Over an in-house lunch at the office, our R&D team’s Chief Architect spoke at length about biofuels, and how it is going to turn out to be a choice between feeding people or feeding cars – a topic I have blogged on earlier. My colleague and senior, a System Architect, proffered his opinion that biofuels are nothing but a gimmick. I noted that we burn up in fossil fuels the equivalent of 400 years of global plant and animal growth each and every year, so it’s not like biodiesel can help much.
My boss, VP Software Engineering, and the Chief Architect, then talked about the storage and range problems associated with using hydrogen as a fuel (or rather, as an energy carrier, as peakoilers will point out). A fellow colleague chimed in with his observation that there is a hydrogen fueling station at East Coast and how it seemed to have been built just for one particular “million-dollar Mercedes” seen zipping around the area.
I’m not quite sure how the discussion came about though. Perhaps it was the sight of the amount of catered food (KFC and Pizza Hut) on the conference table, and how someone remarked how we shouldn’t waste it as we had apparently ordered a bit more than needed. But it’s interesting to see how awareness of energy issues is making its way into the company. And these folks are alpha geeks – the smartest people in the room, in fact some of the smartest people I have ever worked with. They are probably a couple of notches down on the “doomerosity scale” but that’s fine by me; there are no economists in the room.
Elsewhere, in the parent company, it is also apparent that there is an increasing level of corporate awareness of energy issues. The current edition of the company newsletter has an article on the front page about alternative commuting options such as vanpools, carpools, bus services and even cycling to work. An employee comments enthusiastically about a work-related advantage : “I drive in with eight people who work on the F-22, and it keeps me in touch with what’s happening …”
So, how does your company fare on the energy awareness scale? How about your colleagues, on a personal level? Are you the resident peakoiler in your company or department? Has the corporate HQ shown any awareness or taken any action in this regard?
