Reality of energy - now that we have some experience

I am educated as a Nuclear Engineer who barely worked in the industry.  Like many, I left the nuclear industry twenty two years ago.

It was clear back then that the focus on nuclear in the US was non-existent, new plant costs were skyrocketing, with regulatory burden on maintaining and restarting existing ones, becoming cost prohibitive.  There has not been much future in nuclear industry in the US.  Even Mr. Bill Gates is developing the next generation nuclear options with Korea, versus in the US for the above reasons.  Even Georgia Institute of Technology closed its Nuclear Engineering program back in early 1990s, I think I may have been the last graduate!

Here is an article that takes the numbers on various alternate and existing energy sources, and showcases the work of Dr. Paul Joskow of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dr. Charles Frank of Brookings Institute.  The conclusions are interesting.

"If all the costs and benefits are totted up using Mr Frank’s calculation, solar power is by far the most expensive way of reducing carbon emissions. It costs $189,000 to replace 1MW per year of power from coal. Wind is the next most expensive. Hydropower provides a modest net benefit. But the most cost-effective zero-emission technology is nuclear power. The pattern is similar if 1MW of gas-fired capacity is displaced instead of coal. And all this assumes a carbon price of $50 a tonne. Using actual carbon prices (below $10 in Europe) makes solar and wind look even worse. The carbon price would have to rise to $185 a tonne before solar power shows a net benefit."

Read the complete article here.

I would be remiss in not mentioning a few rebuttals.  Unfortunately, I have not found convincing numbers from any that covers multitude of energy sources, hence, not linking them.

Yet one thing has remained constant in all the rebuttals, they have missed the point; that Schumpeter's Creatively Destroying technologies require value realization in a breakthrough fashion; that the investments in alternate energies must continue for them to be viable one day; and that declaring one way over another as the perfect way has always been a fallacy and detrimental to innovation.

TIECON - Energy: Oil & Gas - Entrepreneurial Opportunity Panel

As the Executive Director of Baker Hughes's Palo Alto Innovation Center, I chaired and my company sponsored the first ever Energy: Oil and Gas conference track at TIECON 2014, see here.

A panel discussion on entrepreneurial opportunities in oil and gas sector with Dr. Mario Ruscev, CTO - Baker Hughes; Mr Jim Sledzik, Partner and President, Energy Ventures; and Mr. Art Schroeder, CEO, Energy Valley, Inc. Enjoy!

TIECON - Energy: Oil & Gas - Ram Shenoy

As the Executive Director of Baker Hughes's Palo Alto Innovation Center, I chaired and my company sponsored the first ever Energy: Oil & Gas conference track at TIECON 2014, see here.

Dr. Ram Shenoy, CTO - ConocoPhillips keynote below is a history of the significantly positive impact oil and gas sector has had on the world, and how it is continuing to do so.  Enjoy!

Amazon

Amazon - the name does imply immensity and ability to consume all…!

Hachette, a privately held and significant book publisher, is negotiating pricing terms with Amazon on e-books.

"“In a sense, Michael Pietsch is like ‘Horatius at the Bridge,’ ” says the literary agent and former Amazon executive Laurence J. Kirshbaum, referring to the soldier of legend who single-handedly saved ancient Rome by fighting off an invading army. “He is carrying the rest of the industry on his back.”"

Amazon has been one exceptional example of Schumpeter's Creative Destruction, in the past two decades, let's see what else is in store for the retail world in general.

Read details at NY Times here.

China's energy independence

From Bloomberg:

"China’s effort to catch up with the U.S. in developing shale gas and become more energy independent is coming at a big cost: It’s spending four times as much developing some fields, according to a new report."

Curious about how much of an opportunity this is for the US oil and gas service providers?

Intangible assets

I have been leading efforts on data analytics or the generic term big data, though I focus on the analytics part.  Tobin's Q has been rather an interesting aspect of analyzing the value of information for a company.  Manufacturing companies are valued against their hard assets, but then what about the global giants of the information age, which have come to grow bigger?

A good blog by Mr. Doug Laney, VP Research, Gartner on what is Tobin's Q and how it is impacting the valuations of the companies today.

"… a study by intellectual capital research firm, Ocean Tomo, shows that the portion of corporate market value attributable to intangibles has grown from 17% in 1975 to a whopping 81% in 2010."

Now, if there is any CEO out there still with their head buried in deep productivity gains through automation, and process improvement, they can see the sunset of their companies quickly coming.  The American automakers are the ideal examples.

The question is how do these companies gather data, turn it into information, yet information is not enough.  It is the creation of knowledge from information that leads to extraction of value.  The world is filing up with a plethora of massive data collectors though with minimal idea of how to transition from data to information to knowledge.  Opportunity remains high for analytics providers.

Read the complete blog here at Gartner.

Multilingualism and the business world

Hiring individuals who know more than one language for a multinational is some what a necessity these days.  But does it imply that there is higher value in learning a second or third langauge.

The Economist analyzes the question here, in "Johnson: What is a foreign language worth?"  It seems like there are premiums paid for different second languages.

On monopolies and capitalism

Gigaom writes on "Giants behaving badly: Google, Facebook and Amazon show us the downside of monopolies and black-box algorithms."  Read the complete article here.

Nothing new that we have not seen in capitalism before, though with an interesting 21st century spin.  Though the analysis of Facebook is interesting:

"You can stop using Facebook, but that’s not going to stop a billion or so other people from using it, and therefore it’s not going to stop them clicking on what Facebook decides is newsworthy or not newsworthy, and driving traffic to those sites, and thereby helping to determine whether they live or die. And unlike Google or Amazon, there isn’t even much of a case for antitrust, because it’s not clear what market Facebook dominates."

Brain trust at Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter,and IBM

Excellent infographic at Wired showing where the hiring is done at most of the San Francisco Bay Area companies.  Perhaps I can look at some of those schools myself.

Interesting how significantly IBM leverages Indian universities, while most companies, other than Google maintain geographically close ties.

Click the image to enlarge.

Manage up?

Sage advice from the folks at Forbes here "My advice on managing up - don't".  I worked with a few executives who were brilliant at it at couple of the Fortune 100, with success to boot.

"...the best way to be looked upon favorably by those you report to is not through various charades and other forms of skulduggery, but by simply doing your job and serving them well. When the emphasis of your efforts shifts away from others and to yourself you have placed yourself on a very slippery slope. If you want to move up in the organization let it be the quality of your work that catapults you upward, not your skill in manipulation. If your timetable for career acceleration isn’t matching up with that of your employer, surface your concerns with them in a straight-forward fashion, don’t revert to amateurish corporate hi-jinks."

The upwards manager does not realize that their organization thinks poorly of them or outright does not respect them, if they do not share and bring the results down.  In the end, they are short timers.

Replies to the article are particularly interesting.  Enjoy!

Open data

Celebration of open data, some interesting insights, still a ways to go.  Read the article at The Economist here.  Details from McKinsey, AidData, Open Government Foundation, Open Data Institute, and others.

Worldwide - Women's impact on economics, education, health, and politics

Delightful info-graphic from The Economist on women's impact on the various aspects of various countries around the world.  Read details here.