
U.S. Job Growth Continues; I Have New Worries
World Oil Demand, Source: IEA The U.S. economy is back on track. The Labor Department released March numbers that included adding 216,000 jobs beating the forecast of 193,000 jobs and reducing the unemployment rate to 8.8% from February’s 8.9% level. We all want greater declines but that doesn’t happen over night. Having shown job growth […]

Let’s Not Boil This Frog
You know the story about boiling a frog. Throw a frog into a pot of boiling water and it jumps out but put the same frog into a pot of cold water and raise the heat slowly and the frog won’t have the wherewithal to save itself. Those are the two most common responses to […]

Friday Green Numbers round-up for Feb 4th 2011
And here is a round-up of this week’s Green numbers… Europe’s Energy Member States of the European Union have agreed on targets aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by cutting energy consumption by 20% and increasing the share of renewables in the energy mix to 20% by 2020. The ‘Europe’s Energy’ project gives users a […]

Transportation is your new challenge
Forget all the CRM prognostications you’ve been reading over the holidays, the only one of significance to your business and to CRM is what you’ll be paying to get in front of customers. Last week a former Shell Oil President, John Hofmeister, gave an interview on CNN Money in which he forecasted $5 per gallon […]

Why DOES a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?
Interesting and very informative piece on farm subsidies. The commentary on Representative Frank Lucas is particularly notable (and depressing). Business-as-usual – including farm business – needs to change in Washington. Amplify’d from pointsandfigures.com Federal crop subsidies make up a large portion of the Department of Agriculture’s budget. Simple economics says that if there is a […]

No, energy is not too cheap!
Is energy too cheap to motivate consumers to change their habits and use less?

IBM Start – positive outcomes from the fabulous Sustainable Energy day
I have already written about how well the IBM Start event started out – well I wanted to dive a little deeper into one of the days in particular – the Smarter Energy for a Sustainable future day. Why? For me, it was by far the best day of the event. IBM Start – Building […]

IBM Summit’s first three days? – a great Start!
I attended the first three days of IBM’s Start summit last week and I’m definitely going back this week for more. The venue (Lancaster House) is a sumptuous mansion in the centre of London whose opulence, defies description! The event kicked off with a day dedicated to discussing Smarter Cities. The speaker list included Martin […]

Symantec’s Sustainability Story: It’s The Power Consumption, Stupid.
I was lucky enough recently to meet Jose Iglesias, the guy spearheading Symantec’s sustainability efforts. I wrote the interview up over on Monkchips, but much of the content belongs here too. I like Symantec’s clear focus on energy. While others are broadening their sustainability story, Symantec is doubling down on managing energy more effectively, with […]

British Gas launch version 2 of their iPhone app – nice but non-inclusive!
British Gas announced recently that they had updated their iPhone app to version 2. The original application, which was downloaded over 100,000 times, helped customers monitor energy use and submit meter readings to avoid estimated bills. In June alone over 18,000 meter readings were submitted using the app. With the new version customers can view […]