by Willy Franzen on January 29, 2010
I’ve written about a lot of green jobs, but I’m well aware that most of the jobs in the energy sector are still related to oil. As the price of oil continues to rise and competition starts to increase from alternative energy companies, we’re going to see more and more innovation in the oil industry—there will a much bigger focus on efficiency. One example of his Houston, TX based Object Reservoir, which is a company that helps their clients in the Energy & Petroleum industry model their underground wells to optimize drilling and maximize production. I spent a good amount of time reading over the company’s website to try to understand exactly what they do, and I have to admit that it’s way over my head. Hopefully for some of you it all makes sense.
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by Willy Franzen on January 28, 2010
One of the books that I’ve been reading lately is SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
. It’s a great follow-up to the original Freakonomics
, and it once again shows how changing your mindset can lead you to all kinds of new ideas (this is a really important lesson for job seekers). One of the companies that is mentioned in the book is Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, WA based invention company. They’re all about ideas. Things like product design, product development, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and service all come later, and Intellectual Ventures doesn’t want anything thing to do with those processes. They just invent, invent, invent. The company isn’t tied to one specific area—they’re working on problems like stopping Malaria, preventing hurricanes, and counteracting negative effects from climate change should they ever happen.
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by Willy Franzen on January 24, 2010
I live across the street from what was formerly the world’s largest building—the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. It’s massive at 4,000,000 square feet, which is extremely impressive considering it was opened in 1930. What’s even more impressive is that, with some debate, the Merchandise Mart is now the world’s largest “green” building. It is LEED-EB Silver certified, and apparently the retrofitting that they did to achieve this certification has cut utility bills by 10%. Upgrading one of the largest buildings in the world to be more energy efficient and environment-friendly is a daunting task, luckily the LEED Certification process provided the owners of the Merchandise Mart with guidelines to work to. The organization behind LEED is the U.S. Green Building Council, which is based in Washington, DC. They are a non-profit that is “committed to a prosperous and sustainable future for our nation through cost-efficient and energy-saving green buildings.”
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by Willy Franzen on October 28, 2009
Whether you think the human race is going to end at the hands of the greenhouse effect or you just don’t like paying 3 bucks a gallon for gas, you likely have a vested interest in alternative energy. There’s a good chance that some time in your lifetime our main energy source will be something other than fossil fuels. Then again, I’m just coming to the realization that I won’t see flying cars in my lifetime. Hopefully I’m wrong about that one. Anyway, there are a ton of companies that are vying to win a big share of the alternative energy market. Many of these are small startups that you’ve never heard of. Their websites are ugly, and they’re usually not located in big cities. You’d never guess it from their appearance, but they’re actually at the forefront of engineering technology. One of these companies is Malvern, PA based Franklin Fuel Cells. Their focus is on “commercializing a unique solid oxide fuel cell (SOFCs) technology that can operate directly on today’s hydrocarbon fossil fuels as well as future fuels such as, biofuels and hydrogen.” I don’t really know what that means, but it sounds pretty cool.
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by Willy Franzen on February 10, 2009
How much energy do you use every day? I’m not talking about Calories, although I’d be surprised if you knew that, I’d be shocked if you could tell me how much energy you consume on a given day. You might know how much you spend (and that might be more important), but as energy becomes a bigger and bigger issue, you need to be an informed “consumer.” Everybody needs a little Positive Energy, right? Well Positive Energy is an Arlington, VA based company that is working to “engage the 300 million Americans who are in the dark about their energy use through a combination of cutting edge technology, analytic direct marketing, behavioral science and world-class design.” Sounds pretty cool to me.
