NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York calculated that the Earth’s temperature has been warming at a rate of 0.19 degrees Celsius per decade for the past 30 years. Moreover records from Antarctica ice cores show that the global temperature is within 1 degree Celsius of reaching the highest temperature in the last one million years. And human-induced CO2 levels have reached an unprecedented level not seen on the planet since the middle of the Pliocene, over three million years ago. Can science, technology and entrepreneurs slow down our globe from overheating? Yes. 

At least that’s what British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, four Japanese corporations, three German companies, one Taiwanese conglomerate and General Electric believe. They are all involved in the $10 billion solar energy-generation technologies providing cost effective energy to millions of people worldwide. 

For the first time in the history of mankind we are faced with an imminent global crisis – global warming – and a decade or so to make necessary industrial changes to begin to slow down CO2 emissions. We have the scientific information, the media bombards us almost daily with record-breaking statistics and now collectively we will make a decision: business as usual or allowing human ingenuity, capital markets with some government reallocation of subsidies to steer us on safer path that our children depend upon. 

In 2000 the National Academy of Engineering choose the electricity grid as the greatest invention of the twentieth century, surpassing even automobiles, airplanes and the computer in importance.

Energy rates that users pay vary around the world between 6 and 22 cents KWh. The U.S. is the largest energy user at 26 percent of the total world consumption despite having only 4.6 percent of the world’s population. Yet their average rates of 12 KWh are amongst the lowest in the world. In comparison, the rates in Japan and Germany are 21 cents KWh. Electricity from fossil fuels and nuclear energy in America and worldwide receive direct subsidies of $131 billion per annum. As a result, these electricity rates seen monthly on billing statements do not reflect the actual energy costs. 

Currently, 66 percent of global energy is supplied by fossil fuels (40 percent coal, 20 percent natural gas and 7 percent oil). It’s these fuels that are made up of carbon along with global deforestation and 700 million automobiles that are causing the CO2 levels to rise. Nuclear energy supplies 16 percent of the world’s energy but there is no safe place to store its toxic waste. 

Forty-five thousand hydro dams provide 16 percent of global power but at a tremendous initial cost to the environment in addition some rivers like the Colorado River and Yellow River of China no longer empty into the sea. Biomass, geothermal and tidal and ocean waves supply 9, 6.8 and 0.03 percent respectively to global energy markets. 

In the last decade innovations with wind power have enabled it to capture and produce 1 percent of the world’s power. It has undergone explosive growth at more than 20 percent annually worldwide. Wind however is inherently unpredictable and limited by sufficient wind resources. Also, Europe and America’s tax credits designed to stimulate wind markets have lapsed or been modified. 

Photovoltaic (PV) cells capture, on silicon materials, photons of light moving electrons from a positively charged layer to a negative one, creating an electrical current. There are no moving parts. PV cells last for at least 25 years and have been used in space-based satellites – the harshest possible environment – for decades.

Solar electricity can be made on site at individual homes or factories. Energy can be stored in batteries or sold to the power grid. Perhaps the greatest advantage of this clean renewable resource is that it can be utilized on the power grid during intermediate and peak periods which coincidentally occur during the sunlight hours. Solar power will replace the need for natural gas generators which are used more frequently to supply variable power needs as intermediate- or peak-load generators. Burning natural gas release methane a molecule that is 60 times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat. 

Solar-energy technologies currently provide 0.05 percent of the total electricity generated globally. The insatiable demand for PV cells in Japan, Germany and U.S. has driven the unit costs from $11 per watt to $5 per watt. Solar power is becoming affordable as unit costs continue to drop in price. The solar industry is growing at 20-30 percent each year and projected to climb even higher for the next 40 years.

About one third of the Earth is covered in sun-rich deserts creating a potential vast amount of energy resource. If 4 percent of those sun-rich deserts are harnessed the current world’s energy needs would be met. 

Over the past 30 years the first silicon revolution has revolutionized out lives with computers, cell phones, e-mail and digital music.

We have just entered the second silicon revolution which will be transformed in the next decade or so with unstoppable solar energy superceding our dependency on fossil fuels for electricity and reducing global CO2 emissions. The only unanswered question is how many entrepreneurs will soon become solar billionaires.

SAVE THE HONEY BEES http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6w-Z7XlnHI

Dr Reese Halter is a public speaker, conservation biologist and founder of the international conservation institute Global Forest Science. His latest book is The Incomparable Honey Bee http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+Incomparable+HoneyBee+reese+halter&x=0&y=0  He can be reached through http://DrReese.com

“O que há de tão errado com a Europa?”, pergunta Michael Freedman, neste artigo na Newsweek.

Vejam só: A União Européia tem uma taxa de mortalidade menor dos que os Estados Unidos, com a França entre as menores. Um menino que nasça amanhã nos Estados Unidos terá uma expectativa de vida de 78 anos, contra 79 na Europa e 80 se tiver a sorte de nascer na França.

O europeu terá a chance de levar uma vida feliz, sua educação do jardim de infância à universidade será quase de graça, trabalhará numa das empresas multinacionais da socializada Europa(BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Nokia ou Ericksson) ou 10 das empresas líderes mundiais em vendas.

Terá mais férias e mais tempo livre para tratar de sua saúde e do filho recém-nascido. 

A Europa tem menos doenças psiquiátricas do que os Estados Unidos, e, estatisticamente, dão mais chance de tratamento aos que adoecem. O aposentado tem uma pensão garantida pelo estado.

E desde que foi para a Casa Branca, Barack Obama  tem sido acusado de querer europeizar os Estados Unidos.

Para Bill O´Reilly, a Europa está “cheia de covardes”.

Para Sean Hannity, o pacote de recuperação da economia de Obama é “A Lei Socialista Européia de 2009″.

E a reforma do sistema de seguro saúde de Obama é “a estatização européia”, para Rush Limbaugh.

Mas isso é antigo, segundo o articulista, pricipalmente contra a França. Historicamente, segundo o estudioso francês Justin Vaisse, os americanos consideram os franceses “imorais, venais, antisemitas, arrogantes, insignificantes, e saudosistas”.

A eurofobia está mais forte ainda em nossos dias. Tudo o que Obama diz inspira um direitista a acusá-lo de europeizado.

- “O presidente pediu um hamburger com mostarda Dijon!”.

A apresentadora de rádio Laura Ingraham perguntou no ar: “Que tipo de homem pede um cheeseburger sem ketchup mas com mostarda Dijon?”

Rush Limbaugh anda comparando Obama a Adolf Hitler. Glenn Beck,da Fox News, passou filmes da Wermacht para falar do seguro saúde de Obama.

E, hoje, os europeus são nossos maiores aliados!

Que tipo de seguro saúde fará os americanos mais fortes, mais resistentes, mais prósperos? Seria bom observarmos como fazem os nossos alidos.

Charles Murray ao receber um prêmio do conservador American Enterprise Institute declarou que “a possibilidade de que danos irreversíveis sejam feitos ao projeto americano nos próximos anos, é real; o modelo europeu é fundamentalmente errado porque, apesar do sucesso material, não é adequado para que seres humanos floresçam e progridam – não conduz à felicidade aristoteliana”.

Pode até ser, mas a demagogia de muitos de seus companheiros de direita arrisca ignorar o que a Europa tem a oferecer, apenas para cederem a um ideológico je ne sais quoi.

