$4.00/Gallon Gas, Innovation, and Your Career!

 

Instead of jumping into my next tip for dealing with Distant Thunder, I want to take a moment and talk about innovation, the great USA, and your career.

Also, I’m sorry to be a little slow on my posts lately. Career Secret Sauce is going into print and I’m on one of my semiannual cross-country road trips. That’s what got me thinking about $4.00/Gallon Gas, Innovation, and Your Career!

You buy a lot of gas driving across the country, sometimes two tanks a day. The lowest price I’ve seen was in Oklahoma – about $3.50/gallon. The highest (so far) was in Indiana — $4.00/gallon. We head off the beaten track from time to time and talk to people in the middle of the country.

Besides the cost of gas, the other thing I notice is the transition of industries. I’ve seen incredible new buildings for new businesses and a number of ghost towns. The new businesses are very exciting, but the ghost towns are quite scary.

One of them was in McLean Texas. We had to mail a letter and drove down the “Route 40 Business Loop” looking for a Post Office.

We found it, but it turned out to be the only business in town that wasn’t boarded up and closed down. Everything else was gone; the shops, hotel, café; all out of business. It didn’t look like they’d been closed up for very long, but the only paycheck being written in that town was going to the postal workers. 

I did a little research and discovered that its prosperity was due to two things. First, it was a stop on old Route 66 and second, the train ran through town and it was a big oil transportation hub.

Times changed; Interstate 40 bypassed the town and nearby Amarillo became the oil transportation hub for West Texas. Today it’s pretty much a Post Office and the Devil’s Rope Museum — A Tribute to Barbed Wire.

What’s McLean Got To Do With $4.00/Gallon Gas and Your Career?

McLean was destroyed by the innovation of replacing Route 66 with I-40 and the supply chain efficiency of the Amarillo Hub. A lot of people fear $4.00/gallon gas because of all the money it’s sending overseas, but I’m excited about what it will mean for new career opportunities in the United States.

There are over a dozen incredible new energy technologies that have already been developed and were sitting on the shelf because they can’t beat $30/barrel oil.

They are now flying off the shelves being backed by the power of the US Venture Capital industry and $125/barrel oil.

Bright Source Funded

My old pals in Silicon Valley Venture Capital are among others who just put $115 million into this incredibly cool new company called Bright Source Energy (http://www.brightsourceenergy.com).

They have developed a smart high intensity mirror farm technology that follows the sun to superheat steam that is used to drive power turbines. The technology is so efficient that a 19 square mile farm could theoretically produce enough energy to power the entire United States.

They just closed an agreement with PG&E to supply 900 MKW all from five of these solar farms. That’s enough energy to power 540,000 homes. Building the five plants to support this contract in the Mojave Desert will mean 2,000 construction jobs, and about 1,000 fulltime skilled workers to operate the plants.

Imagine thousands of jobs being created in the Mojave Desert or Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. Think about all of the engineering, finance, and marketing jobs that follow. Now consider that this is just one of dozens of breakthrough new businesses that are getting big funding due to $4.00/gallon gas.

So when you think about your career or your new job, remember why the United States has the best economy on earth. We have the best national model for driving innovation and that’s where our great jobs and careers come from.

Follow Innovation!