Too Many Chiefs …

… and the Question about System Relevant Jobs

Managers vs. Executives

Today I had a very emotional discussion about the need for new IT, new processes and all that other stuff the consulting industry keeps telling us, we got to have. Consultants, that have a standing relation inside the aviation company, with constant projects to “improve” and streamline the work.

At what cost?

Having addressed Consulting, Outsourcing, Cloud? COTS or tailormade back in August 2020, we meanwhile discussed over and again the issue of “System Relevant Jobs”. Back in my economics studies, 40 years ago, the general manager of my intern company questioned the increasing “management jobs” by academics, reminding, emphasizing that in the end, it is all about products. Even in whole sale (it was a central logistics warehouse) it’d be a question about benefit for seller and buyer, where the warehouse we worked in distributed the goods to the own satellite stores. He warned, that every intermediary becomes a leech and products becoming more expensive, not cheaper, by adding more and more intermediaries into the pool. His assumption was that 50% management surplus would be viable. And I should mention that he warned about dependencies from “rogue countries”, like China. Cheap but at what cost?

Being very pro globalization in general, he did call it hypocrisy to buy cheap in China, knowing that this is simply based on abuse of work force and stealing of patents and other ideas from other countries – back in the days, China did not much invent themselves, they were known copycats. In Germany meanwhile called “precarious jobs”, that don’t provide decent living, the living standards of workers in China at the time were at best questionable.

System Relevant Jobs

System RelevanceIs your job “system relevant”? If you work in home office, I can tell you the answer is No. If you work in consulting, I can very likely tell you the answer being No. Working in aviation and transport, the answer very likely is No. And if your salary is above average, the answer also very likely is No.

It’s all about leeches. Draining the money out of the really system relevant people, who normally are overworked, but underpaid. Not on the picture are farmers, friends of the family farming, living since I grew up on the brink of bankruptcies over and again. With more and more demands and pay for their products (milk, meat, grain, etc.) being often below the cost of production. Then they get generously state aid, to keep them working on subsistence levels.

The NHS personnel is on strike, the medical situation there in the U.K., also in Germany, being devastating. 24 hour shifts, 3 days “on call” duty?

Logistics drivers, the one delivering all those fancy goods we all buy, paid at minimum wage or just very little above for good feeling? Uber being a gigacorn? Delivery “Heroes”? But the managers in their offices having a “decent salary”? Who’s doing the work and what do we pay them?

U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

There are 17 SDGs. But all statistics show that all of them are actually still deteriorating. And if companies call themselves “sustainable”, they usually focus on the easy SDGs, most times at the cost of the others. Yes, we invest into climate, we buy CO2-certificates. And buy our growing hunger for power from the grid. Sure we buy “green power”… We upgrade our HR Director to “Chief HR Officer” and call it a board position, but only on paper to look good. We invest in R&D to find solutions how we can become sustainable in the future, while we fight the unions and deny salary increases for our workers. We add the (female) position of Chief Sustainability Officer to express our commitment to the SDGs. Oops, we forgot to give her a budget or empower her responsibilities? Examples aplenty…

We need companies to do the right thing. To embrace sustainability and evolve. It’d give them a competitive edge, a USP. When I was a child, it was common that people worked for “Daimler” (Mercedes-Benz) or “Bosch” all their live. You looked after your stuff from post-school training to retirement – often even beyond. Then they became “Human Resources” to managers who turned “shareholder value” from “what’s good for the company” and “long-term thinking” into “what’s good for my bonus” and “who cares about the time after I’m gone”.

A Question of Respect

My “intern” boss (again) taught me respect for everyone. The guy on the fork-lift, the cleaners, truck drivers and “secretaries” (yeah, we still had those). He taught us to set up the coffee when it was empty and not bother the secretaries. To clean up ourselves to make the cleaners’ jobs easier. To think beyond our petty box as “office workers” and value the hard work of the real workers. Also to question, but then also embrace the value of our work. IF we added value.

And in the pandemic, we should have (but obviously didn’t) learn the other lesson. That it’s not enough to sit at the windows “applauding” the system relevant workers that went above and beyond any perceivable “line of duty”, but to pay them decently. To look after them and keep in mind that they also have families to sustain, vacation wishes that go beyond the balcony on an old residential block they only can afford with added state aid.

Beyond White- and Greenwashing

I recently attended a multi-week project by United Nations Climate Action on Circular Economy. And the need for lifecycle-assessment. But it was also mostly #talkthetalk and academic ideas. And I had several objectives that then led to my image about the panacea distraction.

Aside me wondering, of that lady in the image might be an unpaid intern? Another reflection of the value HR managers and their bosses have about the value of training and labor. Any employer not paying their interns should be put in the pillory. For labor abuse!

Oh yes, and that goes in line with midwifes that quit their jobs as governments don’t reduce but add to the legal strains in the job. Or riders asked to bring their own bikes – and repair, all at minimum wage and abusive “time management”. Or airlines outsourcing their pilots forcing them into bogus self-employment without vacation or sick-leave cover, paid wages below their own pilots. Back in my intern-days, there were “personnel agencies” too. But to hire someone for short-term was always about 50% higher cost than employing someone directly. What went wrong there?

Yes I could go on.

Food for Thought
Comments welcome!

Yes. Comments welcome: Do you agree, disagree, partially, am I right, wrong, do I oversee anything? Have your own examples? What would, could and should we do?

 

Biofuel SynFuel SAF – What is it?

