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URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: NATURAL GAS & ELECTRIC UTILITIES (90%); ELECTRIC POWER PLANTS (90%); WIND ENERGY (89%); UTILITIES INDUSTRY (89%); RENEWABLE ENERGY (89%); POWER PLANTS (89%); WIND POWER PLANTS (89%); SOLAR ENERGY (90%); ELECTRIC POWER INDUSTRY (88%); ENERGY & UTILITY CONSTRUCTION (77%); ELECTRICITY TRANSMISSION & DISTRIBUTION (77%); CONSTRUCTION (76%); COAL FIRED PLANTS (76%); FOSSIL FUEL POWER PLANTS (76%); NUCLEAR ENERGY (72%) Electric Light and Power; Solar Energy; Turbines; Wind; Special Sections COMPANY: ARIZONA PUBLIC SERVICE CO (56%) PERSON: Matthew L Wald GEOGRAPHIC: TUCSON, AZ, USA (79%); BOSTON, MA, USA (79%) ARIZONA, USA (94%); MASSACHUSETTS, USA (79%); NEVADA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (94%) LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: Photos: LINES IN THE SAND -- A solar-power installation in the Arizona desert uses 100,000 square feet of mirrors, a change from the days when renewable-energy sources were considered most appropriate on a small scale. (Photo by Chris Richards for The New York Times)(pg. H1) REFLECTIONS -- Arizona Public Service's solar plant produces one megawatt of power, enough to run a shopping center. The utility is considering a much larger solar project. (Photo by Chris Richards for The New York Times) GATHERING THE GUST -- Hull 2, the third wind turbine in Hull, Mass. The town may build four more, even larger. (Photo by C. J. Gunther for The New York Times) FUEL FROM THE DEEP -- Cathy Clifton, a biology technician, monitoring algae at an Arizona Public Service plant. The algae are fed carbon dioxide and used to make biodiesel. (Photo by Chris Richards for The New York Times) GRAND IDEAS -- Roger Little, chief executive of the Spire Corporation, which makes solar cells, says there are economic benefits to using bigger solar panels. (Photo by C. J. Gunther for The New York Times)(pg. H8)
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1054 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Vermont Wants You To Fill Its Open Spaces BYLINE: By KATIE ZEZIMA SECTION: Section H; Column 1; The Business of Green; HOMEGROWN INDUSTRY; Pg. 7 LENGTH: 1125 words DATELINE: NORTH FERRISBURG, Vt. DAVE MELICHAR always knew he wanted to work in wind power, but Mr. Melichar, a native of Carmel, N.Y. , was unsure where he would settle after college. That changed 10 years ago, when he visited friends in Burlington, Vt., and fell in love with the city and its environmentalist culture. Now Mr. Melichar, 33, is part owner of Windstream, a wind-power company in this town 20 miles south of Burlington. He is also a rarity whose numbers state officials want to increase: an environmental engineer from outside Vermont who came here and put down roots. State officials have begun a program to bring environmental engineering firms to the state and help those already here to expand. The goal, Gov. Jim Douglas and others said, is to transform Vermont into a state where growth is driven by green businesses, the way Silicon Valley is sustained by Internet and technology companies. ''We wanted to find a niche, an economic sector in which Vermont can excel,'' Mr. Douglas, a Republican, said in an interview in his Montpelier office. ''Environmental engineering and sustainable technology is that niche. Vermont has a strong environmental ethic. We have clean air, no billboards.'' While other states and cities, including New York and Chicago, are trying to attract green businesses with economic incentives like tax breaks, Vermont is banking on a mix of benefits that the state hopes will change its business profile, which was once dominated by the insurance industry. Vermont ranks 46th in the nation for its tax climate for business, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group. State officials said that across-the-board tax breaks were not being considered, and that they preferred a tailored approach, offering cash incentives tied to increasing employment and capital investments. The state also plans to adapt perks to individual businesses. For example, if water rates are a sticking point, the state will lower them. It is focusing on businesses with 20 to 100 employees for now. What makes Vermont's pitch unusual is that officials view the state itself as a lure for moving a company here or enlarging an existing one. Officials are trying to use the clean air, open space and connection to the