Artist: Rachel Hulin http://rachelhulin.com/blog/2009/07/wednesday-morning-color-porn.html

In the early 2009 I created some posts about long-term planning and the deficiencies for operational managers of the current budget rigidity, as encountered in many organization.

This post reflects about scenario planning and seems for me (and is for me ) good food for thought.

Although it has consequences. In stead of one context we have to construct, it is about creating various contexts and being able to connect and act accordingly. And that is nice challenge on a personal (indeed personal), professional and organizational level!

Source: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2298

Published: July 22, 2009 in Knowledge@Wharton

As protests in Iran last month drew the world’s attention, the top executives at a large global industrial goods company held a teleconference to consider their options. The meeting was hastily called, but the participants were not starting from scratch. In fact, the events unfolding in the country were strikingly similar to a scenario that they had developed, along with a handful others, in a 2008 offsite meeting focused on potential changes in their competitive environment.

The workshop, the output, and the eventual impact on decision making represents a perfect illustration of how so-called scenario planning techniques can be utilized to help managers navigate in complex and uncertain environments. In the meeting the industrial company held last year, executives had discussed each scenario they developed, the potential triggers for each of them, and how the company should respond to each of these situations if it were to arise. Pulling out the notes from these discussions, they already knew their options and had a view on how they would like to respond. In many ways, they were prepared — and already one step ahead of some other companies.

Paul J. H. Schoemaker, research director of the Wharton School’s Mack Center for Technological Innovation, says such examples illustrate a continuing shift in how companies think about the future. He observes that when managers are facing the profound uncertainties increasingly seen today, they tend to adopt one of three strategic postures.

The first, Schoemaker says, is the “zero-future” option: Here, caution rules the day; no attempts are made to analyze, anticipate or predict anything beyond the short-term, and major decisions are put off until the fog lifts. The second choice is to bet strongly on one particular future. As Schoemaker describes it, the upside is that leaders are able to convey a clear message, reducing anxiety for stakeholders, and take bold action that may later be viewed as brilliant. The danger is that they could place the wrong bets or fall victim to wishful thinking.

The third option entails what Schoemaker describes as a deliberate attempt to separate what we do and do not know about the future, and to use that as a basis for exploring many possible futures — in other words, developing scenarios rather than predictions. This approach differs from the first two primarily in that it is a much more open mindset, with a focus on agility and options. Yet it also is in many ways the most challenging to adopt. “It takes courage to admit our collective ignorance,” Schoemaker says, “because it conflicts with our common notion of leadership, which prizes omniscience. However, our world is too complex for the heroic leadership of the past where a great leader rides up on a white horse and points the way to the future. A better approach now is to embrace uncertainty and examine it in detail to discover where the hidden opportunities lurk.”

Creating Options

Trying to gain a better understanding of the trends shaping the competitive environment has always been critical for managers. In the 1970s, scenario thinking first became relatively popular as a structured way to look ahead — to understand new growth areas, anticipate risks, spot opportunities and build a long-term vision. Perhaps most notably, Royal Dutch Shell used the approach to look more broadly at the trends and developments that could impact the price of oil and develop stories that could challenge management perceptions. Since then, however, companies of all sizes and in many industries have picked up the practice, particularly at times of crisis or dramatic change.

George S. Day, a professor of marketing at Wharton and co-director of the Mack Center, also has witnessed the recent rise in scenario thinking firsthand. “What has changed to make scenario planning so timely? Obviously uncertainty is way up. This is the main driver, because when conditions are stable it’s easier to live with momentum and the projections we normally use,” he points out. “The challenge is that when things are very uncertain we need to think differently, because what we project based on current momentum may be the least likely outcome. We need to start thinking about the unthinkable scenarios — and what’s new today is people are finally figuring out how to do it well, in an environment with a huge amount of uncertainty.”

Derrick Philippe Gosselin, who until recently was group senior vice president at French energy concern GDF Suez, offers a practitioner’s perspective. Gosselin was responsible for introducing scenario thinking into GDFSuez’s planning and investment processes, where the focus was on gaining strategic flexibility. “As someone thinking about scenarios, my job was to develop the capability in our company to anticipate things — to make sense of the environment before other companies,” he notes. This is particularly important in capital intensive industries such as the ones in which Suez operates. “Once you are invested [in a massive project], you are locked in for years, and many of your strategic options are no longer valuable. So the traditional way of thinking about strategy also is no longer as valuable.” In other words, it is nice to have strategic options, but they have no real value if a company will never be able to execute them.

The exception to this rule occurs when a company can sense changes before its competitors do. For instance, when a market shoots dramatically up or plummets, it is already too late to get in or out of an investment profitably. However, some companies, according to Schoemaker, Day and other experts, have developed a competitive advantage by leveraging scenario planning — first in stimulating discussion about potential outcomes arising from the swirling mix of trends shaping the world, and then in establishing monitoring mechanisms to identify which scenario is starting to unfold. In the end, the major objectives for these companies are to minimize surprises and to consistently anticipate — and act on — major emerging opportunities and challenges, ahead of competitors.

Gosselin, who is now a member of the Strategic Foresight Council at the World Economic Forum, believes that if he can get a company to start thinking about possible scenarios that could arise in the future, it means that “I create an awareness of these options, and each time they make an investment decision, they are aware of what could happen. It creates an early warning system, which is something I cannot get at all if we are all simply working with macroeconomic models. It also means we can operate extremely quickly. We have looked at the environment and potential developments, and now we can have a dialog on risk management, anticipation and investment options based upon that.”

Thinking Differently

For many companies, the idea of scenario planning is not necessarily new, but often it is not practiced in a consistent or meaningful way. Most tend to follow key trends opportunistically and in relatively unstructured ways. Part of the challenge, experts say, is that the way organizations discuss and plan for the future is deeply rooted in the company’s culture. This means it can take a great deal of time — or an extraordinary shock — to spark a change in approach. For instance, until recently, managers making a strategic recommendation to the CEO or board of directors often were expected to start by presenting a compelling opinion on what the future would be, and then offer a logical strategy or plan that, naturally, would emerge from that view of the future. Today, this kind of “linear” approach is increasingly being called into question.

At the same time, experts say, as planning discussions get closer to the top levels in a company, short-term financial concerns often rule the day. If there isn’t strong backing by the CEO or other senior leaders to consider alternative views, then strategic planning discussions frequently default into financial exercises — and scenarios tend to get mixed with financial sensitivity analysis.

Wharton’s Day says the solution is to involve senior management directly and actively in open, long-term oriented discussions. Consultants or teams in the organization can help, he notes, but the heavy lifting intellectually has to be done by the top management team. Indeed, at GE, he says, every one of the top management teams is required to go through a scenario exercise. “The leaders of an organization need to share mental models, challenge assumptions and basically learn from each other. Scenarios force managers to embrace uncertainty, and then figure out how to profit from it regardless of what happens. But first you have to get people out of their box. If they haven’t participated in it, it is almost certain to fail. What you are doing is challenging assumptions that may have been tacit for years.”

