Morgantown, where Coal is still King!

West Virginia Sustainability Summit
November 12, 2010
Morgantown, WV


The summit, sponsored by the Discover the Real West Virginia Foundation, itself sponsored by Senator Jay Rockefeller, had its ups and its downs like most events of this nature. Overall, it’s interesting to see what other grassroots efforts are going on in similar communities in the region. For as close as Morgantown is to Pittsburgh there seems to be very little cooperation between the two regions on the sustainability front, despite working on a nearly identical set of issues (Joe Bute and myself appeared to be the only people who came in from the Pittsburgh region). This may have something to do with the fierce pride on display, a theme reinforced by nearly every speaker at the podium.

Disappointingly, clean coal and carbon capture & storage (CCS) was another theme, touted by Senator Rockefeller and repeated ad nauseum throughout the day. But if you stop and think about it, it’s similar to what is happening in Pennsylvania with natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, albeit coal has been WV’s life blood for over a century while PA’s obsession is only just beginning. Most of big business and much of government in Pennsylvania is trumpeting shale extraction as the future of the new energy economy and an endless supply of jobs. Only one speaker really questioned the scientific validity of coal’s “cleanliness”, given the environmental and social damage caused by its extraction.

Ups
Mark Berardi – Manufacturing Support Manager for Toyota of WV: It’s great to see that Toyota’s culture, employee empowerment and Kaizen business model has been successful even in communities steeped in history and a conventional way of doing business.

Trey Dunham – Marketing Director for SustainU Clothing: Trey spoke of the contradictions between what universities stand for (education, success, community) and the clothing they emblazon their names on (imported goods, sweatshop labor). SustainU’s clothing lines provide work to experienced but out-of-work textile workers in North Carolina, reduces environmental impacts by making tees out of recycled cotton and PET from soda bottles, and partners with universities to build student pride in their responsible purchasing program.

Eric Landen – President of Landen Consulting: While understated in his presence, I believe that Eric is nothing short of visionary. He truly understands how sustainability can be of benefit to businesses, corporations and governments through a lens that he calls “Sustainability 2.0”. Sustainability 1.0 includes initiatives like energy efficiency, waste reduction, LEED, carbon counting, water savings. He sums this up with the phrase “How do we impact the environment?” The next generation of sustainability initiatives will look at how we depend on the environment to sustain life and business. From the Landen Consulting website is this statement: “we change the language of the sustainability conversation from ‘cost savings and efficiency’ to ‘revenue generation and risk mitigation’ by helping your organization incorporate ecosystem interaction and ecosystem health into your corporate balance sheet and strategic decision-making toolkit”. I believe that big thinkers and doers like Eric Landen are the types of people that will be able to make real change in the world, and are an inspiration to the rest of us with the passion for seeing true sustainability come to fruition. Although it was probably over the heads of most people in attendance, hopefully the attendees absorbed some of it such that it will trigger an epiphany months or years from now. “I get it now!”

Downs
Neil Hawkins – VP of Sustainability for DOW Chemical: After promising that his presentation would be more than an advertisement, he proceeded to give an hour-long infomercial on all of the great work that DOW is doing across the spectrum of industries. Their diversity of businesses is tremendous, as would be expected from a multi-billion dollar international company. Only one point of interest for me: part of their $1.6B annual R&D budget is spent on what is called “Consumerism”. By that they mean product packaging, but the irony is certainly not lost on me that a) their entire marketing budget is truly spent on consumerism, and b) consumerism and conservation are actually opposing forces.

Adam Krason – Principal at ZMM Architects in Charleston, WV: As a result of my five-year tenure in green building consulting, my interest in LEED has essentially flagged entirely. Apart from my disdain for the one-size-fits-all rating system, its architects like Mr. Krason that don’t have a wider understanding of sustainability beyond green building and often LEED in some cases (that is to say that LEED equals green building, but green building does not entirely equal LEED). This shortsightedness leads to a false sense of accomplishment when it comes to buildings, as success in LEED is measured by how many points are received instead of how well the building performs in the environment in which it is located. The architectural profession was in many ways the first to arrive on the sustainability scene with the green building movement, but somehow they haven’t moved very far since. I think we need to re-cast the green building movement as being only one part of the larger sustainability movement. It seems to me that presentations such as this do nothing to help that idea along.

Somewhere in the Middle
Jim Hunt – ED of Sunnyside-Up Campus Neighborhood Revitalization Corp: To explain, Sunnyside is a neighborhood adjacent to WVU’s Morgantown campus that is heavily populated by college students, akin to South Oakland in Pittsburgh. Jim Hunt seemed like a fairly affable and likeable fellow, but really struck me as stereotypical of the old-school, small-town politicians: great energy and connection to the community, but still lacking an understanding of the big picture. He spoke of their efforts in the neighborhood re-painting dumpsters that had been torched in the nearly-weekly dumpster fires, replacing streetlights with LED lights, and securing a ZipCar for the neighborhood. These are all good things, but he didn’t seem to grasp, a) why it’s important as it relates to sustainability, and b) what the outcomes were and why they are important to talk about.