical home, to cut back. Water agencies handed out four minute egg timers to stick on your shower screen. The idea worked incredibly well. It teaches you to shower from the top down and never ‘soak’ under the stream. I’ve written previously on my thoughts about the Four-Minute Shower Concept.

Put a Brick in it!: (In your toilet cistern, that is.) The displaced water will save you many liters every time you flush.

A clean car is a Lifestyle choice: Car paint is really resilient and does NOT need to be washed – leave it dirty and do everyone a favor.

Put a shade sail over your veggie patch: The shade keeps the plants cooler meaning they require less water and growth will hardly be hindered.

Disconnect your downpipes: This allows sudden but short bursts of rain to be directed not into a waste stream but onto your garden.

Recycle water: Almost EVERY single drop of your bath, shower and clothes-washing can be used on your gardens, especially if you use low-salt soaps. But do NOT use water from your dishwasher or sink as the food oils are not good for your plants.

When washing clothes: It’s very rare for your clothes to get significantly dirty during the day. Wear them again or at least wash them on the shortest possible cycle you can.

In the TriplePundit article mentioned, the author argued that Californians had reduced water use in 2010 down to around 180 gallons per day. To put this in perspective: In the state of Victoria, the government target per person was less than 42 gallons per day. In our household of four people, we managed to get usage down to around 15 gallons per person, per day. And no, we’re not grungy ferals, just everyday people working out where we waste water! In my opinion, anything above 50 gallons per person per day is unjustifiable

Life or Lifestyle?

What each of these ideas requires is for people to understand water is not a never ending resource and now with years of excessive use habits firmly ingrained, the adjustment will be initially uncomfortable. But it really won’t hurt you.

Municipal water saving ideas:

Swimming pools and spas: What rules are in place to restrict people filling up their swimming pools? In Victoria one of the vegetable growers that had access to high salt (low quality) water managed to do a deal with the pool and spa association and local councils so that new pools could be filled with the water not suitable for human consumption but perfectly fine to swim in.

Which parks are you keeping alive and why? We had whole sporting clubs forced off grounds and playing fields that were too hard and therefore unsafe for play. If you don’t get smart about which parks you’ll keep alive and why, expect social dislocation of local sporting clubs. At the same time, recommend that clubs practise less on turf fields to reduce strain on grass. This will help prevent the fields from turning into a dustbowl.

There was widespread loss of mature trees in council parks worth millions of dollars – far better saving the trees than watering the grass because the long term benefits of trees are huge and grass takes far less time to recover.

Rain and roof: Allow people to disconnect their down pipes and to easily install rain water tanks and lead by example in Municipal buildings.

Swap bad for good: Encourage people to fit low flow shower heads, and instigate a ‘swap for free’ trade in.

Ban high-use water products like certain sprinklers, shower heads and pivot sprayers. In farming areas begin having the hard conversations about which produce deserves the water given the restrictions. Understand that this is a very difficult area for many farmers but most will want to help wherever they can.

Shade for good: Put up more shade sails in your parks. It’s a low cost and usually easy fit improvement to park amenities that also reduces water use.

Ruralfication: Municipal roof tops and corporate roof tops are ripe for the greening as are living walls that not only add color, they significantly reduce the heat island effect as well as providing cleaner air. Think about how you can ‘ruralfy’ your cityscapes through food walls or green tops

Plant selection: Make sure you are only planting drought tolerant species across your municipalities. And yes, high water use plants should be removed if replaced by ones putting less strain on the environment

Theft and leaks: Be alert to water theft from your local storage areas and put significant effort into rapid response to hydrant or pipe breaks because not only do you save water, it shows citizens you are serious about the problem.

Engage commercial businesses: Encourage factories to capture water from their vast roof spaces. They could use this for their own needs, give it to their staff or they could donate the water to a local sporting club or school. Get office buildings to think about green spacing their roof tops or car parks

TALK to your citizens: Most will want to do the right thing and they want it to be a shared effort. Public forums about use of parks, planting, issues with water consumption and ideas for saving need to be happening all the time. You can’t rely on legislation without the dialogue with the people.

For water agencies, what a prolonged drought often exposes is a reliance on historical inflow and outflow volumes that do not allow for adaptability when circumstances go beyond the norm. I discussed the need for more risk aware strategy at the Stockholm International Water Institute in this paper: From Forecasting to Applied Scenarios.

And the message for individuals and organisations is clear: Life versus Lifestyle – it’s your call California

Image credit: Flickr/Don DeBold

Marcus Barber is a Strategic Futurist and co-founder of the Centre for Australian Foresight. His Masters thesis looked at water consumption approaches around the world and the difficulty with finding solutions that are mismatched to local conditions. He has consulted to numerous Government and for-profit water organisations in Australia and around the world, often assisting with the ‘difficult stakeholder conversations’ to help foster opportunities for action and problem solving. [email protected]. @rightfuture.

Nickelodeon, the TV channel behind Spongebob Squarepants and Dora the Explorer, has instigated a new social campaign to empower kids to make positive changes in the world around them.

Called Together For Good, the international-only campaign will launch on 21 July outside of the US across Nickelodeon platforms in 150 countries and territories with its inaugural campaign partner, Plan International. 