Kristel Van der Elst, who heads the scenario planning team at the World Economic Forum, has helped direct more than a half-dozen different exercises and seen the impact on participants’ thinking. She emphasizes that it is crucial to have the right mix of people in the discussion. “It’s important that you have different viewpoints,” she says. “If you have people only from the same company, or even only from the business world, you may not get people who will challenge assumptions — people who will shake up the discussions and thinking a little bit.” In addition, opening up the discussion can also help create new networks and partnerships, to discuss trends in a non-threatening manner and foster a sense of trust. “We have had people in workshops who would not talk openly to one another in the normal course of business, but the scenario process provides them with a safe environment to share views, creating mutual understanding,trust and respect.”

Ultimately, Van der Elst adds, such discussions help create a dialog that enriches the capabilities of everyone involved. “You end up changing how people think,” she says. “The long-term benefit is that you open up people’s minds, which also is why it is so important that you have decision makers directly involved in the process. Of course, this is a challenge, because it requires a big time commitment, but when they are only involved at the end of the process, with a presentation being delivered to them, they will have their own picture of the future in mind and are likely toreject the alternatives. It is only by taking them through the process that you can open up their thinking.”

Day agrees. “An interesting question is whether we should call this scenario planning, or what I prefer, which is ’scenario learning.’ Learning implies an intense discussion that challenges the tacit assumptions and mental models of each member of the management team. This provokes tension that leads to reflection, which is essential to collective learning. Learning also implies an on-going process in which the results of actions taken leads to further reflection and insight.”

Developing New Scenarios

Even with senior-level participation, however, the key question is how to proceed most effectively. Experts say many companies and organizations are now focused on building a more systematic process to identify and track emerging trends, feeding into discussions about the implications. Without it, the amount of potentially important information becomes overwhelming — impossible to assimilate or process well by using an opportunistic or essentially ad hoc approach.

Based on her experience at the World Economic Forum, Van der Elst offers some general guidelines on developing a scenario process within an organization. The first step, she says, is the identification of the “central question” — that is, the specific strategic issue that requires a decision in light of trends or potential developments. Making sure this central question is relevant for the stakeholders is essential for the exercise to be useful. It can be defined through research and discussion in the scenario team, but most importantly through interviews with the stakeholders.

Once the key question has been identified, the next step is the identification of the driving forces and systemic changes that are underway — the forces that will dramatically transform the playing field. Usually these are found in a variety of domains. A typical categorization used is STEEP: Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and (geo)Political. “It is important here to keep in mind you are thinking about the contextual environment in which you operate, not the transactional environment,” Van der Elst says. “You look at forces beyond your control and influence that will impact you, as well as the industry you are in. You have to think broadly.” These drivers are found in expert interviews and research, but most importantly through brainstorming with, again, a diverse, multidisciplinary group of people.

In doing so, according to Van der Elst, looking long-term is important: Engaging in a discussion about what the major drivers will be 10 or 20 years out can help people see things that they would never consider when looking only three or five years ahead. “The time horizon for the scenarios needs to be sufficiently long to avoid only conveying a creative description of the present, and sufficiently short for the scenarios not to lose focus and relevance.” In addition, participants should not be looking only at things that are direct extensions of what is already happening, but instead at things that could happen. For instance, when the price of oil is soaring, thinking about a scenario of much lower prices is important because it is plausible, even if it is not an extrapolation of current trends. It is not being ‘realistic’ that matters; it is being plausible.

Out of the long list of potential drivers, companies can move on to determine the critical uncertainties. Simply put, these are the driving forces that are both extremely important and highly uncertain. “These are the things you need to think about and be prepared for,” Van der Elst says. “For these critical uncertainties, you explore relevant, challenging, diverse, and possible outcomes.” An effective mechanism to do this often is a workshop where the primary forces of changes are discussed and prioritized, with the results plotted on a 2×2 chart, usually with impact on one axis and certainty on the other. This helps management teams focus on what is important, and avoid what is just noise. It also begins to uncover implicit assumptions and beliefs — for instance, a lot of people think some things are certain, when it turns out they are not certain at all.

The biggest-impact uncertainties will be the key themes for the scenarios. “This is something we cluster,” Van der Elst says. “During workshops, we explore different sets of drivers to find the scenarios that are most relevant. This depends on the audience. We always ask: What are the boundaries of possibilities? How would the world look like in this scenario and what does it mean to you?’ The scenarios are often brought to life and communicated using story-telling techniques, which are effective ways to help decision makers understand the potential outcomes, easily remember them and challenge the current accepted wisdom.

As an example of the output from a robust scenario exercise, consider a recent paper by Schoemaker and co-author Rob-Jan de Jong from Europe. They offer four scenarios — titled Capitalism 2.0, Global Depression, Visible Hand and Obama World — that depict how Western economies might emerge from the global financial crisis that became visible in 2008. Looking ahead to the year 2012, these scenarios describe different futures that could define the next five years, including early warning signs. The scenarios are built around two pivotal uncertainties. The first concerns the deeper nature of the present downturn (i.e., will it prove to be cyclical as before, or deeply systemic and dislocating?) The second uncertainty concerns the role of government versus the free market in lifting economies out of the current malaise.

The final step is for participants and others to take the input back into their strategy decision-making process. In general, there are two different approaches, the experts say. One is to attempt to make a company’s whole strategy completely robust against every scenario. This, however, can be difficult or even water down the strategy. A better option, the experts say, is to design a strategy that creates value in two or three scenarios — with a backup plan if other scenarios emerge.

Hidden in Plain Sight

Indeed, being prepared may be the single biggest benefit of scenario thinking. Otherwise, managers run the risk of engaging in overly linear thinking. This, in today’s environment, can be devastating. As recent events have clearly shown, companies’ positions in the future are not definitively linked to where they are today. Instead, more and more managers are being forced to think about alternatives.

Van der Elst sees this change already happening. “Companies had to get away from making decisions or arguments about what the future should be,” she says. “One of the challenges we had until recently in the [World Economic Forum] workshops was to make the people in the room realize that there could be a slowdown in economic growth. They would say that is not possible, so each time we had to make sure people understood that the downside also was an option. As the participants went through the process, it opened their minds. Some CEOs told us afterward that they returned to work and changed their strategy. They had been completely banking on the high-growth option.”

Gosselin voices a similar perspective. “The discussion of going from point A to point B is not the right one,” he says. With more and more companies operating in turbulent environments, “you must be open to considering alternatives, and possibly an alternative that you do not agree with. When something shocking happens, afterward it always seems so obvious. People ask, ‘Why did we not see it? Well, the answer is because there were lots of options for possible outcomes. But now, afterward, there is only one that we see.’”

Additional Reading

Using Scenario Planning as a Weapon Against Uncertainty
Knowledge@Wharton

The New Business Reality
Knowledge@Wharton

Sifting Through Data Overload to Broaden Your Company’s Vision
Knowledge@Wharton

Read more at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2298

The race to bring pond scum to fuel tanks has acquired high stakes in recent years, with venture capitalists, federal agencies and legacy oil companies pouring millions of dollars into the technology. Today ExxonMobil (s XOM) and startup Synthetic Genomics announced one of the biggest deals yet: more than $600 million for a 5-6-year algae biofuels development program, including more than $300 million to be invested into the startup.

While today’s project does not represent the largest algae deal to date (Algenol is building a plant in Mexico reportedly worth $850 million, as we’ve noted in the chart below), it is one of the biggest commitments so far from the oil industry — which has been placing a growing pile of chips on algae for its potential to work with existing infrastructure for fossil fuels (e.g., pipelines, oil refineries).