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by Willy Franzen on September 8, 2008
Carbon is everywhere – in trees, air, diamonds, your body, yet it typically seems pretty harmless. For the most part carbon isn’t something that you lock up under the kitchen sink to keep away from the baby, although breathing carbon monoxide will kill you, and there is the fear that we may be using carbon monoxide to cook ourselves. No matter what you think about “global climate change,” you have to recognize that attempts to limit carbon emissions are quickly becoming a major business concern. That means that businesses of all sizes are either going to have to invest significant resources in trading in carbon markets, or they’re going to have to outsource. If they’re going to outsource, Point Carbon is the place to go. They provide “independent news, analysis and consulting services for European and global power, gas and carbon markets” based on the information they get from their “experts in international and regional climate policy, mathematical and economic modelling, forecasting methodologies, risk management and market reporting.” If you’re interested in energy policy or markets, there couldn’t be a better place to work than Point Carbon.
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by Willy Franzen on June 21, 2008
Half of the news lately has been about high gas prices. It gets tiring, since the stories never bring a new angle. Oddly enough, gas has been relatively price inelastic until recently. Prices would go up, and people would keep on driving like they did with lower gas prices. We’ve finally hit a point where people are actually cutting back on their driving because gas is so expensive. Although we haven’t done any research to back this up, we’d bet that home energy use is even less price elastic that gasoline use. Most people’s Dad’s yell at them for leaving a light on, but they don’t take serious measures to limit their home energy consumption – it takes too much effort. The Association for Energy Affordability is a New York City based non-profit that promotes energy affordability through conservation in the home.
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by Willy Franzen on May 22, 2008
It’s safe to say that the environment is becoming a big political issue again. If the trend continues, a likely result will be increased government regulation. It’s important that our shared resources are protected, but government regulation often ends up creating intricacies and loopholes that increase the cost of doing business without accomplishing the desired beneficial outcome. It’s easy to say that companies should just suck it up and learn to stop putting the environment at risk, but that point of view fails to look at the whole picture. There are very few people in the world whose livelihoods don’t have an adverse impact on the environment, which means that more restriction can significantly decrease some people’s abilities to put food on the table (it can also significantly decrease a corporation’s ability to put billion dollar profits on the table). Businesses often have to jump through hoops to gain both government and community approval of environmentally sensitive projects, but they rarely retain staff with such specialties. Aspen Environmental Group is a company that provides the required expertise.
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by Willy Franzen on May 1, 2008
My house in college was not energy efficient, unless you consider the heating system’s not working half the time a feature of design. The doors and windows all leaked cold air in the winter, and it was impossible to cool the house down below about 95 degrees in the summer. We even tried covering the windows in the winter for added insulation, but it didn’t help much. Our monthly heating bills were outrageous despite the fact that my roommates were cheap and insisted on turning the thermostat down below the point at which our landlord warned us that the pipes would freeze. Energy efficiency was clearly not a priority for whoever built our house, but if it had been they could have hired someone like Rumsey Engineers to design it.
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by Willy Franzen on February 28, 2008
This time of year, many of the entry-level consulting jobs are already filled. It’s amazing and a little disappointing if you’re still in the job market, but a good portion of consulting firms fill all of their entry-level job openings six to twelve months in advance of when the new hires will start working. That leaves a lot of soon to be college graduates who want to get into consulting with limited choices. Whether you were turned down when you applied in the fall, never got around to applying, or just realized that you’re interested in consulting, the apparent dearth of consulting jobs probably has you considering looking at other fields in lieu of consulting. Don’t give up so fast! There are still a lot of great consulting jobs out there, you just have to look beyond the sexy names. As is typical in the industry, Navigant Consulting does most of their hiring through campus recruiting in the Fall, but they still have some entry-level job openings.
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by Willy Franzen on January 25, 2008
Solar power is one of those things that continues to amaze you long after you’re first introduced to it. Even if it’s just a photovoltaic cell connected to a lightbulb, the harnessing of the sun’s power always seems to generate a feeling of child-like amazement. Lucky for our planet, that youthful exuberance has remained in many of today’s entrepreneurs, even after they have grown up. Because of them, it seems that we might soon see the day when solar power moves from something that hobbyists play around with to a real source of sustainable energy.
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