“From our research, we know it’s important to our audience to make a meaningful impact in their community and they want to support causes that are important to them,” said Mark Levine, senior vp, marketing, brand strategy, Viacom International Media Networks and head of public affairs, Nickelodeon International. “We’re certain Plan International’s passion, expertise and global presence make them a perfect partner to launch this campaign and help our audiences achieve their goals.”

At launch, children will be able to  log on to a dedicated microsite - good.nickelodeon.tv - to read inspirational stories about children who are already making a change in their communities, provide information on how they can get involved and offer various activities and challenges to help them make an impact – big or small.

The second phase of the campaign will launch in August, inviting children aged six to 17 years old to log on to good.nickelodeon.tv to upload photos and videos of themselves making a difference in their community.

Four finalists in each participating region outside of the US will be selected by a panel of Nickelodeon and Plan International team members. Nickelodeon viewers will then have the opportunity to vote to select one special change-maker in each region.

The campaign will culminate with one lucky finalist winning an all-expense-paid trip to the US to attend a Nickelodeon event as a VIP guest.

 

By Matthew L. Mattila, J.D.

It’s no secret that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is flexing its muscles under the Clean Air Act, with ever-increasing efforts to regulate pollution. It’s also no secret that industry groups and numerous states have vigorously opposed the regulations. But has a strategy of steady opposition backfired?

EPA opponents just scored a major victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, but it could undermine their larger efforts to undo EPA’s Clean Power Plan.

The Supreme Court rules against EPA

On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a long-awaited opinion in Michigan et al. v. EPA et al, where petitioners challenged EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule. This rule, at its core, is EPA’s attempt to regulate mercury and other hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) from power plants pursuant to Section 112 of the Clean Air Act. The High Court found that EPA unreasonably deemed cost irrelevant to the initial decision to regulate.

Following this decision, the future of MATS is now uncertain. The rule could survive, since the Supreme Court did not vacate the rule and merely remanded the case to the D.C. Circuit, which will further evaluate the rule’s fate. In the meantime, until the agency appropriately considers cost, it seems EPA will not effectively be regulating power plants as a source of HAPs under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act.

Implications for EPA’s Clean Power Plan

The ongoing MATS battle could have larger implications for EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which is a draft rule EPA first proposed in June 2014 in direct response to President Barack Obama’s 2013 Climate Action Plan. The Clean Power Plan arises out of Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act and tasks states with developing plans for reducing carbon pollution at existing power plants. This will likely promote diverse state regulations, ranging from stricter emission controls on coal-fired power plants to increased emphasis on clean energy alternatives and emissions trading programs.

Unsurprisingly, the Clean Power Plan is contentious because it shows an ambitious regulatory shift in energy policy that threatens to increase utility costs. Here, opponents even took the unusual step of challenging the draft rule prior to its finalization. The D.C. Circuit rejected procedural challenges in June, refusing to consider the legality of a proposed rule and leaving substantive arguments for a future date. EPA is widely expected to finalize the Clean Power Plan this summer and renewed legal challenges are imminent.

With the recent MATS decision, EPA opponents ironically may have undermined their ability to challenge the Clean Power Plan. A major argument against the Plan is that EPA should not be able to regulate carbon pollution at existing power plants under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act when the same source is already regulated under Section 112. This argument is based on the statutory text of Section 111 (or at least based on the House of Representatives’ version of the text), but it would be difficult to argue that power plants are sources regulated under Section 112 if MATS is no longer in play. By pushing to invalidate the MATS rule, EPA opponents have therefore made a stronger case for upholding the Clean Power Plan.

Looking ahead

Industry groups and states will continue to spar with EPA over carbon pollution, and the Agency will continue to test the limits of its authority, including through finalization of the Clean Power Plan in the coming months. Since the Plan can be legally challenged for reasons that do not depend on the existence of Section 112 regulations, it seems unlikely that state and industry groups will abandon the MATS fight anytime soon. Still, the litigation should be closely watched in light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.

If EPA withdraws the MATS rule to further consider cost or if opponents resist potential withdrawal or vacatur of the rule, then this could signal larger uncertainty over the future of the Clean Power Plan. In the meantime, many will be watching, waiting and holding their breath.

Image credit: Flickr/Daniel Lerps

Matthew L. Mattila is an environmental attorney in Atlanta, Georgia and can be reached at [email protected]. This article is for general educational and informational purposes only. This article is not intended as legal advice and should not be construed as such. As always, readers should consult a qualified attorney for legal advice concerning specific situations.

A few years back, I met Audette Exel at a Conscious Capitalism innovation conference.

Exel, an extremely successful banker in her own right, pioneered a new model of social innovation: She connected investment bankers and not-for-profits under the same roof. The bankers could make a meaningful contribution to social causes they believed in while doing what they did best – make money. The not-for-profits, receiving a direct cut of the bankers’ earnings, didn’t carry the perennial cloud of insolvency over their heads.

The success of Exel’s Adara Group is testament to the fact this model works.

Wanting to catch up on the latest, I invited her to a podcast interview.  It went so well, I transcribed the highlights of the radio show for readers.

