Are you a recent graduate discovering how difficult the current market is, unemployed, worried you might soon lose your job or just feel that your career seems stuck in place? Are you thinking that now may be the best time to re-tool your career? Going for a green MBA, now, while the job market is stagnant may be a smart move; both for recent graduates, currently unemployed (or underemployed) professionals as well as for those who want to forge a path into a career in corporate sustainability. But what is a Green MBA, why is it important and what schools are offering them? These are the questions this post delves into.
If you think your business is too small or too service-based to benefit from going green, or you’re waiting for the hype about green and sustainability to die down, then you’re missing an opportunity to chart an upward course for your company.
The great American car culture is literally running out of gas. Many leading petroleum geologists are warning us that the era of easy cheap oil is over and that we are facing a much steeper rate of depletion than commonly believed. There is nothing that can replace these vast stores of liquid fossil energy that is being pumped out of the ground and drives our car culture. Without cheap plentiful oil the American car culture will rapidly crumble. The impending demise of the car culture and the types of spread out low density living that it has fostered is perhaps the most profound socio-economic earthquake we will have faced in many decades. Will we wisely prepare and build out alternatives to this doomed way of life or we wake up one day unprepared and find that the pumps really have run dry? Talking about giving up on the car culture in America is quite the third rail — no one wants to give up their car — and discussion often veers off into irrational sound bite, talking point filled shouting matches. But the facts are the facts. Cars run on gas and the era of cheap easy oil is over… the world now stands at the top of the oil production curve… at the peak of production. It is like we are all sitting in some great roller coaster ever so slowly rolling perched right at the very top of the precipice. We do not have much time at all to begin re-inventing America and building a green economy that can carry us into the future; if we dilly dally and do nothing events will soon race ahead of us and force drastic sudden change upon us all.
Algenol Biofuels, a Florida biofuels startup and DOW Chemical Company announced a pilot-scale algae-based integrated biorefinery that will convert CO2 into ethanol. The patented technology developed by Algenol Biofuels uses CO2, salt water, sunlight and non-arable land to produce ethanol, which can be used as a fuel or as a feedstock, replacing natural gas in the production of plastic. The algae is grown in long plastic covered troughs, called bioreactors that are filled with salt water that has been saturated with carbon dioxide gas, which provides the carbon the algae needs for photosynthesis.
The White House announced that the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science will invest $777 million in Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) over the next five years. In a national effort to accelerate scientific advances in critical areas of the new energy economy the United States Department of Energy (DOE) will establish 46 new multi-million dollar Energy Frontier Research Centers (or EFRCs) across the nation.
This, the fourth and final installment of our four part article series on the report on the Smart Grid put out by the U.S. Department of Energy, titled “The Smart Grid: An Introduction”, covers the DOE reports section that deals with how the various constituencies are working to realign themselves so that they participate in and are positioned to thrive in the emerging Smart Grid future that is beginning to be built out. It summarizes the five fundamental technologies that will drive the Smart Grid. It illustrates concrete examples of current Smart Grid projects ranging from West Virginia to California to Hawaii, that illustrate how a smarter grid is already taking shape. Finally it asks: What’s Your Stake in All This?
This, is the third installment of our four part article series on the report on the Smart Grid put out by the U.S. Department of Energy. The report is titled “The Smart Grid: An Introduction”. The current installment covers the DOE report’s section that defines what is meant by Smart Grid; what it is and conversely what it is not. It covers the various critical aspects that working together will form the Smart Grid. It continues with a summary of the DOE Smart Grid report’s “Compare and Contrast: A Grid Where Everything Is Possible” section that outlines the many benefits of creating a smarter grid.
This is the second installment of our four part article series on the excellent report on the Smart Grid put out by the U.S. Department of Energy that delves into this complex subject matter in considerable detail. The report is titled “The Smart Grid: An Introduction” and is dedicated to the education of all interested members of the public to the nature, challenges and opportunities surrounding the Smart Grid and its implementation.
This installment of our article series covers the DOE reports section that deals with where our current electric grid currently stands and what are the risks that it faces.
The U.S. Department of Energy has produced an excellent report on the Smart Grid that delves into this complex subject matter in considerable detail. The report is titled “The Smart Grid: An Introduction” and is dedicated to the education of all interested members of the public to the nature, challenges and opportunities surrounding the Smart Grid and its implementation. Building out the Smart Grid is a colossal task comparable in scope to the construction of the interstate highway network or the construction of the Internet. It is daunting, but it is a task that can no longer be postponed; one that simply must be done; as well as something we need to do as a nation for reasons of national security, to lay a foundation for our continuing prosperity and to preserve our nations global influence.
