   "I never left my abuser because I didn't have any way to make money to support myself &
my kids...." Many women in the world...
It's time to have hope and keep your head clear to make choices for yourself and your kids.
If you haven't had an education past high school there are some education considerations you'll have to think about.
- What is your passion?
- How much money do you need to live comfortably?
- How much money do you need to put away for your kid's education in the future and your retirement
needs?
- What's the compromise you can make if you can't make enough money with your passion?
- What is available to you in your area as far as educational resources and career resources?
- Will you need to relocate?
Instead of pining away in the domestic violence shelter - it's time to start thinking, using
your common sense, your strengths that have kept you alive this long and your bravery which has brought you to the shelter
to begin with to make some solid decisions!
Being in the shelter you'll be exposed to many resources. Utilize them!
Energy Cuts Growing in Importance at US Companies By
Chris Morrison | February 19th, 2009 @ 11:03 am
No official studies today, but I do have some anecdotal evidence
that energy saving measures, once a non-issue with corporations in the United States, are becoming de rigeur for cost-conscious companies. And in the recession, the number of firms
that qualify as cost-conscious - even cost-obsessed - is growing by the day.
The evidence is Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts,
one of the world’s largest private equity funds, trumpeting that it saved $16.4 million between three companies by making them more “environmentally-friendly”. Of
course, that’s a buzz word, and it certainly didn’t
mean asking employees at the companies, U.S. Foodservice, Primedia and Sealy,
to spend weekends planting trees or flush the toilets less. The money was primarily saved through using less fuel and raw
materials.
KKR and its partner, the Environmental Defense Fund,
will now apply the methods at four more companies. But KKR obviously has a greater interest than other folks in making small
improvements to the bottom line; in a way, that’s its claim to fame. The question is, how many other firms and corporations
are also enacting permanent energy cuts?
It may just be a certain class of companies. Alcoa,
for example, an aluminum company, is bragging about a 36% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 2008. But making aluminum is one of the most energy-intensive
processes in the world, so a companies in that industry should need little motivation to cut its usage. Along the same lines
is the chemical giant DuPont, which used a different metric to talk its efforts up, saying last year that
it had saved 2.7 trillion BTUs of energy.
Separately, some forward-thinking companies are also leading
the effort. In a report by environmentalist group Ceres, IT company IBM got top honors for its climate change initiatives, along with some other tech
firms like Applied Materials and Intel. Apparently, the more brainy the company, the more likely it is to pay attention to
energy and/or the climate (although the geekiest, Apple, got low grades).
But the tide seems to be turning, and more companies are taking
notice; KKR is just one small example. The recession has cut energy demand, for electricity, liquid fuels and other sources.
Could it be that when it’s all over, demand doesn’t rebound to pre-recession levels? If the trend keeps on, it
might not.
source site: click here
Energy Roundup: Green Mobile Technology, Antarctica’s
Carbon-Free Base, and More
By Kirsten Korosec | February
16th, 2009 @ 4:34 pm
Green technology star
of cell phone industry show– Solar panel cell phones, eco-friendly packaging and energy efficient chargers
will be among the latest green technology applications featured this week at Mobile World Congress
in Barcelona, Spain. A number of products have been unveiled at the industry show, which kicked off Monday, including Samsung’s Blue Earth phone — the first solar full-touch screen phone made from recycled
plastic water bottles — and LG’s solar panel technology that can fit into the back cover of a
cell phone. Look for more of these innovations throughout the week, including the winner of Nokia’s
environmentally friendly technology competition. [Source: Mobile Burn, New York Times, PC Magazine]
First carbon-free polar
station opens in Antarctica — Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth station
in Antarctica became the first zero-emission polar research station in the world this week, adding fuel to the argument
that alternative energy is viable even in the coldest regions. The station will house 20 scientists researching climate change
and will be powered by solar panels and wind turbines, which are expected to provide 230 volts of electricity for the station’s
heating, computers, lights and scientific instruments. [Source: Cleantech]
Obama to sign stimulus
bill in “new energy economy” state – President Obama will
sign the $787 billion economic stimulus bill Tuesday in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, a partially solar-powered
venue picked for its focus on renewable energy. Gov. Bill Ritter called it
the perfect spot to sign the bill, which gives Colorado $130 million for clean energy and weatherization projects,
and touted the state’s aggressive investment in “new energy economy” initiatives such as wind and solar
as an effective way to create jobs. [Source: Rocky Mountain News]
Exxon adds more than
it produced in 2008 — Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest
oil company based on market value, added more proven oil reserves than it produced last year, a figure used by industry analysts to determine
if a company is growing. This is the 15th-straight year Exxon’s reserve additions outpaced its production. The
oil and gas company added 1.5 billion oil-equivalent barrels of reserves in 2008, enough to sustain productions levels for
15.3 years. [Source: Boston Globe, Reuters]
Clean energy focus of
China, U.S. talks — U.S. and Chinese government and business leaders
converged this week in Seattle to talk about ways to cooperate on clean energy. The 30-member Chinese delegation met with
semiconductor-equipment maker Applied Materials, Tesla Motors and other companies
in Silicon Valley before arriving in Seattle. Talks between the world’s two biggest energy consumers and greenhouse-gas
producers are taking place the same week U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
travels to China and other Asian countries to discuss — among other topics — climate change. [Source:
Seattle Times]
Abraxas to announce
earnings at oil and gas symposium — Abraxas Petroleum is expected to announce its 4Q
earnings at a symposium for independent oil and gas producers held this week in Florida. More than 25 companies will discuss
the latest trends in the industry at the Independent Petroleum Association of America
symposium. A number of other oil companies will report 4Q earnings this week including Chesapeake
Energy, Noble Energy and Evolution Petroleum. [Source: IPAA]
Massive carbon burial
experiment launches — Workers sank a drill bit into Illinois soil effectively launching a Department of Energy project that, if successful, will deposit a million metric tons of carbon
dioxide into the ground by 2012. The controversial $84 million project would pipe the carbon dioxide into a geological formation,
called Mt. Simon sandstone, which lies beneath parts of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. [Source: Wired]
source site: click here
Shoppers Still Buy Green Despite Recession
By Katherine Glover | February 18th, 2009 @ 7:27 am
Even as they cut back on spending, consumers still care about
sustainability, a pair of new studies suggest. In an Opinion Research Corporation survey, 4 out of 5 people said they were
still buying green products or services.
