Leadership and Management in Engineering

The Cape Wind Project is proposed to be America’s first offshore wind farm. It is envisioned to be located on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound, miles from the nearest shore, where 130 wind turbines will harness the wind to produce up to 420 megawatts of energy. Under average wind conditions, the Cape Wind Project could provide up to three quarters of the electricity needs of Cape Cod and the Islands in the southern coast of Massachusetts. Although from the point of view of energy production, it taps into a clean, renewable, and environmentally advantageous source, it is not a project without controversy. The project has experienced opposition from those concerned with other factors, such as visual impacts, potential impacts to boating, bird flight patterns, and more. But there is also significant support from environmental and labor groups, and the project has received favorable reviews by permitting agencies. This paper presents the project within the context of the company that is developing the project, its founder’s vision, and the technical, environmental legal, public relations, and political issues encountered in its history from 2000 to 2008. The problems of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions and the European experience with wind power are also recognized in context. While the need for and usage of electric power energy grows annually, this project can be seen as a business case study of the trade-offs the United States must face for its energy future.

Our planet is warming because of human activities affecting the environment. Climate change is caused by a number of things, and it will take an enormous amount of concerted effort to fix it. It involves thinkers, politicians, professionals, and the public. Architects and engineers will have a major role to play in resolving the associated problems. This paper explores various architectural and building technologies that are employed to achieve a low-energy built environment. The paper concludes that designers of the next generation of buildings, whether residential, commercial, or institutional, should aim for “zero energy” buildings in which there will be no need to draw energy from a region’s power grid. In this approach, climate and environment are used to advantage rather than being treated as adversaries and buildings become sources of energy, like batteries. A few illustrative buildings are discussed that represent the new generation of sustainable or green buildings.

Local actions within the United States to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the transportation sector are becoming increasingly prevalent given that no definitive guidance has been provided by federal agencies in Washington, D.C. State climate change action plans not only have the potential to mitigate impacts of global warming, they also can save the economy billions of dollars and could greatly impact how governments and agencies plan transportation projects in the future. This article focuses on action plans in the Western states, examining where they have anticipated receiving the most GHG reductions while also highlighting some of the more cost effective GHG reducing strategies. The purpose is to highlight some of those states that have been in the lead, and to provide guidance to other states that are in the process of, or starting to embark on the process of creating state climate action plans. There is a strategic role to be played by transportation planners and engineers to assist states and other government agencies in developing recommendations for climate change action plans. Future actions may include interstate and regionalization of the plans and integration of surface transportation modes with aviation.

The New York metropolitan region will inevitably be exposed to more severe coastal flooding as sea level rises and storms may become more frequent and severe with global warming. The inner city can be protected by placing three storm surge barriers at choke points in the waterways surrounding the city. This has been demonstrated with a coupled meteorological-hydrodynamic mathematical model of the Eastern seaboard. However, New York City is presently planning to be flooded, not to prevent being flooded. If we are not to repeat the process that failed New Orleans, engineering leadership is needed now to take the next step of designing the barriers and establishing their technical feasibility.

Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. Climatologists seem to agree that global warming means the earth will, on average, get wetter. But in the Rocky Mountains, there has been a steady decrease in mountain snowpack—the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American Southwest with most of its water. There has been less snow, earlier spring melts, and warmer nights. In 2007, Los Angeles went 150 days without a measurable rainfall. This article documents some of the concerns of water managers in the Southwest, focusing on Colorado and Nevada, the reuse of graywater, and measures that are being taken in view of the water rights of the Colorado River. The concept of a “water footprint” similar to that of the “carbon footprint” and the relationship between energy, carbon greenhouse gas emissions, and water is described. There are challenges yet to be addressed for reengineering the water supply and there is the need to rethink the use of water in the face of land use patterns and human population growth.EDITOR’S PREFACE: This article was originally published in the October 21, 2007, issue of The New York Times Magazine. It has been edited and adapted to conclude with a section focusing on the nationwide challenge for the engineering profession. This article is reprinted with permission from The New York Times.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are widely acknowledged to be responsible for much of the global warming in the past century. Since the burning of fossil-based fuels is an important source of GHGs, the policies on GHG mitigation encourage the replacement of fossil-based energy with biomass energy. This policy would lead to a large-scale conversion of land to production of crops for biomass energy. The impacts of GHG mitigation policies were analyzed for five types of agricultural land—cropland, managed forestry, pasture, unmanaged forestry, and unmanaged grassland—in terms of their carbon storage capacities and the effects of conversion of the land to use for biomass fuel cropland. The research indicates that biomass energy production would lead to a reduction of the biological carbon-storage capacities of these land types. Although there would still be a net benefit in reducing atmospheric GHG emissions, such benefits would be partly counteracted by the land-use conversion. Thus, this paper provides an example of the need for further study to discern all the implications of proposed GHG mitigation policies and technologies and the degrees to which they are likely to enhance our future.

One of the most debated topics today is global climate change, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are widely acknowledged to be responsible for much of the global temperature increases observed in the past century. Aiming at mitigating GHG emissions, most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty ratifying the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with the objective of reducing GHG emissions.

This paper presents a counterpoint to the claim that ${\mathrm{CO}}_2$ and other “greenhouse gases” are the cause of warming trends in the global climate. The author presents a summary of the evidence that there are historical, geological, and biological records, as well as other indicators of a natural longer-term cycle in global temperature trends. Despite this, the claim that the effects of global warming are entirely benign is not made; rather, there are aspects of this paper that should inform decisions regarding proposed technological and engineering solution. In particular, the implications for engineering leadership is the concept of choosing adaptive “no-regrets” technologies applied to address the inevitable trends of global climate change. Several of the measures described in this paper are the same as those proposed on the basis of global warming caused by emissions of greenhouse gases. These include reducing dependence on fossil fuels, greater efficiency and transportation, energy-efficient buildings, and planning for changes in rainfall and drought patterns affecting the availability of water supply.