earth, which brought early environmentalists here in the 1970s, to attract businesses. ''The values of Vermonters are so environmentally conscious, and globally this is what we're known for,'' said Frank Cioffi, the president of the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, an economic development group. ''It's a natural fit.'' The state program, which Lt. Gov. Brian E. Dubie started in 2004 and Mr. Douglas has made the centerpiece of his administration, is also intended to cultivate homegrown brainpower in Vermont, which has been losing young people at a rapid clip. The state has the lowest birthrate in the nation, and the number of 20- to 34-year-olds has shrunk by 19 percent since 1990. To help stem the tide, Mr. Douglas is proposing opening new math, science and technology high schools across the state and offering scholarships to students who stay in Vermont for college. Officials are also considering the feasibility of providing cellular and broadband access statewide by 2010. The state is looking for help from the University of Vermont, where the Center for Emerging Technologies has been an incubator for environmental companies. ''There really wasn't a regional economy,'' said Daniel Mark Fogel, the university president, ''and the more we asked, the more we were confident that we really wanted to put a stake in the ground as a leader in environmental and sustainable technology.'' While that stake has been planted, it is not fixed. Just under 1,000 people are employed in the 69 engineering firms that work in environmental fields statewide, with 27 of them dealing exclusively with alternative energy, according to the state office of business and economic development. Two large environmental engineering companies opened offices in Vermont last year: the URS Corporation, which is based in San Francisco, and Leggette, Brashears & Graham of Shelton, Conn. The Vermont Environmental Consortium, a nonprofit association of businesses, is growing. Some of the state's dairy farmers have also been turning into alternative energy entrepreneurs, harnessing the methane gas from cow manure and selling it as clean energy. Vermonters call it ''cow power,'' and think it can help the farmers, who are struggling with low prices. Still, the state has been losing jobs, and there are tangential costs to doing business in Vermont. Northern Power Systems, an environmental engineering firm founded here in 1974, was recently merged with Proton Energy Systems; both were subsidiaries of the Distributed Energy Systems Corporation of Wallingford, Conn., which announced in January that it was cutting 60 jobs. Most of those were in Vermont, said Rob Smart, the director of marketing for Northern Power. The Bowles Corporation, which makes equipment to clean up industrial oil spills, has operated here since 1983, expanding from two employees to 16. Its president, David Bowles, has become involved in helping the state's environmental companies market their products. But he said there were problems in how the state does business, and he, too, felt hemmed in. He also said Vermont suffered because of tourists and others who opposed development. ''It's not easy, but I'm here,'' he said. ''The tax burden is high, and the costs of health insurance have just risen and risen. And there's a sort of philosophical disconnect between people who love this view of Vermont as an unspoiled place where business doesn't mix. But if we don't have jobs, this place doesn't work.'' Joel Makower, the executive editor of GreenBiz.com, said that Vermont was jumping on the bandwagon, trying to capitalize on a rapidly growing industry. ''You can certainly see that there's a bubble potential, but at the same time you're talking about a trillion-dollar market for clean energy and alternative transportation,'' he said. Mr. Makower said the state needed to build on its academic and financial resources and tap its entrepreneurs for help. While Northern Power has gone through setbacks, he said, it was well regarded and has had ample investment. ''I see them as a good anchor company, showing what can be done in the Green Mountains,'' he said. Mr. Cioffi, of the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, and others involved in the effort to make Vermont a center for green business say they are confident that their vision will take shape. ''This is orchard planting,'' Mr. Cioffi said. ''It's not an annual garden. We're nurturing seedlings and making sure they're healthy.''