The numbers, of course, don’t tell the whole story. Look at GreenFuel Technologies, a startup that won big investments and a $92 million algae farm project in Spain, but ended up laying off staff and ultimately shutting down earlier this year. Activity in the nascent algae fuel sector also includes more than a few deals whose amounts have not been disclosed, but which may hold significance for the industry over time. For example, Synthetic Genomics received an early investment from BP (meant to support one of the first comprehensive genomic studies of microbial populations in various hydrocarbons, and ultimately lead to processes for making biofuels). While we can’t compare the size of that investment to the others in our chart, it may have gone a long way to help the company win today’s massive deal with ExxonMobil. And while Royal Dutch Shell and algae-to-fuel startup HR Biopetroleum have not been forthcoming with details about the financing for their 2-year-old joint venture, Cellana, having the heft of Shell’s budget and resources behind it could make Cellana a serious contender against smaller startups.

For the chart below, we looked to include the largest sources of funding flowing into the algae sector, including equity investments, government grants and contracts, joint ventures, strategic alliances and licensing deals:

Partners/Companies	Project
Algenol Biofuels, Sonora Fields $850M	Algenol has a licensing agreement with Sonora Fields (a wholly owned subsidiary of Mexican-owned BioFields) for a project in Mexico that will deliver a billion gallons of fuel a year. More »
Synthetic Genomics, ExxonMobil $600M+	ExxonMobil plans to invest more than $300 million in Synthetic Genomics as part of a larger $600 million collaborative R&D program for developing and commercializing transportation fuel from photosynthetic algae. More »
Sapphire Energy, venture capital $100M+	Sapphire has raised venture capital from high-profile investors including Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment, ARCH Venture Partners and Venrock to help it squeeze green crude from algae for high-octane fuels. More »
Solazyme, venture capital $76M	Solazyme’s latest round (Series C, $7M) brings the startup’s total funds to $76 million and will be used for commercialization of its technology: genetically engineered algal strains grown in fermentation tanks, fed sugar instead of sunlight, and using existing industrial equipment to extract the oil.
General Atomics, Department of Defense $20M-$43M	General Atomics began leading a team of university and industrial partners in a 36-month program starting in January 2009 to “examine all aspects” of the algae-to-jet-fuel production process under the Defense Adanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. More »
SAIC, Department of Defense $15M	SAIC won a defense contract earlier this year to develop a $3-a-gallon algae-derived fuel for military jets. The funds come under a biofuels program in DARPA More »
Center for Advanced Biofuel Systems, Department of Energy $10M-$25M	The DOE will award $2 million to $5 million each year for five years to this St. Louis lab as part of the The Energy Frontier Research Center Awards program. More »
C2B2, Conoco Philips $5M	The Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels (C2B2), part of the joint venture created by the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado State University, the Colorado School of Mines and NREL, won sponsorship from Conoco to develop transportation fuels from biomass, starting with algae. More »

Lần đầu tiên sau 10 năm, công ty đứng đầu bảng xếp hạng lớn nhất thế giới là công ty dầu mỏ đến từ bên ngoài nước Mỹ. Các đại gia ngành “vàng đen” cũng thống trị danh sách Fortune 500 công bố tuần vừa rồi.

Trong bảng xếp hạng 500 công ty lớn nhất công bố cuối tuần vừa rồi, người khổng lồ dầu mỏ của Hà Lan Royal Dutch Shell nhảy 2 bậc so với xếp hạng năm ngoái, thay thế nhà bán lẻ Wal-mart để trở thành công ty lớn nhất.

Là nhà sản xuất dầu mỏ lớn nhất châu Âu, đà tăng trưởng của Shell có vẻ không giảm đi chút nào ngay cả trong thời kỳ suy thoái. Mới đây, Shell đầu tư 18 tỷ USD vào Qatar trong dự án Pearl GTL biến khí gaz tự nhiên thành nhiên liệu diesel sạch. Shell lên kế hoạch sản xuất đủ nhiên liệu cho 160.000 xe hơi mỗi ngày vào 2010.

Ngành dầu mỏ đã có một năm hốt bạc, đưa các công ty năng lượng lên vị trí cao trong danh sách các công ty lớn nhất. Ảnh: Dailymail

Tổng doanh thu của công ty lớn nhất – Royal Dutch Shell đạt 458.361 tỷ USD, trong đó có 26.277 tỷ USD lợi nhuận. Công ty Royal Dutch Petroleum thành lập tại Hà Lan từ năm 1890, và trở thành Royal Dutch Shell vào 1907. Cho đến nay, Shell đã có mặt tại 140 quốc gia, trong đó Mỹ là thị trường lớn nhất.

Đây là lần đầu tiên trong vòng 10 năm, người đứng đầu Fortune 500 đến từ bên ngoài nước Mỹ. 2009 cũng là năm chứng kiến ít doanh nghiệp Mỹ nhất kể từ khi danh sách được lập ra lần đầu tiên hồi 1990.

Trong 10 vị trí cao nhất của danh sách Fortune 500, có tới 7 vị trí thuộc ngành dầu lửa. Ngoài ExxonMobil đứng thứ 2, BP giữ vững vị trí số 4 như 2008. Công ty Chevron tăng 1 bậc, lên xếp thứ 5, trong khi ConocoPhillips xếp thứ 7, nhảy 3 bậc so với xếp hạng 2008.

Những xáo trộn trong danh sách minh họa một năm thuận buồm xuôi gió với ngành năng lượng. Giá dầu thô lao dốc xuống 46 USD vào cuối năm. Tuy nhiên, mức giá đỉnh điểm 147,27 USD mỗi thùng hồi tháng 7 thừa sức giúp các đại gia dầu hốt bạc.

Trong khi đó, doanh nghiệp bán lẻ vật lộn trong một năm kinh tế suy thoái. Giá cả ngày càng giảm vì người tiêu dùng ra sức thắt lưng buộc bụng, tiết kiệm chi tiêu.

Với doanh thu năm 2008 443 tỷ USD và lợi nhuận 45 tỷ USD, Wal-Mart rơi xuống vị trí thứ 3, mặc dù cổ phiếu của họ được bầu chọn là vững mạnh nhất trong các công ty thuộc Chỉ số trung bình công nghiệp Dow Jones.

Thanh Bình (theo CNN, CSN)

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Tổn thất của ngân hàng Mỹ có thể lên đến 600 tỷ USD

Nguồn: viencanh.com Đại gia ngành dầu hốt bạc trong suy thoái

Lần đầu tiên sau 10 năm, công ty đứng đầu bảng xếp hạng lớn nhất thế giới là công ty dầu mỏ đến từ bên ngoài nước Mỹ. Các đại gia ngành “vàng đen” cũng thống trị danh sách Fortune 500 công bố tuần vừa rồi.

Trong bảng xếp hạng 500 công ty lớn nhất công bố cuối tuần vừa rồi, người khổng lồ dầu mỏ của Hà Lan Royal Dutch Shell nhảy 2 bậc so với xếp hạng năm ngoái, thay thế nhà bán lẻ Wal-mart để trở thành công ty lớn nhất.