Enjoy.

Marc Stoiber: Audette, before we launch into Adara and the innovative work you’re doing, give us a bit of background.

Audette Exel: I began my career as a lawyer doing project finance work, then went into corporate finance advisory work, and finally ran one of three publicly traded banks in Bermuda. Through that I chaired the Bermuda Stock Exchange. I actually signed the $5 note in Bermuda, which my social activist family found quite hilarious.

From my earliest times as a thinking adult, I was always thinking about disparity, injustice and social justice. I kept that passion as my career wound along a path through business, law and banking.

MS: In 1995, you were elected a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. A big deal. Tell us about that.

AE: Actually, there is a funny story connected to that. I got a letter by fax back in those days from Yehudi Menuhin. It was over Christmas and it said that the World Economic Forum was going to bestow this honor on me.

I actually thought it was a bunch of my friends playing a joke on me as sort of a Christmas joke.

It was because I was very young and at the helm of a bank, and I guess maybe because I had always tried to talk about reconciling disparity with the power of business. It was an enormous honor.

Actually, as it turns out, the World Economic Forum and being invited to WEF for a few years and getting that award actually led to my connection with Uganda and the First Lady of Uganda, so a lot has unfolded from that.

MS: From what I understand, your connections in Uganda inspired Adara. Now let’s dig into this great organization you’ve created. Describe the two halves of Adara. You've got the for-profit and the not-for-profit.

AE: Absolutely. The Adara group is made up of two parts.

The first part is the business engine. That's the corporate finance team. They're investment banker types, and people that come out of that part of the world.

Their job is to relentlessly make money using their corporate finance skills, knowing that that money will be donated across the desk – both in real terms, as they literally sit across the desk from their not-for-profit team mates - but also across to our international development organization, Adara Development, which is now a truly global organization touching tens of thousands of people a year in poverty.

That organization is staffed by amazing development specialists all over the world.

People on the not-for-profit side of the desk know that their job is to relentlessly think about how to provide evidence-based, best practice service to people in poverty. We've all got one mission, but we have different skills that we bring to the party.

MS: On the one side are people making so much money they often feel a void in their soul that they don't know how to fill. Then the folks in the not-for-profit sector are constantly living with the fear of having their last paycheck. That’s a terrifically complementary group to bring together.

AE: Absolutely. When you're running a bank, you're thinking all the time about matching your assets and your liabilities. With those eyes, I started to look at the nonprofit world and it really struck me like a bolt out of the blue that that was one of the really big problems and struggles that nonprofits had.

For me, that's what really was the genesis of the idea to try a new model.

Once I got into the banking world, I found out it was full of people who were absolutely brilliant, many of whom had really deep values but who felt the similar emptiness. They loved their work. It was intellectual chess, but what was it all about?

I tried to find a marriage of those two needs.

I guess we're trying to bring mastery, purpose and autonomy in our own small way to the NGO and banking community.

MS: If you think about it, the largest group of people in the workforce today is millennials, and they aren't working just for the money anymore. They want a company that makes meaning.

AE: I'm a huge fan of millennials because they're coming to the equation with a completely different definition of what success is in their lives.

We have a lot of millenials who come to us trying to crack that nut of how you can have a life where you can use your skills to build security, but at the same time do something great for the world.

MS: Right now, you're working on a new model, harnessing some of the most powerful bankers in Australia.

AE: That's right. We just launched the Adara Playground. It’s a panel corporate finance, business and very senior investment bankers can join for two years.

If they join, they agree that they will work for our corporate finance business at the same time they're running their own big banks or whatever they're doing. They'll work for us on at least one mandate per year - entirely for free.

MS: That's fantastic.

AE: You can imagine if every bank in the world had a panel structure or a playground where they said to their new employees and their senior leaders, "You can run deals through the playground and the money that's made on those deals will all go to great causes." Imagine how powerful that would be in effecting change. It has great potential.

We're going to change the meme so people can see how easy it is to use skills for good and how great it is to use skills for good.

Probably the ten most famous bankers in Australia have lined up to join us, including chairs of the largest publicly traded banks, the CEO of the biggest integrated investment bank, the chair of the largest independent investment bank and senior non-executive directors.

MS: Let's look at the other side of the table, the not-for-profit side. Working for Adara must be a very attractive to people who are saying, "I want to go into the not-for-profit side of things, but I want to work with a group where I know that I'm going to have security."

AE: I think we have amazing people working with us. It takes my breath away the quality of people that have joined this journey. In terms of what grabs them about Adara, I think there are a few things, but I think the model underpinning not only the financial viability but also their own security is one.

I think it's also that we're quite contrarian, and we do what our communities think and tell us is right on the ground. We're not subject to political whim.

Because the financial viability is underpinned by the businesses, our people know that they're not going to be caught in the middle between donors and people we’re helping.

MS: How have the projects changed? I remember when we first spoke years ago it was all about Africa. You were building roads and schools in Africa. How have your projects evolved and what have you learned from the way they've evolved?

AE: We've made a lot of mistakes. We moved too quickly in the earlier days and intervened in communities doing stuff that wasn't right for that community. I think, of the first 1,000 latrines we built, 970 of them turned into goat sheds, so it's been quite a journey.

