VOICES

New year, new plans, new attitudes

No matter where you are in the world, this week o ers us all the opportunity to enter the new year with a new plan and a new attitude. Even if we believe we have the right plan and a great attitude, there could be room for a little improvement raising the bar for ourselves and those around us. What if we could make the slightest incremental improvements to our existing plans and our outlook? I think you would agree that we would experience even greater results. ese past couple of months have kept us busy with clients and internally with business planning, writing sales plans, prospecting plans, training plans, new onboarding plans, and working with clients and friends on creating and building vision boards that help provide visual reminders of our goals and what we expect the new year to bring. And if we forget or fail to plan, this old quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin still holds true all these years later, “By failing to plan, you are preparing to fail.”

Now some of us might be thinking that our plans are just ne, and our attitude is exactly where it needs to be. Whenever I hear this, I am reminded of something my great uncle Harry would always say, “ ere is nothing so good it couldn’t be better, and nothing so bad that it couldn’t get worse.” So, even if we believe our plans are solid and our attitude is good and positive, maybe we could take one last look at our plans and give ourselves a check-up from the neck up to try and identify any blind spots we may have missed.

When it comes to planning, I am a big advocate of using a planning tool. I am a little biased to the Ziglar Performance Planner as it is an annual planner that helps me not only manage my days and meetings, but it also helps me to plan out my goals for the year and track those goals each and every day. It also contains some of Zig’s most famous motivational quotes, and when I read those each day, it de nitely inspires me, and ensures my attitude is in the right place as I glance at those words of wisdom throughout my day. If you aren’t using one, I would highly recommend that you nd one that works for you and your schedule.

How do we develop and maintain a positive attitude in a world that can sometimes feel so negative? at is a question I receive from many of you throughout the year. And here at the beginning of the year is the perfect time to take control of our own attitude regardless of what the world throws our way. Setting our foundation upon an attitude that starts with gratitude. It’s really di cult to slip into a negative head space when we are grateful for everything we have and everyone in our circle of friends and family.

Maintaining a positive and healthy attitude isn’t just about gratitude alone, we also must be careful of what we allow to enter our minds. Again, here at the beginning of the year it is a fantastic time to create a reading calendar for the year of the good books that we want to read, books that inspires us and that keep us grounded. It’s a great time to nd the podcasts that are lled with powerful and positive information that can motivate and challenge us to grow in mind, body, and spirit.

How about you? Is the new year the right time to reevaluate your plans? Are you failing to plan? Or are you all over this and have a brilliant plan and a wonderful attitude? Either way, I would love to hear your story at gotonorton@gmail.com, and when we can take the time to create a plan that will help us to achieve all that we hope to achieve in the new year, and support that plan with a positive attitude, it really will be a better than good life.

WINNING WORDS

Michael Norton

Michael Norton is an author, a personal and professional coach, consultant, trainer, encourager and motivator of individuals and businesses, working with organizations and associations across multiple industries.

Renewables move forward in Colorado, but in Wyoming? Not so fast

Colorado’s largest electrical utility this week announced it will begin construction of 300 miles of major new transmission next year to harvest wind from the state’s eastern plains. In Wyoming, though, a wind farm proposed 15 years ago still needs crucial permits. e di erence? Land ownership, at least in part. e 345-kV transmission line that Xcel Energy plans to string between Brush and Lamar, connecting new wind farms along the way, will not cross federal land. In Wyoming, the wind farm lies on a checkerboard of private and federal lands.

Projects involving federal lands trigger reviews mandated by a 1969 law, the National Environmental Policy Act. NEPA merely requires disclosure of impacts. In practice, say authors of a new book, “ e Big Fix,” the process is itself the outcome. e review must be accelerated to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century.

“ e Big Fix,” written by Aspen native Hal Harvey and former New York Times reporter Justin Gillis, paints a detailed but still accessible picture of how to decarbonize our economy. For example, we can create comfortable buildings without burning fossil fuels. Harvey has experience in this going back to the 1970s, when he built and designed passive-solar homes. After studying engineering at Stanford University, he now runs a 36-person think tank in San Francisco. Gillis was writing about the intersection of climate and energy from a base in New York City when he became aware of Harvey. As he consulted experts from across the country, he says, Harvey’s thoughts impressed him as the most practical. In the book, the authors break down the challenges of our energy transition into seven sections, including transportation and carbonintensive industries such as steel and concrete. Every page sparkles with insights and absorbing statistics. For example, the world each year produces 5 tons of concrete products for every man, woman, and child. Concrete causes 7% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

In one chapter, they take on forestry and food. To solve our climate threat, we must eat less meat, especially beef. Chicken comes out on top for those of us who can’t quite gure out vegetarian meals. ey also talk about electricity. We will need more of it in buildings and transportation. Existing technology — especially wind and solar — can take us a long way, probably 70% to 90% in Colorado.

To advance even deeper, we need other technologies and business models. is will require major government support on par with or even greater than the support that resulted in dramatic reductions in wind and solar prices. ey call for the same support for hydrogen, carbon capture, and geothermal technologies, all of them promising but still costly. e key will be scaling up production to lower costs, as has occurred with everything from Model Ts to solar panels to smartphones. is includes nuclear, which Harvey and Gillis call a “vexed and vexing technology.” It delivers 20% of emissionsfree energy now, but new plants have had humongous cost overruns. Instead of big plants, they see a possible path of smaller modular units using factoryproduced components.

For the next decade, though, they hope to see far more cost-e ective noemission technologies, chie y wind and solar. And this will require more transmission and, in Wyoming, permits for the wind farm that Phil Anschutz wants to build for the export of electricity to balance the solar energy of Arizona and California.

“ ey’re trying to put up this truly colossal wind farm in this superb spot in Wyoming, one of the windiest places in the country, and it has taken them well over 15 years to get the permits that they need under NEPA,” Gillis said when I interviewed the authors several weeks ago. ey see the need to reform, not gut, NEPA and other environmental reviews to create hard deadlines and accelerate the pace.

Without reform, said Gillis, “it will take us 30 to 40 years to do that which really needs to be done over the next 10 years.” He hopes for leadership from more leftish leaders in Congress, perhaps in the Senate. And he also says the environmental movement, so long focused on saying no, must gure out ways to say yes. ere are nuances. e authors readily admit there are places we should not build solar and wind farms. And there is also a lively debate about the balance between big and distant renewables versus local sources.

As for Colorado, they see us as being a step or two ahead of much of the rest of the United States. And the United States, they say, can become a model for the world, even those countries whose economies today depend heavily on burning coal.

Colorado continues to close its coal plants. Another unit, Comanche 1, located at Pueblo, will cease operations before the champagne gets hoisted to celebrate 2023.

BIG PIVOTS

Alleen Best Alleen Best

Allen Best publishes Big Pivots, which focuses on climate change and the energy and water transitions in Colorado. See more at BigPivots.com.

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