A 40 minute presentation about the connection between our buildings and human performance. For most commercial work space, the cost of building represents a small fraction of the cost of the salaries paid to the employees in that building. Getting the most of your workforce is easier if your building is optimized for human performance.  In a typical office space a 2-3% increase in worker productivity is possible.  Over the first 30 years of the building such productivity increase is equal to several times the cost of the entire building.

 

A 45 minute presentation about the current peer reviewed science on climate change.  The presentation includes details about  positive and negative feed backs, role of water vapor as the primary greenhouse gas, why Europe is so worried about climate change, and what history can tell us about what an increase in temperature will mean to the Pacific Northwest.  Also covered is how the State of Oregon is the first and only state to set a flexible standard for carbon emissions for new power plants.

 

This 60 minute presentation covers a wide range of residential topics.  The first part is about residential energy efficiency and how to cut your energy by 30 percent using a simple best practices approach.  The second part is about how homeowners can use renewables to meet a significant fraction of their heating, water heating, and electricity needs.  The last topic covered is about what incentives both state and federal are available for both energy efficiency and renewables.

 

We seem to have an "energy crisis" every 10 or so years.  This 30 minute presentation covers why the next energy crisis (2008 to 2012) will be very difficult to avoid and how energy diversity and distributed energy resources are our best strategy to limit the risk of economic slow down. The presentation focuses on how solar electric power in particular is a key player in the emerging distributed energy world.  The presentation covers what advances have occurred and what the US and the rest of the world are doing (and not doing) to advance this technology.

 

For more than 40 years, the U.S. government made plutonium for its nuclear weapons program at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state.  That process generated enormous amounts of  radioactive and chemically hazardous wastes. Hanford is perhaps the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere.  Its waste poses a long- term threat to the Columbia River, and its contaminated facilities and aging waste storage tanks pose some potential for an accident that could impact Oregon.

Our presentation focuses on the cleanup activities at Hanford and the risks posed by Hanford's wastes.  A massive cleanup effort is currently underway, but will take several decades and many billions of dollars to be successful.

We tailor the presentation to any length and focus to fit your audience