The work has evolved over the years. We've lived 17 years through three Ebola outbreaks. We've lived through a 10-year Maoist civil war in Nepal. However, in terms of where it's evolved now, one of the great things about having a cornerstone funder, is we have relentlessly stared down our mistakes and funded really good research all the way through to see where we're messing it up and fixed it.

Where are we now? We're very well known particularly for our work with neonatal intensive care for babies at risk in very remote settings.

We're very connected now to some of the big global leaders in health, trying to help showcase and train how you run maternal-infant support facilities at a tertiary level in very remote places. We're also pretty well known for the rescue of kids from traffickers. We got involved in that work and learned our way through it.

The final thing we're pretty well known for is very remote health and education. To give you a sense of that, our most remote project when I first went there is a 25-day walk from the nearest road.

MS: Are we looking at the future NGO model here?

AE: I think this contributes to what's going to come.

I think that the NGO sector will continue to look for partners in the business community, and the business community will need to figure out how they can use their businesses and their skills for purpose.

MS: Do you think Adara could become a broker between people who are looking to do good and people who need the backing so that they can do good? Do you see yourself sharing this learning as some sort of a creative commons or creating an app for that?

AE: There's no question. We share knowledge locally, regionally, nationally and globally. How do we do that to touch as many lives as we can?

I love your idea of the commons. Technology opens up huge opportunities for us to be able to share.

I don't believe that it's so much about replicating. I think it's about modeling, showcasing and then supporting others to find their own way to achieve the same ends. Yes, you're going to see a lot of us in that space in the next five to ten years trying to help as much as we can.

MS: I look at things like the Occupy movement. This could become a brand pillar in the rehabilitation of banking.

AE: I agree with that. Brand is such a powerful thing. You know so much more about this than me, but I think the trick is it's got to be real.

When you run a for-purpose business or you run a business that has a purpose deeply embedded in it, it's got to be very real because people know what authentic is. They can sniff out something that’s a marketing ploy, as opposed to something that’s actually real.

I think the divide that we're seeing, the disparity and that terrible statistic that the 85 richest people in the world have the combined wealth of the bottom three and a half billion is unsustainable at every level.

We need to find ways to effect significant change.

MS: You talked about authentic brand. What are the hallmarks to the authentic brand to you?

AE: Integrity. That's the thing we talked about at the start. It's very easy to be pushed into becoming an icon, and I believe that speaking with honesty about the journey is incredibly important, even the parts where you've made terrible mistakes. In fact, weirdly, sometimes making mistakes is the greatest contribution you can make because others learn from them.

There's clearly living the actions rather than the words. It's one thing to be a thought leader, as they say, and it's another thing get out there, give it a go and do it.

I think humility stands a bit with truthfulness for me, but the minute that you fall into arrogance, you stop listening. I think really deep authenticity comes from always learning and listening.

Then you have to model it. It's not about telling people what to do. It's about inspiring them by being the best model you can be.

MS: Do you think that going forward brands that embrace authenticity might actually have an easier go of it?

AE: Yes. You're touching on a strong point. It's really hard work to be an image. It's like they tell you when you're little and they say, "Don't lie because you can never remember what your lies are."

I decided very early in my adult life that I could only be myself.

Actually, I think there's another very interesting topic of discussion around this. What does it say about leadership today, that simply being authentic or simply being yourself is somehow a huge badge of honor?

MS: Isn't that crazy?

AE: People have great instincts about who is real and who is not. When you hear someone speaking on-point and spinning, every bone in your body says that's just…

MS: Crap.

AE: I was just trying to look for another word that wasn't a swear word. I was having trouble.

MS: You're Australian. You've done extremely well, half an hour without swearing. That's fantastic.

AE: That's because my mother is in the next room.

MS: Here's the final question. Five years from now, you're standing on a stone and looking backwards at this magical thing you've created. What is it? What does the next five years look like?

AE: The next five years are about bringing home everything that we've tried to do in the last seventeen years. To not only do deeper and better service to more people in need, but to have really proved out that anybody can do the same as we've done and help people do that.

MS: It also strikes me that part of humility is saying, "I don't have a clue where this is going to go." The world is just shifting and you'd be arrogant to say, "This is exactly where we're going to go," because things do shift so quickly.

AE: Yes, life does kind of blow back your hair sometimes and there are things that happen that you don't see coming.

MS: Audette, thank you.

AE: My pleasure.

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on the IEEFA blog.

By Tim Buckley

With its $2 billion acquisition of North American renewable power plant operator Invenergy Wind this week, SunEdison is making a landmark deal.

It is but the latest in a series of moves that suggest a preemptive strategy by SunEdison to get a material portfolio of global renewable-energy assets together so it can float an emerging-markets yieldco in the U.S. (Yieldcos explained, via Bloomberg: “An increasingly common way for renewable-energy developers to raise capital at lower costs. Developers sell new projects to their yieldco, using the proceeds to fund additional plants. Revenue from selling power provides funds for the yieldco to buy more plants as they are built and also pay dividends to investors.”)

