Why you should read Global Energy Transformation
In Global Energy Transformation I take a look at energy issues from a management and business perspective. This hasn’t, to my knowledge, been done before, and I was surprised by how many novel ideas I could craft, only by changing the perspective. Energy systems transformation is a major challenge for all of us. No previous [...]
New book on soft aspects of leadership and change
I’m currently working on a book that emphasizes the softer aspects on leadership and change. It will bring up issues related to the current specialization in society, the need for strong leaders with a global, long-term, perspective and the need of stories and strong images of our collective future. This book will be optimistic, blaze [...]
Truths and myths about Peak Oil
There are many misunderstandings regarding when the global peak in oil production will occur. When I discuss Peak Oil with people from different walks of life they seem to have highly differing ideas about it. I would like to present a few myths and briefly explain why each is a myth. Myth #1: Global Oil [...]
Feelings make change possible
People don’t change on a large scale because experts have identified the need in research projects. People change when they feel the need to do it. Promoting large scale change is more an issue of making people feel good about changing, and by providing clear directions on the exact contents of the change. The past [...]
Lomborg in the Washington Post
The Danish statistician Björn Lomborg has an op-ed in today’s issue of The Washington Post. Lomborg’s best-selling book of 2001, “The Skeptical Environmentalist” has many things in common with “Global Energy Transformation”. When it was published, Lomborg had the advantage, of arguing against the very powerful environmental lobby, which he does in the article as [...]
Easy to be green
In his New York Times column of today, Professor Krugman debates the polarization of the climate change debate, in which many participants in the debate still argue that the problem does not exist. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/opinion/25krugman.html He poses the rhetorical question: “Have you been impressed by the civility of the discussion and the intellectual honesty of reform [...]
Energy Savings in Buildings
There is a huge untapped opportunity to save energy on lighting and heating in buildings, and this can largely be financed through market based activities. One electrical installations company in southern Sweden purchased a small office building, that cost 84.000 Kronor (12,000 USD) per year for lighting and heating. By changing lighting installations and installing [...]
Learning from best practices
The debate about energy efficiency and sustainability is full of technical issues and high flown ideas. Many of these will be important, but they need to become included in a plan for how we approach change in practice. Large companies often have decades of experience from change management in their own organizations and from change [...]
Venture Capitalists and Business Managers Unite!
I have spotted a trend among venture capitalists and business managers. During the course of a few weeks several seem to have adopted the idea that nations need to develop strategies for innovation and technology development. I have previously mentioned the article by CEO of General Electric, Jeff Immelt, and venture capitalist John Doerr in [...]
"We are well prepared!"
At the beginning of the Second World War, the Swedish Prime Minister, Per-Albin Hansson, re-assuringly stated that “Sweden is well prepared for a war”. When the forces of nazi Germany took Denmark, the Swedish army, at night, drove jeeps with heavy logs along the coastal road which the Germans could view from Denmark. The jeeps [...]
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Mats Visits GWU June 21
