Captain Obvious

The solar industry has launched an industry-wide attack on the electric utility industry implying that they are all anti-solar.  Indeed there have been some noteworthy cases of underhanded behaviors, but decide for yourself whether the accusations are fair. Read the recent article in Solar Power World. 

Those of us who have been part of this dialogue since the beginning understand how the economics of projects depend in part upon the subsidized credits for power produced.  While that subsidy was appropriate to get the industry started, it is no longer acceptably economic at scale and places an economic burden on those least able to afford electricity and who definitely are least able to put solar panels on their roofs.

But notice the tone of the article and specifically note the elimination of any of these details over the decades.  We now know more fully what it will take to accommodate solar at scale and the economics of solar farms is a much more realistic and sustainable choice for society.  Utilities have jumped onto that bandwagon.  Rooftop solar is simply a bad idea compared to large scale solar farms on all fronts, and especially for grid resilience.

Perhaps the biggest lesson here is that the utilities did not “bring their customers along” on the intellectual and economic journey to arrive at this decision.  They simply assumed they could legislate to control their destinies.  It seems they assumed customers would simply go along with the change, and evidently they haven’t.

Once a legal battle ensues it is extremely costly to try to educate anyone… there is too much money to be made in the intellectual war.

The natural gas industry had better wake up and smell the roses.  You are next.

I grew up with the admonition to “eat your spinach!”  Popeye cartoons even tried to convince me it would make me strong.  You probably also may remember when President Bush was asked about broccoli, and he said he hated it.  Lawsuits erupted from the broccoli industry!

I thought it was my choice whether I ate certain vegetables.  One of our friends says “we didn’t evolve to the top of the food chain to eat grass” … meaning he hated salad.

If I asked people in a meeting what they want for lunch, I would expect responses.  Some might like a salad; others might want pizza or a nice sandwich. Anyone who doesn’t speak up will get what the rest of the vocal people wanted.

The last few years has produced a new style of response in corporate meetings: no response at all.  People seem prone to blend into the background and not indicate preference.  Perhaps they don’t want to be criticized for their position.  Maybe they hope nothing is decided so they can go back to business as usual. Perhaps they listened to Abraham Lincoln’s advice, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”

This is so common now that it has been given a name… it is now called crickets.

I wish we at least heard a chirp here or there to measure the temperature of the conversation in the room.  As the graph here indicates, there is a very strong correlation between the chirps per minute and the outside air temperature. Similarly, people talking, contributing their ideas, working together to shape the best answer is a strong indication of the energy going into shaping any decision.

In too many meetings these days, you hear crickets.  Silence.  Deafening silence.  Not a peep out of anyone.  Not even a gratuitous response like: “Thanks for giving us something to think about.” And that silence announces to everyone in the room, “You confuse us with someone who cares; we don’t give a damn about what you are saying.”

Anyone who has studied sales or how to influence people will acknowledge that on the emotional spectrum, where love and hate are at opposite ends with ambivalence in the middle, ambivalence is the worst condition to face.  It is much better to have someone engaged, even in disagreement … that gives you something to work with to hear their perspective and seek better understanding.

Yet, with all of today’s polarization and people seeking shelter in their favorite corners of life, we get crickets in all too many meetings.  No seeking to better understand, no considering alternatives, and no attempt at seeking higher callings.  The lesson I share from this observation is that each of us should take responsibility for why we are called to be in any meeting.  Someone believed you brought something of value to the table or you wouldn’t be there.

Keep it up and you may not be invited back. Maybe today, the better variation on Lincoln’s quote is, “Better speak up and demonstrate you bring value to the discussion.”

Most of you probably will not remember this key phrase by Sigourney Weaver in Aliens when she is being questioned about destroying a spaceship in her first encounter with an alien creature.  She had lost her entire crew to just one of these critters.

For context, here is a link to the scene in the movie.

I have used the entirety of this movie for years when teaching strategy to energy utilities and even wrote a book using this movie to illustrate how utilities needed to rethink their marketing and sales approaches.

The reason I bring all this up is over the recent hype about hydrogen.  I understand the interest in this topic for consultants because they thrive on things the average person simply does not understand.  However, the simple, obvious questions never seem to stay in focus.