A year ago this month, SunEdison rolled out its first yieldco developed-market IPO in the guise of TerraForm Power. That initial public offering debuted in July 2014 at $25 per share; today it is trading for almost $40.

The company’s Invenergy acquistion, announced Monday, builds enormously on its purchase this past November of First Wind for $2.4 billion. The two deals combined give SunEdison a sizable development pipeline for wind energy. They also mean SunEdison controls one of the largest renewable energy portfolios in the world. Both are very material transactions that presage how Western equity and debt capital will now flow rapidly into the global renewable infrastructure sector. The company is setting a pace others are bound to follow.

All told over the past several months, SunEdison has acquired a portfolio of 757 megawatts of renewable-energy assets (wind, solar and hydro) through nine transactions in seven emerging markets (Brazil, Chile, China, India, Peru, South Africa and Uruguay). It has more than twice that amount—1.9 gigawatts—of renewable-energy projects in the pipeline. And SunEdison has made a believer out of big-money investors, having attracted a $175 million equity stake in the seven-market deal from the private equity firm the Blackstone Group and two others. The company also landed $362 million in acquisition finance to support that move.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the deals SunEdison has made in the past several weeks alone:

• A memorandum of understanding (July 2) with the Spanish wind-turbine maker Gamesa to build up to 1 gigawatts of wind-powered electricity in target markets that include India and Mexico.


• Acquisition (June 16) of Continuum Wind Energy, a Singapore company that owns 242 megwatts of wind-powered generation in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Gujarat.


• That seven-portfolio acquisition (May 7) noted above, which includes 150 megawatts of wind-powered assets from Honiton Energy Holding (China) and102 megawatts of assets (India) owned by Fersa Energias Renovables of Spain.


• An equity investment in Imergy Power Systems (U.S.), and the purchase of 1,000 energy-storage units from the company for installation across India.

SunEdison’s acquisition of Invenergy and its many renewable-energy holdings in the U.S. and Canada is a landmark deal, to be sure, that will help drive private-sector investment in solar.

But there is much, much more to come in the solar sector as a whole—in developed and underdeveloped countries alike.

Image credit: Flickr/Jonathan Potts

Tim Buckley is IEEFA’s director of Energy Finance Studies, Australasia.

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on the Pure Advantage blog. 

By Matt Philp

Open source. It’s a concept from the world of software development, where programmers often collaborate to improve code then share the results at no cost. But could the open-source approach also help solve the vexed issue of unaffordable housing?

That’s the proposal of former PlaceMakers boss John Beveridge, who believes creative solutions are vital to prevent a generation of would-be home owners from being locked out of the market. Beveridge is calling for a national design competition focused on delivering a low-cost, eco-friendly and highly repeatable house type, with the winning plans to be fully digitized and accessible for free. “It’s about bringing the Digital Age to house building,” he says.

Beveridge, who these days is a director of Design Windows Group, a prefabricated window manufacturing business, has a personal as well as professional stake in the housing issue. His children “probably don’t aspire” to own a home because of the cost, he says, and it’s an increasingly typical attitude among their peers. “We’re not developing enough opportunities to encourage home ownership for young people.”

The rising price of scarce land is a factor. But the subscale nature of the New Zealand market and the kiwi love affair with big, bespoke homes don’t help, he says. “Consenting and regulatory controls struggle to deal with the high level of customisation each build requires, adding time and cost as well as risk, all of which must be priced into the house.”

The solution, he believes, lies with better design and greater standardization. “My idea is to create high quality, smart housing with open access to a range of standard designs, which must incorporate eco-friendly outcomes through passive energy use. These plans would have pre-approved consent to build, and would allow banks to pre-approve a loan, as the normal risks of building were taken out. Homeowners couldn’t introduce variations to the design, but the design and plans would be free.”

https://youtu.be/a8fHgx9mE5U?t=106

The open source essence of Beveridge’s idea is not unprecedented. In 2011, London design practice ‘00’ initiated WikiHouse, an open source project for designing and building houses that offers users the opportunity to download customizable Creative Commons-licensed plans. Using a method that has drawn comparisons to Ikea furniture, the building pieces are then cut from plywood by CNC routers and snapped together with wedge and peg connections, to be assembled onsite in less than a day.

“There are definitely some concepts there that we could be drawn on,” says Beveridge, “But I’m thinking here of a New Zealand context – and specifically an Auckand context. And, of course, we’re talking about a more substantial house.”

The focus would be on designing for a small footprint, possibly with a bias to “brownfields” sites, he adds. “We want smaller spaces but better designed for livability, not these great big houses we see the group builders proposing. You might say, too, that it won’t have garaging, because we’re going to build these houses close enough to the CBD that people can use public transport, or bike or walk.”

A set of standard plans would be available to a pre-approved pool of licensed builders, who would be working with a known fixed margin and could give undertakings on speed and quality of build. As they became more familiar with the designs, productivity would lift through repetition, while the cost of materials could be reduced and onsite waste slashed.

“If someone was building one of these kiwi houses off an open source plan they’d have access to a digital project management plan and a standard bill of materials. Building to a certain scale, you should be able to create better pricing.”