PEDALING -- Vermont wants to attract more ''green'' engineers like Dave Melichar, on bike, but David Bowles, right, says there are problems doing business there. (Photographs by Paul O. Boisvert for The New York Times) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1055 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final 'Corporate Hippies' Seek Their Bliss In a New Environmental Economy BYLINE: By FELICITY BARRINGER SECTION: Section H; Column 1; The Business of Green; Pg. 2 LENGTH: 1096 words CHANGE once came slowly to the job market for people seeking careers focused on the environment. No more. There were signs as early as the 1980s, when the Rainforest Alliance began working with businesses to create a program for identifying environmentally sound wood products: more graduates were taking jobs outside traditional environmental arenas like engineering, waste management, policy development, law and resource protection. The shift gathered steam in the 1990s, when companies like Starbucks and Nike started to integrate such concerns into everyday business practices. Early this decade, Daniel C. Esty, a professor of environmental law and policy at Yale University, noticed changes in the goals of younger students and the kinds of jobs students took when they left the Yale School of Forestry and the Environment. Law and science, which were traditional environmental specialties, still attracted many students; but a newer one, corporate environmental management, was growing. The latest ones -- finance, venture investment, entrepreneurialism -- barely registered. ''I am overwhelmed by how this has evolved,'' Dr. Esty said recently. Students still gravitate toward nongovernmental organizations, advocacy groups and government, but a large plurality of the current generation interested in environmental work are looking elsewhere, particularly to financial firms, small businesses and even corporations. They seek employment there because, among other things, they think that is where they can have the greatest impact. ''It's extraordinary how many students see themselves as going into business as a place to have leverage on the issues,'' Dr. Esty said. Take Samantha Unger, 27, a graduate of Barnard College and the school of engineering at Columbia University. She started with a summer job in a California program, trading state-issued pollution-emission credits. Now she trades credits for greenhouse gas emissions at Evolution Markets, a company in White Plains. ''I would call myself a corporate hippie,'' she said. ''I'm in the business of definitely caring for and supporting environmental growth and change for the better, but I also believe in the growth of business. And from the beginning I have believed there should be a cost associated with pollution.'' Ms. Unger and her colleague Jason Patrick, 34, are examples of what Charles F. Mason, a professor of economics at the University of Wyoming, describes as a new driving force. ''The person who knows how to play the financial markets, the middleman looking for someone who has something to sell and can anticipate who will buy it,'' he said -- they will make a real difference. None of the academics, employers or young professionals would call these boom times for environmental employment; plenty of graduates with degrees in environmental science must work at finding a job. But all say they are witnessing both an upward trend in the number of jobs and a change in the definition of environmental work. ''The issues themselves have changed -- climate change is far and away an example of that,'' said Kevin Doyle, the national director of program development for the Environmental Careers Organization, a nonprofit group that places recent graduates in environmental internships at federal agencies, businesses, nonprofit groups and state and local governments. ''Businesses as businesses are becoming actors of environmental sustainability, either because they want to, or they feel they can do good public relations, or because they have to,'' Mr. Doyle said. ''The axis of influence is starting to shift from a more exclusive focus on activists and government. You can work in business because you're an environmentalist.'' Mr. Doyle and others named several paths to environmental work: law, government, nonprofit groups and, increasingly, management and finance, often in alternative energy. Private employers providing environmental jobs include Goldman Sachs, General Electric, Nike, Timberland, engineering consultants and philanthropic foundations. Some workers bounce among the various subgroups, adding skills as they go. Jesse Johnson, 36, graduated from Princeton in 1993 and worked in finance in Hong Kong. He said that he loved the intensity of finance and the intellectual caliber of his co-workers, but missed ''the things that motivated me in college -- the environment, the outdoors.'' He returned to Yale and graduated in 2002 with joint master's degrees in environmental management and business. When he finished, he and a friend started a furniture business, the Q Collection, in Manhattan. ''It took a while to get it up and running,'' Mr. Johnson said of the company, which is not yet profitable. ''It's home furnishings, furniture, textiles, baby furniture. But we add a whole new layer. We are thinking about sustainability.'' Right now, the horizontal expansion of environmental careers is most evident among the 20- and 30-something age groups. They have been trained in what Mr. Doyle called the ''sustainable ecosystems'' mind-set of this generation's environmental policy makers, blending scientific understanding with concerns like economics or social justice. Many switch among environmental jobs -- starting out, say, at a nonprofit, then getting a master's degree and ending up at a business. While Jill Gravender was an undergraduate in economics and taking an ecology class at Arizona State University, she said, ''It became apparent to me that when you're thinking about economics, environmental issues are all considered to be market externalities.'' The two disciplines, she said, ''were talking past one another; I realized I wanted to be that facilitator.'' After college, she got policy jobs with the New America Foundation and the nonprofit California Climate Action Registry, which collects data on various companies' greenhouse gas emissions. She went back to get a master's degree in environmental science and management at the University of California at Santa Barbara and now, at 33, is director of water programs for a small foundation called Environment Now. It is not just industrial concerns that are adding environmental jobs. In 1992, Shelley Billik started as a recycling coordinator at Warner Brothers. Now she is vice president for environmental projects. ''When I started in 1992, it was just me,'' she said. ''Now we have a staff of four in the office and a recycling crew of seven.'' ''The place where the department fits'' has changed as well, she added, becoming part of corporate strategy.