As everyone will admit, hydrogen does not occur naturally … it has to be manufactured, either from the refining process of crude oil, coal, or some other hydrocarbon processing.  If it is a side product from other refining steps as it is in most refineries, it can be captured and stored in tanks for use specifically as a single molecule.  Unfortunately, since it is such a light gas (molecular weight of 2 as opposed to air at 18) it is very expensive to store and transport.  What makes matters worse, it is such a small molecule that it goes right through the steel containers used to store the more common commercial gases.

I understand the love affair with hydrogen, and if we had sources that were realistically available there are a host of engines that could use it as a fuel, starting with fuel cells for the techy folks, but let me remind you that you could use it in our standard internal combustion engines quite inexpensively and achieve the same end result: no tailpipe carbon dioxide or NOx.

Taking electricity which is a highly refined energy source and using it to split water molecules has to be the silliest idea I have heard in my energy career.  There is no source energy expert who would agree.  You never take the most highly refined energy source … electricity … and then degrade it deliberately at scale to do anything.  You store the electricity in batteries if you have to, or use other compression/recovery methods similar to pumped hydro.

I guess the good news is that everyone is beginning to wake up to a simple fact.  We are measuring carbon dioxide levels and new legislation around full life cycle carbon accounting is emerging.  That should fix this.  But, perhaps not.  Just take a look at the stupidity of burning wood waste and trees under the fictitious math of lifecycle methane release logic.  Burn a tree in seconds because somehow you are avoiding the rotting tree emitting methane over decades?  No … I am not making this up!

Perhaps IQs have dropped while I was here among you.

I entered the energy industry almost 40 years ago.  Back then, presenters at conferences were chosen based upon the content and relevance.  Sponsorships at the meetings were common but they were generally part of the exhibit hall perspective … you got a bigger booth area, better trafficked locations, and of course mention and signage.

The idea that the “message” or the product offerings were somehow more newsworthy was absent.  There were of course testimonial presentations by customers and consultants that might feature vendor products, but once again the conference was still mostly about content and relevance … not about who had the biggest check book.

Over the past decades that has changed and so much so that content is now merely vendor talking points.  Oh, sure it may be hidden in some general market platitudes so that it doesn’t reek of commercialism … but it is getting pretty hard to see these meetings as truly educational.

The worst offenders are what we used to call the research firm meetings.  You know who they are.  You get emails from them almost daily.  They all have their hands out … begging for funding … while advertising that they are providing “cutting edge insights” into this or that.

If I told you that a firm was funded by the tobacco industry to research this or that, would you consider the reports relevant to your health?

Pay to play … follow the money … and beware of the findings they claim.

Managing in the real world is not easy since it means compromise and tradeoffs.  There is only so much money, time to execute, and impact to be made.  Phrases like the tyranny of the urgent conjure up how tempting it is to do what is easy or let panic rule the day.  Few managers can truly execute a strategic vision without being distracted by daily skirmishes.

Where disciplined critical-thinking minds prevail and all the facts seem to be present and confirming, you observe rightful decisions and progress.  However, the real world is seldom so transparent and consistent, so you tend to observe “paralysis by analysis” where studies seem to only raise more doubts and the need for more studies.  This is what one of our energy colleagues coined as the apropos acronym WASTE to describe the current scientific situation: It was the Welfare Act for Scientists, Technologists, and Engineers … after all, if you ask them what to study, they will invent ideas!

My father, who was president of a division of Panasonic, chastised me when I finished my master’s in management and offered to help his business using the disciplined methods I had learned.  He said, “Those techniques are useless in the real world. By the time you have gathered all the information needed to use your models, the competition would have already claimed the prize!”

Managing by what my father called gutfeel or instinct could not be further from today’s business styles.  Management-by-committee-and-consensus has replaced common sense and any form of sophisticated intellectual ideas.  Worse yet, our cancel culture seems to care much more about mediocrity and some sense of societal equity, rather than striving for excellence in every position and people empowered to make a difference.

This perfect world idealized in our youth might be good for society if it were blended into a realistic framework of cost-effectiveness and some retrospective wisdom. Unfortunately, each generation must learn that lesson on their own and many, sadly, follow the German philosopher’s line that, “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”  They would do well to listen to the wisdom of leaders who have been there and done that and can make decisions instinctively vs. seeking consensus leading to mediocrity.

Instead, we have ideologues dominating the discussion and consensus mechanisms that have an insatiable appetite for more information … more studies … and endlessly more bickering…more WASTE.