Leadership Profile: Sass Somekh (Part 9)

Social activism has emerged into wide scale leadership, as Sass has led a drive in Silicon Valley for corporations to develop energy policies of carbon neutrality. After being spurned by members of Congress, he has kick started initiatives which are leading to substantive change.

SM: When you say we, do you mean you have made it a corporate initiative at Novellus, or is it your personal initative? SS: I personally did this, together with the CEO and a few other people. I put together this single page summary, because I know if I summarize it CEOs will read it and give me their support. Thirty CEOs have signed this call for action, and I sent it to the 40 or so members of Congress from California, and received only one answer back. I followed all of the rules, didn’t send it to Washington, sent to local district offices, emails, paper copies, etc, and the message back was just a single response.

Right there I realized that calling for action is not enough, you have to start the action. We then organized the CEO summit where we had 85 CEOs attend. The highlight was the signing of a pledge which committed to reduce energy consumption within the companies. It was a commitment to pursue legislation, we had three members of the House sign the pledge as well. Our pledge also included a part to innovate in renewable energy. The final item was to return in one year and report on the results. Novellus is continuing this activity, and on April 20th we are going to have a workshop for Chief Operating Officers and Facility Directors.

SM: So you are organizing a summit to educate on energy efficient facilities? SS: Yes, how to save energy within facilities with the goal of approaching energy neutrality. For example, in my house I am putting 12 KW of solar capacity, it is 66 panels of five feet by three feet. The goal is that I would generate enough electricity from solar power to not only compensate for my electricity usage but also for my gas usage. In that case, my house would be carbon neutral. That would then be the goal of every corporate facility. This reduces the amount of carbon which goes into the atmosphere.

SM: You are only going to do this with only California companies, or will it be National? SS: It will just involve Silicon Valley companies. This is one initiative that I am chairing for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group which is an umbrella organization of 200 companies in the valley.

The other initiative they have which I chair (it is one of their 12 Clean and Green initiatives) is plug-in hybrid cars. You know a hybrid car like the Prius gets very good gas mileage because it has a very small gasoline engine with an electric motor. When you accelerate, both work together and give you good acceleration. When you slow down, or when you are idle, you recharge the battery for the next time you need to accelerate. It has a battery, but you never plug it into the wall. The next level of sophistication in this hybrid car is to take the small battery out and put in a bigger battery. You plug this into the wall and charge it at night, and you end up driving the first 20 to 30 miles on electricity. The average car in the US travels 28 miles a day.

[to be continued]

[Part 8]
[Part 7]
[Part 6]
[Part 5]
[Part 4]
[Part 3]
[Part 2]
[Part 1]

This segment is part 9 in the series : Leadership Profile: Sass Somekh
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