DEALING -- Samantha Unger, 27, trades emissions credits at Evolution Markets. She says her job combines her beliefs in protecting the environment and helping business. (Photo by Michael Nagle for The New York Times) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 1056 of 1258 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final The Value Of Their Values BYLINE: By RORY STEWART. Rory Stewart's latest book is ''The Prince of the Marshes and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq.'' He runs the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Kabul and is a guest columnist this month. SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Pg. 21 LENGTH: 740 words I began my career as a Foreign Service officer in Indonesia. There, journalists, diplomats and aid workers emphasized that local government was ''incompetent, inefficient and corrupt.'' I heard the same when working in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. My colleagues often seemed contemptuous of the nations where they served. They overlooked the cultures' virtues and strengths, which are the keys to rebuilding nations, particularly after insurgency and civil war. Foreign policy experts will tell you that poor states lack the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, free media, a transparent civil service, political participation and a great deal more. Employees of major international agencies commonly complain that Afghans or Iraqis or Kenyans ''can't plan'' or ''can't implement.'' At its worst, this attitude is racist, bullying and ignorant. But there are less sinister explanations. As a diplomat, I was praised for ''realism'' if I sent home critical telegrams. Now, working for a nonprofit, I find that donor proposals encourage us to emphasize the negative aspects of local society. Many of our criticisms reflect our deep assumptions about citizenship, management and the state. Afghans and Iraqis are often genuinely courageous, charming, generous, inventive and honorable. Their social structures have survived centuries of poverty and foreign mischief and decades of war and oppression, and have enabled them to overcome almost unimaginable trauma. But to acknowledge this seems embarrassingly romantic or even patronizing. Yet the only chance of rebuilding a nation like Iraq or Afghanistan in the face of insurgency or civil war is to identify, develop and use some of these traditional values. Many international reformers overexaggerate the power of technical assistance and formal processes. In fact, in these contexts, charisma can be more potent than bureaucracy. Politicians have to demonstrate an intuitive understanding of local power structures and an empathy for the unexpected things people value about themselves. This may be uncomfortable for the international community. A leader who can restore security, reconcile warring parties and shape the aspirations of a people may resemble an Ataturk more than a U.S. president. This is not a call for dictatorship. True progress must be sustained by the unconstrained wishes of the people. These should include, in Afghanistan, people with strong liberal values as much as conservative rural communities. These various desires must be protected from both the contorted control of an authoritarian state and the muffling effect of foreign aid. The international community often attempts to avoid imposing foreign systems. Donors try hard to emphasize grass-roots consultation in designing a political system. But it is much easier for us in theory than in practice to admire and empower an unfamiliar society. Our approach to nation building in Afghanistan has failed to accommodate the splits between Hazara and Pusthu land arrangements, gender attitudes and codes, or their different approaches to literacy, the dignity of the individual or economic progress. We do not embrace the many unexpected ways in which Afghans might overcome trauma, invest, trade and learn. Such diversity should not be imprisoned by the current centralized government, but empowered by a devolved and flexible federal system. Western management jargon is of little help to Afghan entrepreneurs, who use tricks, trust, community and crises in a powerful way. The strong Afghan sense of justice, community and religious belief can support a counternarcotics program, the rule of law, democracy or security. But the real drivers of change are opaque. Ultimately, we must respect countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and trust in their ability to find their own solutions. This does not mean we need to withdraw entirely. A Harvard M.B.A. will be better at building a hydroelectric plant than a local tribal process. Foreign troops can sometimes, as in Bosnia, end a war. Our rigid values, critiques and methodologies can, even in Iraq, set up a central bank and stabilize a currency. But the central problems are national and political. Our invective about state failure and our dissatisfaction have become part of the problem. Real solutions will emerge, often improbably, from local individual virtues, and from the cultures we struggle to describe and tend to ignore. Directory: ~hesterj -> Entrepreneur Entrepreneur -> Byline: By armand limnande section: Section mm; Column 0; T: Men's Fashion Magazine; Pg. 76 Length Download 4.36 Mb. Share with your friends:
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