Unfortunately for the food companies, customers are also increasingly
skeptical. A BrandSpark International survey found that 75 percent believe companies are “exploiting environmental claims for marketing purposes,” and in the ORC study, only 1 in 10 “blindly” trusted green claims on product labels.
Furthermore, the cacophony of competing green claims can get
as overwhelming as the various nutrition labeling schemes. But there is one thing that the studies found trigger automatic
skepticism: packaging.
If a product claims to be environmentally-friendly but it’s
individually packed in styrofoam that’s in turn wrapped in cellophane before being stuffed in an oversized box and then wrapped in plastic a second time, that’s going to
be a hard sell. In the ORC survey, 60 percent said they look for minimal packaging, and in the BrankSpark study, 78 percent
of the 50,000 surveyed said companies had a long way to go in terms of reducing packaging.
Packaging is already on the radar for a lot of companies. McDonald’s just changed its
packaging to make it, among other things, more sustainable. Kellogg
is working on designing a more efficient cereal box. And packaging and water use were both on the list of nine sustainability goals released by Heinz.
Coca-Cola won an environmental award from the World Environment Center because of sustainable packaging
and efficient water use — water being potentially the next big thing as environmentalists start talking about “water footprints” in addition to carbon footprints And Coca-Cola is also
funding a project at Michigan State University to look at better forms of packaging.
But companies, like customers, are kind of on their own to figure
out what “green” means and what their priorities should be. The LEED program, for example, gives points to buildings
built with water-efficient toilets, but it doesn’t sufficiently address how efficient industrial processes are themselves.
source site: click here
|
The economy has been so horrible... what
kind of career path are you thinking of embarking on?
Think about some of these options!
Many Solar Companies Won’t Survive the Recession
It’s hard to imagine a solar panel manufacturer having
to use every available inch of their warehouse and production facility, clearing space to stack unsold panels all the way
to the roof. But that’s the picture a new Lux Research report is painting. Demand for solar panels is expected to fall
this year, leaving the industry gasping.
The scenario is difficult to believe — demand for
solar power looked like it was on an unstoppable growth trajectory even when the recession first began last year. But now
even manufacturers lucky enough keep getting funding for their factories are getting hurt, because
the developers who would buy the finished product can’t secure project financing.
According to Lux, the market will start growing again next year. Sales in 2008 were for 5.5 gigawatts of capacity;
the number is expected to only be slightly lower this year, and slightly higher next. But the speedbump is going to cause
some major pain. All but the best-positioned companies will be forced to close, artificially speeding up and harshening the
shakeout some insiders didn’t expect to until after 2010.
Here’s why:
As the oil industry showed last year, small gaps between supply
and demand can cause big price variations. Companies that aren’t already making dirt-cheap products will lose money,
and most of these companies are still far too young to have built up war chests.
The graph also shows where Lux thinks the market will recover,
in 2012. Around the same point, they think the industry will be worth over $60 billion, or twice what it’s worth today.
And if most of the smaller companies and inefficient players get pushed out by then, the pie will have to be divided by a
smaller number of strong companies like First Solar, a thin-film panel maker that nobody thinks will go under.
Incidentally, the tough road ahead for solar companies won’t
end badly for the world. The Lux report has a number of graphs projecting the costs of various technologies going forward,
but the one below for crystalline silicon seemed fairly representative. If the economy recovers, and the cost per watt of
solar panels drops as much as the analysts think it will, solar power will become a lot more attractive to nearly everyone.
source site: click here
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