It’s a bold idea, and Beveridge can see it appealing to some of the country’s best architectural and building brains. As for the potential market, he envisages interest coming from “tech-savvy potential homeowners with a bit of ‘get-up-and-go’ and who could potentially manage a building project.”

Bruce Kohn, CEO of the Building Industry Federation, goes further. He suggests the open source concept might allow aspiring owners to get back to building their own first homes, particularly if the plans employed a significant amount of prefabrication. “You’d create a situation where, metaphorically speaking, they would put the jigsaw together.”

Kohn is enthusiastic about Beveridge’s proposal, and sees Auckland as being an ideal testing ground. “There’s such clear demand there, it would be a good place to try it out.”

Pamela Bell, CEO of Prefab NZ, is also supportive, and sees plenty of scope to make prefabrication a key feature. But she wants to see how Beveridge proposes that designers can still get paid. “You can’t just take one part of the value chain and say let’s make this bit free so that houses become more affordable. It’s much more complex than that. But if you got the designers to work with the manufacturers and developers as a team, then you’ve really got something.”

In fact, Prefab NZ is pursuing a project at the moment that also includes an element of open sourcing and involves a design contest. The idea is to create a universal bathroom pod for the retirement industry and social housing sector, a replicable unit that would become a “digital drag-and-drop element” of any designer’s vocabulary. “Anyone in the country could make it, with the plans all open source.”

Arising from research conducted with BRANZ intended to promote greater uptake of prefabrication, the bathroom pod project will launch in August with a design competition. “We’re aiming for a royalty system and prize for the winning design team based on per unit manufacture.”

Meanwhile, Beveridge is sharpening up his business model and talking to potential backers. He believes there’s a way that designers could get paid for their talent and time, without compromising in any way on that essential open source idea.

“Rather than getting a one-off payment, architects could perhaps earn many smaller fees, a bit like streaming on iTunes,” he suggests. “It’s all about applying this changing world to some of the problems we have with housing in New Zealand. It just needs a platform to bring it all together, and some inspirational leadership.”

Simon Millar, CEO of Pure Advantage, says his organization for one is excited about Beveridge’s proposal. “It’s a really intriguing idea. We’d love hear from other stakeholders what they think they can offer.”

Image credit: Pure Advantage

Matt Philp began his feature writing career at the New Zealand Listener, and was a senior writer for Metro, The Press and North & South. Now a freelancer, he writes on architecture, lifestyle, business, heritage and travel for several New Zealand magazines.

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on CSR21.org. 

By Joseph Kirschke 

Early this year, after three months of rolling blackouts that barely kept their country from total darkness, South Africa’s long-suffering people finally saw their energy crisis like a gathering storm. “There is a medium probability of load shedding today and tomorrow,” Eskom, the national utility, tweeted back in January, “with a higher probability on Thursday and Friday.”

South Africa’s power-hungry mining industry, Africa’s largest, causes much of the strain – while struggling to cope. So, too, does the economy, as 2015 growth projections have dropped to 2 percent from 2.50 – possibly slowing to one percent. Some South African miners, having penetrated off-grid areas amid ore depletion and fluctuating markets, meanwhile, are discovering benefits of renewable energy, presenting opportunities beyond South Africa – and the subsector itself.

After the recent collapse of the biggest commodity super-cycle in modern history, alternatives to unpredictably-priced, trucked-in diesel fuel for new mines have seldom enjoyed more appeal. With energy consuming well over 50 percent of off-grid project operating budgets, miners must now re-focus to cost-cutting at current operating mining sites from new exploration and development.

The South African government, for its part, plans to triple electricity by 11.4 gigawatts through a multi-phase, $13 billion alternatives initiative. Bureaucratic tie-ups, unstructured financing and inconsistent regulations, however, have signaled scant relief for Eskom’s beleaguered coal-fired power plants – and the homes and businesses tethered to their electricity.

To this end, Cronimet Mining-Power Solutions, engineered, financed and constructed the country’s first 1.6 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic diesel-electric plant in 2012 at a chromium mine operated by a local subsidiary of its German parent company. The plant and equipment were financed by Cronimet Mining Power Solutions under an independent power producer (IPP) agreement, freeing the mine from the twin burdens of financing capex investments and technology management.

By purchasing only the electricity, the mini-grid has yielded annual savings of 450,000 diesel fuel liters – at an estimated 1,200-ton CO2 abatement rate. In three years the PV/Diesel system will breaks even, Cronimet reported, through diesel savings, with photovoltaic electricity 50 percent below diesel costs and at grid parity with Eskom in remote Limpopo Province.

To leading global producers of platinum, gold, diamonds and magnesium and other minerals in a nation with top green energy potential – namely, 600 MW of PV currently grid-connected – the appeal is elemental. Harmony Gold Mining Co. Ltd., for instance, harvests limited-scale biomass and solar, while Sibanye Gold Ltd. plans for a 150-MW solar plant and Shanta Mining Co. Ltd. installed a smaller pilot PV plant under feasibility. Majors including Anglo American Platinum Ltd., AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. and Newmont Mining Corp., pending carbon credits, are exploring their options.