Là nhà sản xuất dầu mỏ lớn nhất châu Âu, đà tăng trưởng của Shell có vẻ không giảm đi chút nào ngay cả trong thời kỳ suy thoái. Mới đây, Shell đầu tư 18 tỷ USD vào Qatar trong dự án Pearl GTL biến khí gaz tự nhiên thành nhiên liệu diesel sạch. Shell lên kế hoạch sản xuất đủ nhiên liệu cho 160.000 xe hơi mỗi ngày vào 2010.

Ngành dầu mỏ đã có một năm hốt bạc, đưa các công ty năng lượng lên vị trí cao trong danh sách các công ty lớn nhất. Ảnh: Dailymail

Tổng doanh thu của công ty lớn nhất – Royal Dutch Shell đạt 458.361 tỷ USD, trong đó có 26.277 tỷ USD lợi nhuận. Công ty Royal Dutch Petroleum thành lập tại Hà Lan từ năm 1890, và trở thành Royal Dutch Shell vào 1907. Cho đến nay, Shell đã có mặt tại 140 quốc gia, trong đó Mỹ là thị trường lớn nhất.

Đây là lần đầu tiên trong vòng 10 năm, người đứng đầu Fortune 500 đến từ bên ngoài nước Mỹ. 2009 cũng là năm chứng kiến ít doanh nghiệp Mỹ nhất kể từ khi danh sách được lập ra lần đầu tiên hồi 1990.

Trong 10 vị trí cao nhất của danh sách Fortune 500, có tới 7 vị trí thuộc ngành dầu lửa. Ngoài ExxonMobil đứng thứ 2, BP giữ vững vị trí số 4 như 2008. Công ty Chevron tăng 1 bậc, lên xếp thứ 5, trong khi ConocoPhillips xếp thứ 7, nhảy 3 bậc so với xếp hạng 2008.

Những xáo trộn trong danh sách minh họa một năm thuận buồm xuôi gió với ngành năng lượng. Giá dầu thô lao dốc xuống 46 USD vào cuối năm. Tuy nhiên, mức giá đỉnh điểm 147,27 USD mỗi thùng hồi tháng 7 thừa sức giúp các đại gia dầu hốt bạc.

Trong khi đó, doanh nghiệp bán lẻ vật lộn trong một năm kinh tế suy thoái. Giá cả ngày càng giảm vì người tiêu dùng ra sức thắt lưng buộc bụng, tiết kiệm chi tiêu.

Với doanh thu năm 2008 443 tỷ USD và lợi nhuận 45 tỷ USD, Wal-Mart rơi xuống vị trí thứ 3, mặc dù cổ phiếu của họ được bầu chọn là vững mạnh nhất trong các công ty thuộc Chỉ số trung bình công nghiệp Dow Jones.

Thanh Bình (theo CNN, CSN)

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Tổn thất của ngân hàng Mỹ có thể lên đến 600 tỷ USD

Nguồn: viencanh.com Đại gia ngành dầu hốt bạc trong suy thoái

JUNE 29, 2009, 12:00 P.M. ET

LONDON (Dow Jones)–

Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN) Monday said it was shutting down some output following an attack claimed by militants, days after the country’s president offered an amnesty to the gunmen.

Here is an article I found at cleantech.

“San Francisco, Calif.-based CMEA Capital is on the hunt for the best and brightest cleantech investments. But if the investors can’t find what they are looking for, founder and Managing Director Tom Baruch told the Cleantech Group they’ll create their own company.

The venture capital firm usually invests anywhere from $10 million to $15 million per company, over the life of its involvement with the company, he said. And these days, renewable fuels and chemicals from cellulosic precursors as well as algae are catching the attention of CMEA investors. Baruch said they are working on a stealth project in collaboration with a university in San Diego to genetically modify algae to produce chemicals.

“We’re working to see if we can build our own company,” he said. “We’re shopping for the right technologies and supporting some small research projects.”

CMEA has also invested about $15 million to date in Codexis, which makes producing biofuels, pharmaceuticals and industrial products faster through its next-generation biocatalytic chemical manufacturing processes. CMEA was involved in spinning Codexis out of Redwood City, Calif.-based biotech company Maxygen (Nasdaq:MAXY).

Codexis, which filed its S-1 in 2008 (see Codexis files for $100M IPO) and then pulled it due to market conditions (see Codexis withdraws IPO), has attracted significant private equity investment with IPO plans on the horizon again come 2010.

In March, global energy giant Royal Dutch Shell NYSE:(RDS.A) and Codexis expanded an agreement to develop better biocatalysts, with Shell increasing its equity stake in Codexis. The companies first announced the partnership in 2006 to investigate other biofuels, researching new enzymes to convert biomass directly into components similar to gasoline and diesel, with Shell taking a stake in the company in 2007 (see Shell partners with Codexis for next generation biofuel research and Shell, Codexis in biofuels agreement).

Baruch said he expects Codexis to turn a profit by the end of this year.

“We want to be involved in companies that are truly transformative—that change the way people do things and think about things, that have cost and performance characteristics that are a leap apart from what’s currently available,” he said.  “And frankly, if it’s not transformative I don’t want to do it.”

To read the full article, click here.

As hard as we try, those of us in Social Media are always going to struggle when old media giants like News Corp decides to lay the boot into social media via one of the popular tools – in this case Facebook. The report from (News subsidiary) Adelaide Now is a clear attack on social networking and social media and is designed to do nothing more than instil fear in the minds of business owners. The headline pretty much gave away the bias of the article and upon reading it I had my expectations of a hatchet job pretty much confirmed.

What really stood out for me (other than the blatant bias in the article) is the comment from a Telstra Executive.
Telstra Business Executive Director Brian Harcourt was quoted in the article as follows:

“If an employee spends as much as an hour a day on Facebook, it can end up costing a business thousands of dollars in lost time over the course of a year.”

I’ve thought long and hard about this comment and whether to just ignore this or write a stinging rebuke. I really don’t follow the logic of a senior Telstra executive making comments like this. He’s basically telling the business community to lock down internet access or “god forbid” it will cost your company thousands of dollars.

Why am I confused by this comment (or frustrated)?

1. Telstra has been promoting itself as a leader in the social media space, espousing their brilliant efforts to connect to the community and providing the means for people to have dialogue.
2. Telstra recently announced your own internal social media policies with much fan fare  (or was that just a reaction to the @fakestephenconroy fiasco).
3. Telstra sells internet access – broadband is their bread and butter remember…

So, Telstra is telling the business community to curtail use of the internet particularly the evil Facebook as that is where bludgers congregate? That would be like Jeroen van der Veer (he’s the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell) telling his customers to NOT buy the Land Rover Discovery 3 V8 HSE because it’s a V8 and man they suck the gas down. Forget about the fact you could drive it sensibly and reasonably economically and derive much pleasure and benefit along the way – “It’s a V8 man; it’ll cost you thousands of dollars a year”.

So rather than be critical of Telstra, I’m going to help them. I’d like to put forward many of the points that (I suspect) Brian didn’t get a chance to in the article. I want to believe that Telstra believes – and knows this is not about bludgers; it’s about culture and engagement (remember the former CEO’s massive spread in The Boss Magazine last year where he talked long about culture and engagement?). Telstra knows this is about accepting that technology is good and things are changing.

