Chairman’s Blog, Mar/Apr 2021

A Cautious Spring…

As vaccines find their way into the arms of more and more people, some regions of the world are beginning to experience relief from the pandemic’s deadly grip.  But other regions are not as fortunate, with India and Brazil driving global daily case rates to new record highs – and a reminder that we cannot forego caution just yet.  Please join me in taking a moment to remember the 3,195,085 souls lost to the pandemic as of this writing.

April 22nd marked the 51st annual Earth Day, and another reminder that COVID-19 is not the only threat to humanity.  2021 has seen a renewed focus on the Climate Crisis and an acceleration in carbon reduction technologies.  For a summary, see the item from USAFacts on the State of the Earth.

Energy distribution as we have known it for the past century is undergoing a tectonic shift in technology – migrating from the strictly one-way pipe of producer to consumer.  The new “grid” will be a fluid mechanism for moving energy among endpoints that are both producer and consumer to share excess capacity or draw on available stored energy when demand exceeds production. See the items on the T77 Project in Bangkok Thailand and The Distributed Grid Explained from Forbes for a peek into this future.

Much like the industrial revolution has been the main economic driver for the past century, the new energy revolution is driving economic change.  See the items on Economic Conditions Outlook from McKinsey and Unlocking the Circular Economy from with World Resources Institute.

And while carbon emissions and energy have dominated the headlines, we are seeing growing concerns about water scarcity.  See the opinion item about Planning for a World with Less Water from CNN.

As a reminder from past newsletters, IFMA has amassed a collection of COVID-related materials in their Coronavirus Preparedness Resource Center.  The IFMA Foundation released an authoritative Pandemic Manual.  And Lear Corporation produced a Safe Work Playbook: 2nd Edition.  All are freely available for download.

As always, we hope you find the newsletter enlightening…
Dean Stanberry