But challenges are considerable: Financing for any mine from international lenders, contingent on estimates of mineral reserves and operational lifecycles, is an uncertain, complex undertaking – particularly at the outset. More high, up-front costs – in already risky areas – can tip the scales heavily. On-site technical expertise and long delivery lead-times for expensive parts yield further disincentives.

On the other hand, most new African mines are in isolated areas where usually underserved, sometimes-volatile, communities have their own requirements – namely, a social license to operate. Miners worldwide have long paid dearly for neglecting such populations – including their access to resources like energy.

Indeed, analysts have predicted that some 80 percent of African mines will eventually be located in off-grid areas. Private sector IPP developers, such as Cronimet, have picked up on these market forces and are offering miners a one-stop-shop for off-balance sheet, on-site PV electricity to reduce operating costs, increase energy reliability and create a natural hedge against rising fossil fuel and centralized energy prices.

However, advanced renewable energy use by miners in Chile and, to a lesser extent Australia, demonstrate South Africa’s mines can share power with nearby villages – while advancing economies of scale and third-party supplier integration. With wind turbine, solar and hydropower spanning the globe, potential for energy-sharing and providing legacy systems beyond the life of mine inside and outside South Africa across industries – like agriculture, tourism, the service sector and forestry – is clear.

So, too, are financing opportunities: The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), for example, reported 2014 green energy investment – led by wind and solar – increasing 17 percent to $270 billion. Forerunners are social impact investors, philanthropies, ethical funds and large financial institutions like signatories to the U.N.’s own Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) – managing $34 billion in assets, representing 20 percent of global capital markets.

The rush to extract South Africa’s geological riches, beginning in the late 1800s, has never been a forgiving enterprise: Some 80,000 miners have since lost their lives; millions more have been displaced. Ongoing labor tensions, dangerous working conditions and violence – like the 2012 killing of 34 striking platinum miners by security forces – are a bitter legacy of Apartheid rule.

But fresh investor scrutiny can only improve the equation. And with International Finance Corp. forecasts of “substantial” green energy use at most mines by 2025, South Africa’s can set a precedent – while helping one of the world’s most undeveloped regions emerge from the shadows.

Image credit: Flickr/jbdodane

Joseph Kirschke is a consultant who advises mining companies on sustainability and a former editor at Mining Media International, the largest U.S. publishing house covering the mining industry.

CSR21.org exists as a platform for news, analysis and opinion: bylined guest pieces represent the views of the author(s) and  may not reflect the official opinions or views of CSR21. 

By Ava Collins

Veterans who have returned from active military duty often need to obtain employment and reintegrate into civilian life. Despite all the veteran benefits offered by the government and various DVBE organizations, many employers are hesitant to add veterans to their workforce.

Let’s look at some of the problems that veterans face while job hunting:

1. Skills mismatch: Military training provides individuals with excellent skills to make them good leaders. All too often, however, employers cannot get things done with leadership skills alone – they look for particular skills or experience needed for a job, which veterans simply may not have.


2. Skills translation: Sometimes veterans have the skills that potential employers are looking for, but may not be able to project them correctly. Consider the lifesaving skills gained during combat experience, which could translate into what a civilian paramedic or EMT does. “Skill translation” is a problem for a lot of veterans who are unable to explain how their military skills translate to non-military jobs.


3. Education: Most veterans do not have advanced degrees or qualifications, so veterans jobs tend to be restricted to unskilled or lower positions. Since they have to compete in the difficult economy, with civilians who also face trouble finding employment (despite higher education and degrees), they tend to get passed over by employers.


4. New skills: Veterans are used to learning skills from a predefined program that often puts an emphasis on physical work. For civilian jobs, they may find themselves unable to acquire new job-related skills. This creates a problem for employers who hire veterans and want people who are flexible enough to keep up with changing business needs.


5. PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder): PTSD is a serious issue among many veterans, causing nightmares, flashbacks and even sleeping disorders. However, this veteran disability goes away with time and does not affect every veteran. Employers, though, are usually quick to assume that every veteran has a history of PTSD. Overcoming this negative stereotype is perhaps the biggest problem that veterans face in civilian jobs.


6. Discipline: Discipline is an important part of military life, and veterans are among the most disciplined individuals in the world. In a military scenario, this is good, but in everyday civilian jobs, too much discipline could be dangerous. A non-military manager may be lenient about employees coming late to work, taking a sick day and so on, while a veteran may not show the same leniency, leading to morale problems in the office.


7. Rigidity: Another aspect of military life is rigidity: Veterans are taught to obey orders without question. In a civilian job scenario, not everything is cut and dry. Most non-military jobs require creativity, where veterans might be lacking. Employees are expected to think outside of the box, which won’t happen with many veterans. This makes employers avoid veterans for creativity-oriented jobs.


8. Culture shock: There is a stark contrast between military and corporate culture. Corporate culture is defined by a (comparatively) lax attitude, casual wear, and a world where rules can be bent or broken if necessary. The military is not lax at all, and protocol needs to be followed, so veterans often find themselves unable to adapt to corporate culture.


9. Co-worker interactions: Veterans, due to their nature of past employment, may find it difficult to work with their non-veteran co-workers. Also, some civilians find it difficult to work with veterans, because of perceived rigidity. Many employers worry that the work atmosphere might suffer by adding veterans to the mix.