I can imagine Brian and his colleagues looking at this research and wanting to say to the public and their valued business customers – “the research shows that business owners are worried – they don’t quite get it like we do. So because we’re innovative leaders, we’re going to contribute some of what we know and hold true, so that others can learn how to harness the potential and find a positive. Because it’s not about bludgers it’s about empowerment and trust”.

I am of the opinion that Telstra would get much more mileage (or column inch coverage) if they said this, or if they even went a step further and followed the lead of their global innovative peers like IBM, Dell, and Harvard by saying “Our message is don’t lock down. Our message is to allow dialogue, to embrace it through a set of mutually agreed guidelines. In fact, here’s our policies – take them and modify them.

We’re Telstra, so we’re going to contribute to the community. Because we believe this is the way of the future because we’re bloody smart and innovative, and we want you using our products.”

Isn’t that a much better story line than what News Limited concocted?

I like this model where Telstra uses their PR presence/muscle to go into the community and have the balls to say “come with us, we’ve got some great ideas”.

Incidents where Multinational Corporations (MNCs) sponsor massacres in order to eradicate dissenting voices against their obsession for profit have been a motif through Colombia’s history.

At the beginning of the 20^th century it was the army who suppressed labor protests. The best example is the Banana Massacre in 1928 in which the army exterminated laborer protesting over wages in behalf of the United Fruit Company. This bloody episode in Colombia’s history was immortalized in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Since the mid 20th century, the slaughtering of the most vulnerable in society has been “outsourced” from the military to paramilitaries directly sponsored by MNCs but still in direct complicity with the government and the army.

The most representative case of recent slaughters sponsored by MNCs was conducted by Chiquita Brands. This US Corporation admitted paying the paramilitaries US$ 1.7 million between 1997 and 2004. Chiquita claims that the armed group blackmailed its employees. However, Salvatore Mancuso, a paramilitary boss currently in US jail, declared that the payments were voluntary. Chiquita was fined US$ 25 million payable over five years by the US government for supporting a terrorist organization, but none of the executives were jailed. Paradoxically, Chiquita Brands was formerly known as United Fruit Company.

Nevertheless, the victims of paramilitary massacres have not been compensated, if that is at all possible. But Colombian lawyers have opened criminal cases against the Chiquita’s board members who authorized such payments. Since the company confessed making the payment in a US federal court, they could potentially be apt for extradition to Colombia.

The US Attorney General, Eric Holder, was the defense lawyer who obtained this juicy deal for Chiquita in US courts. Recently, Holder met with Colombia’s Interior and Justice Minister, Fabio Valencia Cossio – whose brother is investigated for links to the paramilitaries whilst being regional attorney – to iron out details on a new extradition arrangement in order to circumvent Supreme Court obstructions. However, it is obvious that US nationals being extradited to Colombia were not part of the conversations but ways to keep extradited paramilitaries from talking about “sensitive topics” was certainly high in the agenda.

The case of Chiquita Brands is just the tip of the iceberg. Mancuso has admitted receiving money from Dole and Del Monte Foods Companies and Drummond Coal Company. The food companies appear to not only have paid for “pacifying” the workers, but also for driving farmers off their lands so bananas could be planted. In the case of the coal company, there have been various civil lawsuits on behalf of the relatives of Drummond sponsored paramilitary’s murders.

In light of the many obstacles from the highest levels of government to dismiss the legal cases against multinational companies a recent landmark case offers a silver lining to the family of the thousands that have been massacred with the complicity of MNCs.

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has paid a US$ 15.5 million out-of-court settlement to the family of the victims due to the incriminating evidence of their complicity against the atrocities committed on the Ogoni tribe of Southern Nigeria in the 1990’s. Shell was accused of colliding with the Nigerian military to hunt down tribesmen opposed to oil developments and their ecology devastation affecting their livelihoods. What is important of the verdict is that, although the company did not directly engage human rights violations, it did facilitate vehicles, patrol boats and ammunition to the military to terrorize the population.

Together with the United Nations Human Rights Commission interest in extrajudicial killings by the Colombian state, Shell’s news offer some hope for justice. Hopefully the impunity and manners in which MNC and the government have been operating in Colombia for hundreds of years can be modified.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/9/headlines

CIA: Keep Documents from Bush Era Sealed

The Obama administration is urging a federal judge to block the release of certain Bush-era documents that detail the videotaped interrogations of CIA prisoners at secret prisons. The Washington Post reports CIA Director Leon Panetta said in an affidavit that releasing the documents would benefit al-Qaeda’s recruitment efforts. Panetta said the forced disclosure of such material to the American Civil Liberties Union could be “expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security by informing our enemies of what we knew about them, and when, and in some instances, how we obtained the intelligence we possessed.” Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU said he found it “troubling” for the Obama administration to say that information about purported abuses should be withheld because it might fuel anti-American propaganda. Jaffer said that amounts to an assertion that “the greater the abuse, the more important it is that it should remain secret.”

Shell Pays $15.5 Million in Niger Delta Case

The oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to pay a $15.5 million settlement to avoid a trial over its alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Niger Delta. The case was brought on behalf of ten plaintiffs who accused Shell of complicity in the 1995 executions of Nigerian writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others. We’ll have more on the story after headlines.

Peruvian Indigenous Leader Seeks Asylum

In Peru, indigenous leader Alberto Pizango has sought refuge in Nicaragua’s Embassy and is seeking asylum. Pizango is wanted in Peru on sedition charges after leading protests opposing laws that encourage foreign mining and energy companies to invest billions of dollars in the Amazon rainforest. Over the weekend, sixty people died after police tried to break up a blockade. Indigenous activists are vowing to continue to fight for their land.

Indigenous Protester Atilio Pisango: “We have carried on this fight for more than fifty-seven days. The government has killed our indigenous brothers in Bagua. If the government repeals the law, we will lift the strike. Our leader, Alberto Pizango, did not send armed men; it was the army.”

Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

The Supreme Court has decided not to hear a challenge to the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. The court refused to hear an appeal from a former Army captain who was dismissed under the policy. The Obama administration had urged the court to throw the case out. In a brief, the Obama administration had said the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion.” While running for president, Senator Obama campaigned to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but he has made no specific move to do so since taking office in January.

Court: Judges Must Avoid Appearance of Bias

In another closely watched case, the Supreme Court ruled that a West Virginia judge should have disqualified himself from an appeal of a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy because the coal mining company’s CEO had been a major campaign donor. By a 5-4 vote, the justices held that the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals judge should have removed himself from deciding the case, because Massey chief executive Don Blankenship had spent $3 million to help him get elected to the court.

Court Declines to Hear Case to Save Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks

Also on Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear a petition from a coalition of Native American and environmental groups to protect the San Francisco Peaks located near Flagstaff, Arizona. The mountains are considered sacred by thirteen Native American tribes. A lawsuit was filed by the coalition to block a private developer from expanding a ski resort on the mountain and from using recycled sewer water to make fake snow.

Former Guantanamo Prisoner Describes Being Abused

Another former prisoner at Guantanamo has come forward to describe being abused inside the jail. Lakhdar Boumediene, who now lives in France, told ABC News he was kept awake for sixteen days straight, and guards inappropriately used hypodermic needles and IV tubes intended for forced feeding during hunger strikes. Boumediene, who was held for nearly eight years without charge, was interviewed on ABC News last night.