Honored to be sharing my thoughts on sustainable aviation at ASTM, the Association of Swiss Travel Management (the Swiss successors of ACTE.org), at their Earth ’21 sustainability conference (their first, definitely not the last), the main question, not just in the Q&A but also in the following discussions and messages was the issue to understand the difference between BioFuels, SynFuels and Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF).

Greenwashing Demon (shutterstock_1170455851)

There is a lot of greenwashing and intentional abuse by using especially SAF for unsustainable fuels. So let me give you a short definition and help me and all others on the road to sustainable aviation to understand the greenwashing and using the proper wording for the proper thing!

Fuel Blending

At first, we started to blend biofuels into our car fuels. It is what you use in your car, blended as E5 (5%) or E10 (10%) into to fossil fuel. So it is lipstick on pigs, as in reality, it is still 90% or even 95% fossils! And may be very likely the reason, why fossils (and CO2) are still on the rise and growing.

Primary Energy Demand vs. CO2Anything not Zero-fossil such by definition is not “sustainable” in reality. At max it can be a step on the road to sustainability. Mostly an attempt for Greenwashing!

Biofuel

Rapeseed fieldsSo first we had biofuel. Which by definition is from a biological source, like rapeseed. With environmental activists for years complaining that valuable agricultural space (fields) are abused for biofuels instead of human food. And Amazon and other forests are being burned down to plant such seeds.

Biofuels to date comes always blended, engines are not able to operate on unblended biofuels without major modifications! There was another greenwashed development, where Lufthansa in cooperation with DB Schenker operated a 100% Carbon-Neutral cargo flight, offsetting the CO2 from unsustainable fossil fuels. As was openly discussed at and reported from COP26, offsetting is #greenwashing. It’s not in itself “green” but a sale of indulgences.

While we also planned with Biofuel when we developed the Kolibri business and financial plans, we back then already understood that as the only option then available and such the maximum step we could do to fly somewhat sustainable. But then I learned about

SynFuel (my choice)

Synkerosene, Powerkerosen, eKerosene, synfuel, powerfuel efuelJust about three years back, I stumbled across a report about Sunfire.de, developing something they called SynFuel. I still use that word, whereas SynFuel is also called e-Fuel or PowerFuel. I do not like those two “modern” terms. As e-Fuel implies (I believe intentionally) “electric” (e-Mobility), which has nothing to do with it. And PowerFuel implies a higher power efficiency which as as missleading. So I file those namings under attemps for white- and greenwashing.

SynFuel by definition is Synthetic Fuel, refined by CO2 and Hydrogen. The name is program. So I encourage use of SynFuel and not those other names that are rather distractive.

Speaking to Sunfire back then, I triggered their understanding that aviation is a key target market for their SynFuel, which they originally envisioned as a Diesel-replacement. So I speak about SynFuel for the generic addressing of fuels, SynKerosene and SynDiesel for specific replacements.

SynFuel has been proven to be able to operate unblended, at 100%, both for cars, trucks, ships or aircraft. It might be noteworthy that the Hamburg SynFuel pilot facility at Hamburg Airport is said to not have been just opposed, but in fact boycotted by Lufthansa there. For the fear to be pushed towards it’s use, which they are not ready for. Unwilling. A clear sign about their real “sustainability interest”, which is pure greenwashing!

brown blue gray green SynFuelIn my opinion, SynFuel is the main, in fact the only candidate to replace fossil kerosene in aviation. At this time, the production of SynFuel requires quite some energy; 15.3kWh/liter. Energy that taken from the grid, especially in Germany with the worldwide highest grid cost, will make it very expensive. But.

But if you develop green energy sources and use those to refine SynFuel, you have several advantages. The energy cost drops drastically. You replace grid-power, which is not green, no matter what you “buy”. The demand for green grid power by far exceeds the supply today. So that’s just more greenwashing! Only green SynFuel is sustainable and Grid-Energy is not sustainable either!

It’s rather new, which might explain conservative politicians and industry leaders still holding on to the less sustainable e-mobility. Or wishful thinking like liquid hydrogen flying, which will not have any impact by 2030, realistically a lot later than 2050! And a meek excuse by most of our industry leaders to delay investment into real sustainability.

Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) – the Greenwashing Lie

When IATA commits to 2% blending of SAF into fossil fuels by 2030, that “SAF” is used to pretend sustainability. In IATAs definition, that includes both BioFuels, as well as any-colored SynFuel. If they would be honest, their commitment would require to amount for 2% net sustainability. Which in itself remains an embarrassment! Even on cars we have already E5 in most countries as a standard, E10 an option. And aviation commits to E2?

The only real SAF is 100% green SynFuel
meaning the source energy is green!

Even waste-to-liquid is not really SAF, as the waste often is not from sustainable sources. But experts agree so far that it is “circular” and helps to reduce the carbon-footprint. There it is more the waste-producing industry to replace i.e. fossil-based plastics with bio-degradable alternatives. Though I just had some lobbyist trying to convince me (seriously!) that plastic is good for climate…

Further Reading

I addressed this in The Road to Environmentally-Friendly Flying, which I work on to turn into a WhitePaper.

Where my WhitePapers are meant as articles I keep updating occasionally. Different from such posts, which reflect my knowledge, opinion and ideas at time of writing. They are also rather nice in review, seeing my head still being round, but my ideas mostly sound.

This all is

Food for Thought!
And as usual, comments, disagreement, discussion and ideas are welcome!