10. Future deployments: The last issue for employers is the chance of recall and future redeployment. Veterans could be asked to return to active duty at short notice and may not have the option to decline. Employers think of their employees as assets that give returns over a period of time, which they may risk losing when they hire veterans.

Staffing and consulting companies like HicksPro understand the challenges that veterans face while looking for civilian employment. They help veterans transition into civilian life, connect with employers interested in military veteran hiring, build their skill set for non-military occupations and use online tools like social media to boost their careers, so they can enjoy financial independence and success even after retiring from active duty.

Image credit: Flickr/143d ESC

Ava Collins of Hicks Group, a staffing and consulting firm with experience connecting businesses to qualified veterans, wrote this article for TriplePundit. Collins says that working with an agency that helps put veterans to work is the easiest way to go about hiring veterans as well as gaining more in-depth information about how it could vastly improve your business.

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is providing funding to local Bangladeshi banks in a wide-ranging program in an effort to make the country's garment industry safer for workers.

Under the program, IFC will provide $10m each in financing to five Bangladeshi banks which will allow participating banks to increase lending to garment factories specifically to improve their structural, electrical and fire safety infrastructure. Prime Bank Limited has already signed up to the initiative, and four other Bangladesh banks are expected to follow in the coming weeks.

In addition, IFC has signed separate cooperation agreements with the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and the Accord on Fire Safety and Building Safety in Bangladesh, who represent dozens of the world’s leading garment brands. The two organizations will assist garment factories to undertake the SEF upgrades, and monitor compliance.

Bangladesh’s ready-made garment industry employs more than 4m people—mostly women—in about 4,500 factories and accounts for about 80% of the country’s exports. Despite a strong desire to improve worker safety, IFC says that many factories have found it difficult to access the capital necessary to make the improvements necessary to meet buyer’s standards.
 

This turns out to be quite a week for green aviation. First, an incredible milestone in the historic journey of the Solar Impulse as the fuel-free aircraft successfully completed a five-day crossing of the Pacific from Japan to Hawaii, the longest solo manned flight in history. While the realization of commercial solar-powered flight is likely still decades away, this inspirational journey sets a high bar against which all other efforts must ultimately be measured.

Then, United Airlines, announced that it would invest $30 million in a program that would produce jet fuel from trash. Pleasanton, California-based Fulcrum BioEnergy specializes in producing both aviation and diesel fuel from ordinary household waste. The company has committed to produce as much as 180 million gallons of this fuel per year. Fulcrum’s process, according to spokesperson Karen Bunton, “has been thoroughly vetted by numerous third parties including the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Agriculture” and has been found to meet “all of the aviation industry and military technical requirements and specifications.”

Fulcrum is preparing to begin construction on the Sierra BioFuels Plant near Reno, Nevada, that is expected to produce 10 million gallons of ethanol annually using household garbage. Bunton said the plant used a modular design that can be “easily replicated and scaled to build larger facilities that will produce between 30 and 60 million gallons of competitively-priced jet fuel or diesel per year.”

This is hardly United’s first venture into alternative fuels. In 2013, the airline signed an agreement with AltAir Fuels to purchase 15 million gallons of biofuel derived from camellia, a distant relative of canola. The fuel, which is produced in Southern California, is being used exclusively on flights taking off from LAX. Back in 2011, United flew a commercial leg between Houston and Chicago with a blend of 40 percent algal-based biofuel from Solazyme.

Also announced last week, Virgin Atlantic has cut its carbon intensity while increasing profitability, primarily by switching to more efficient aircraft, like the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The company’s level of carbon dioxide emissions per mile traveled was down 10 percent from 2007 levels, putting it on track to reach its ultimate goal of a 30 percent reduction by 2020.

At the same time, the company turned a profit for the first time in three years. Said Virgin’s CEO, Craig Kreeger: “Our latest sustainability figures show that profitability can be de-coupled from carbon, which is fantastic news for our airline and our industry.

"Last year we successfully delivered on our recovery plan, posting a profit for the year ending December 2014, and we are now looking to an even more sustainable future, in every sense of the word.” The company is also working with LanzaTech to incorporate alternative fuels produced from waste gases.

And if all that wasn’t enough, on July 10, the Airbus, all-electric E-Fan, will make a demonstration flight across the English Channel. This single-seat prototype is expected to pave the way for production models E-Fan 2.0 and E-Fan 4.0 and ultimately a short-range, regional airliner in the long term.

As the battle against climate change heats up, both airlines and aircraft manufacturers are stepping up their efforts to come up with greener alternatives. Air travel has become a deeply entrenched and highly valued aspect of modern life that many will be reluctant to forsake. In 2013, some 3 billion people took to the skies. At the same time, emissions from aircraft are significant contributors to climate change, estimated at 5 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, not only because of the large amount of fuel consumed by each airplane and the large number of airplanes, but also because the emissions are deposited directly into the upper atmosphere.

That number could grow, based on the current trend, to as much as 15 percent of all GHGs. So, it’s good that these efforts are taking place. At the same time, it raises the question of whether enough is being done.

Image credit: Wiser Earth: Flickr Creative Commons