ABC News: “Do you think that you were tortured?”

Lakhdar Boumediene: “I don’t think. I am sure. You think that’s not torture? What’s this? What you can call this?”

NY Times Criticized over Report “1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad”

The New York Times is coming under intense scrutiny over its recent coverage of what former Guantanamo prisoners have done after their release. On May 21, the Times ran a front-page story titled “1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad, Pentagon Finds.” Since publication, the Times has had to backtrack from the article’s most serious claims. On Sunday, the paper’s public editor wrote that the article was “seriously flawed and greatly overplayed.” The public editor said the article failed to distinguish between former prisoners suspected of new acts of terrorism—more than half the cases—and those supposedly confirmed to have rejoined jihad against the West. Had only confirmed cases been considered, one in seven would have changed to one in twenty.

First Guantanamo Inmate Transferred to US for Trial

US authorities have brought the first Guantanamo Bay prisoner to the United States, flying him into New York to face trial for his alleged role in bombing the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Ahmed Ghailani arrived early today and was brought to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. He is scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court later today.

FBI Defends Use of Informants Inside Mosques

FBI Director Robert Mueller has defended the agency’s use of informants inside mosques, despite complaints from Muslim organizations that worshippers and clerics are being targeted instead of possible terrorists. Mueller said, “We don’t investigate places, we investigate individuals.” Several Muslim organizations have publicly complained that the FBI has planted spies in their mosques. Shakeel Syed of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California accused the FBI of “trying to incite and entrap” law-abiding people.

Cuba Rejects Offer to Rejoin Organization of American States

Cuba has formally rejected an offer to return to the Organization of American States after members of the group agreed to lift the Cold War-era ban on its membership six days ago. Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro has said repeatedly that Cuba had no desire to rejoin the OAS, which he has described as an instrument of neoliberal economic policies and US intervention in Latin America. The official announcement was made on Cuban television.

Cuban Television Announcer Raul Isidron: “Cuba] has values at odds with the neoliberal capitalism and egoism promoted by the OAS and feels that it has the right and the authority to say no to the idea of incorporating itself in an organization over which the United States still holds an oppressive control.”

Top UN Official Calls for Global Ban on Plastic Bags

In environmental news, a top UN official is urging a global ban on plastic bags, in part because plastic is the most pervasive form of ocean litter. Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Program, said, “Single-use plastic bags, which choke marine life, should be banned or phased out rapidly everywhere. There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere.” The campaign to ban plastic bags is gaining steam internationally. China banned free plastic bags last year, saving the country an estimated 40 billion plastic bags. Here in this country, San Francisco is the only large city to have banned plastic bags.

Charges Dropped in Dragging Death of Black Man in Texas

In the Texas town of Paris, protesters gathered outside the local courthouse Monday condemning the recent dismissal of murder charges against two white men in the dragging death of a black man. Twenty-four-year-old Brandon McClelland died last year after he was dragged from beneath a truck until his body was nearly dismembered. The two men originally charged in the crime were both friends of McClelland. They were released last week after being held for eight months in jail awaiting trial. Officials said the case had been unraveling in recent months because of a lack of eyewitnesses and physical evidence. Last month, a gravel truck driver gave a sworn statement acknowledging he might have accidentally run over McClelland, who authorities say got out of the car to walk home.

Canadian Politics

• This Sunday marks the 20th Anniversary of the Polytechnique Massacre. Articles reflecting on this anniversary and the continuing struggle to end violence against women can be found here and here.
• The Liberal, NDP and Bloc Quebecois MPs who sit on the House of Commons status of women committee boycotted the Tory government’s l’Ecole Polytechnique ceremony this week. They argued that Tory policies have rolled back the fight for women’s equality and safety including; elimination of the court challenges program and to the move to abolish the gun registry – something that some Liberal and NDP members also support.
• This week celebrates 20 years since Audrey McLaughlin was the first woman to be elected as a Leader of a Federal Political Party.

American Politics

• The Senate voted for the Mikulski Women’s Health Amendment to HR 3590, the Senate health reform bill. The amendment guarantees coverage and affordability of critical women’s preventive health care, including mammography screening for women under the age of 50, and ensures physician involvement in decisions on the need for screening.

Reproductive Choice

• The Baltimore City Council passed a law requiring all pregnancy centers that do not offer abortion information to post signs in English and Spanish to that effect. The mayor is expected to sign the bill, which will enforce the new policy with a $150 fee for centers that don’t comply.

Gendered Violence

• The Ugandan Human Rights Commission released a statement this week as part of the 16 days of activism to end violence against women, highlighting the link between gendered violence and poverty.

Economic Crisis

• A report released this week, measuring the pre-Olympic Games impact, has shown a 373% increase in homelessness in Metro Vancouver since 2002, the year before the city won the Olympic Bid.

International

• The draft Anti-Homosexuality Bill is part of a growing campaign against homosexuals in Uganda, the author of the bill has defended it saying, “Homosexuality is not part of the human rights we believe in.” Critics say the aim is to divert attention from corruption and other political issues ahead of the 2011 national vote.
• The 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award was given to Zimbabwean activists Jenni Williams and Magondonga Mahlangu for their work empowering women of Zimbabwe to speak out on the desperate hunger, crumbling health and education systems, and domestic violence and rape in that country. They have faced government repression for their efforts.
• The number of women dying from pregnancy-related complications in Nigeria is akin to a plane crashing every day, but the crisis gets less noticed amid pandemics such as AIDS and malaria.
• The Swiss passed the ban of Minarets this week, what some see as an extremist or even racist step which highlights apparent double standards in Europe’s respect for human rights.
• A group of 4 Nigerian farmers are suing Royal Dutch Shell, claiming that the oil firm polluted their land in the Niger Delta region. They will ask a court in the Netherlands for compensation and to force Shell to clean up the area.
• Violence against women throughout the world represents a public health crisis of pandemic proportions. This article discusses worldwide violence against women in marking the 10th anniversary of the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
• The list of 100 Top Women in Canada was released; here are some of the highlights.

A group of Nigerian farmers are suing Royal Dutch Shell over an alleged oil spill in the Niger Delta region that they say ruined the livelihood of local villagers. The farmers claim that badly maintained pipelines of a subsidiary of Shell spilt oil that contaminated fish ponds and farms in Bayelsa State in 2005. Backed by environmental group Friends of the Earth Netherlands, the farmers took the case to a Dutch civil court yesterday. They are demanding compensation and hope the court will force Shell to clean up the area affected. The company has denied any responsibility for the incident, arguing the leak was caused by sabotage. The court is expected to announce on 30 December whether it will proceed with the case.

Royal Dutch Shell and PetroChina Co. have signed an agreement to jointly develop the first shale gas resources in southwestern China’s Sichuan province. Beijing wants natural gas to account for 5% of the nation’s energy mix by 2010, 10% of the nation’s energy mix by 2020. An early winter with low temperatures have increased recent demand and caused natural gas shortages in parts of China (See Horn River News: Winter weather triggers natural gas shortage – in China)

The joint venture will further assess China’s shale gas potential and make way for more foreign cooperation opportunities. North America has lead the world in shale gas development which has fundamentally changed how natural gas is viewed as an abundant, low carbon energy source in North America. Developing shale gas resources in China’s  Sichuan basin opens a new opportunity for China to meet growing energy demands with domestic Chinese natural gas resources contributing more to China’s overall energy mix. Its only a matter of time before a “Horn River basin” is discovered outside of North America.

Wall Street Journal: Shell, PetroChina to Develop Shale Gas in Sichuan

At the Open Innovation Summit last week in Orlando, there were a number of companies there discussing their various initiatives for open innovation. What is open innovation? UC Berkeley professor Henry Chesbrough, perhaps the father of the movement, formulated this definition several years ago:

Open innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology.

At the Summit, several companies expressed their growth related to and/or impact of open innovation:

Cisco: Cisco’s internally generated growth is at 5%. Its partner-based growth is 10%. #ois09

Clorox: Clorox target for growth from innovation is 4%. Last few years around 2.5% to 3.5% = significant portion of growth. #ois09

Royal Dutch Shell: Conser: About 40% of projects in Shell’s R&D program come from GameChanger. #ois09 [GameChanger is its open innovation program]

Rockwell Collins: Aggarwal: 75% of firms expect 40% of innovation to come from external sources by 2012. #ois09

Hewlett Packard: McKinney: 60% of ideas generated internally. Via HP Garage. Use employee crowdsourcing to filter and refine these. #ois09

Given the way these companies described their open innovation efforts, I decided to check out their stock performance. Hat tip to Jackie Hutter for suggesting this idea.

The table below compares the 5-year performance of the companies presenting at the Open Innovation Summit against the S&P 500:

It’s not a clean sweep, but most of the companies have outperformed the S&P 500 handily the past five years. While it’s not all due to initiating open innovation, it appears that you can’t rule out its influence on company performance.

Here’s how industry consultant Stefan Lindegaard describes the open innovation landscape:

I also argued that only about 10% of all companies are adept enough at open innovation to get significant benefits today. Another 30% have seen the light and are scrambling to make open innovation work and provide results that are worth the bother. I call them contenders.

The other 60% are pretenders—companies that don’t really know what open innovation is and why or how it could be relevant for them.

Looking for growth ideas? See what the firms in this open innovators stock index are doing right.

Alaskan habitat mapped for polar bears.

A vast swath of icy sea, barrier islands and coastal land on Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope will be granted special protection because of its importance to the threatened polar bear, under a proposal released this week by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The agency proposes that 518,000 sq km of coastline and shallow Arctic Ocean waters be designated as critical habitat, a status of heightened protection afforded under the Endangered Species Act.

The area, which would be the largest ever designated for an Endangered Species Act-listed population, overlaps the territory with the largest existing oil fields in the United States where companies operate and plan to explore more.

The Bush administration last year declared polar bears “threatened,” or likely to become endangered. The May 2008 order by then-Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne cited the bear’s need for sea ice, the dramatic loss of such ice in recent decades due to global warming and computer models that suggest sea ice is likely to recede further.

Environmental groups hailed the habitat announcement, but noted that it came in the same week that the Interior Department approved a plan by a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell to drill exploratory wells on two leases in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s north coast.

Tom Strickland, an assistant Interior secretary , said that the critical-habitat designation should not hinder further development if operations are responsible and careful.

Oil companies are already subject to rules for protecting polar bears imposed by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and under other aspects of the Endangered Species Act.

Included in the designation are areas where polar bears establish their dens, give birth and nurse their cubs and forage for food, officials said. Over 90 percent of the habitat is water that is often covered by sea ice.

Environmentalists happy

The plan is subject to a 60-day public review before it becomes final.

“The maps all (reflect) what scientists say polar bear critical habitat in the US should be,” said Brendan Cummings, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups that sued to gain protections for polar bears. But Cummings and other environmentalists said the Department of Interior must stop the spread of oil development in new Arctic territory to make the critical-habitat designation meaningful.

State promises fight

Alaska state officials, however, are fighting the listing itself and the regulations it entails.

“Some are attempting to use the Endangered Species Act as a way to shut down resource development. I’m not going to let that happen on my watch,” Governor Sean Parnell told a news conference, echoing the stance of his predecessor, Sarah Palin.

The state has sued to overturn the listing, arguing that polar bear populations are robust and unaffected by sea-ice changes.

China Daily

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is investigating whether a former secretary of the interior, Gale A. Norton, violated the law by granting valuable leases to Royal Dutch Shell around the time she was considering going to work for the company after she left office, officials said Thursday.

The officials said investigators had recently turned up information suggesting that Ms. Norton had had discussions while in office with Royal Dutch Shell about future career opportunities. In early 2006, Ms. Norton’s department awarded three tracts in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary for shale exploration. In December 2006, she joined Shell as the company’s general counsel in the United States for unconventional oils, a company spokeswoman said.

Original DVD cover

Ms. Norton, 55, was President George W. Bush’s first interior secretary. In that job, she was an ally of Vice President Dick Cheney in the administration’s general approach of opening up more federal lands for energy exploration.

The possibility that Ms. Norton violated the law by seeking employment with a company while she was a federal official in a position to benefit the company stemmed from an investigation of many months by the Interior Department’s inspector general.

…snip…

For more than a year, Interior Department investigators have been looking into Ms. Norton’s dealings with Shell. They interviewed dozens of department officials about the program to lease tracts for shale exploration.

The officials from the office of inspector general recently turned over their findings to the Justice Department.

An artist's impression of Shell's LNG processing ship

Royal Dutch Shell PLC has unveiled plans to build the world’s biggest ship – a 480m vessel that will house world’s first operational floating liquefied natural gas platform.

At a estimated cost of US$5 billion the 75 meter  wide ship will Displace 600,000 tonnes, carry 50,000 tonnes of equipment, and withstand “one in 10,000-year” tropical cyclones, the company stated.

Gas for the vessel will come from the Browse Basin’s Prelude field, which is thought to contain up to three trillion cubic feet of gas, and the Concerto field, about 16km away. Floating LNG is increasingly being considered as a way to commercialize stranded gas resources too small to support the construction of onshore LNG terminals and their associated pipeline infrastructure.

Shell awarded a contract to a consortium of France’s Technip SA and Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries Co. to build the floating LNG ship and has an option to order nine more over the next 15 years.

Wall Street Journal: Shell Plans US$5B Floating LNG Off W Australia

Qatar Airways A380

Qatar Airways says it has made history by operating the world’s first commercial flight using synthetic kerosene made from natural gas. The fuel is a mixture of synthetic gas-to-liquids, or GTL, kerosene and conventional oil-based kerosene fuel developed by Royal Dutch Shell and  was used aboard an Airbus A340-600 departing London Gatwick and arriving at the Qatari capital Doha on Monday evening.

Qatar has some of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas and hopes to become the top producer of liquid kerosene made from natural gas once commercial production begins in 2012.

Qatar Airways’ Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said in the statement;

“This milestone flight is the first step in making this alternative fuel available to airlines.”

The fuel does have its skeptics in the industry but others are simply calling it a step in the right direction. Regardless, it once again indicates the world’s focus on natural gas as a low carbon alternative to oil based fuels.

New York Times: Qatar Flies Natural-Gas-Fueled Plane

Gale A. Norton, Interior Secretary for George “Worst President in American History” Bush (2001 to 2006), has been indicted on charges that she “illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC.”