National Clean Energy Project Part 14/16

Michael Thaman: Thank you Senator Worth and thank you for having us join this
wonderful event and this great coalition. It’s been an interesting
morning. I think we've talked about some fascinating technologies
on both the fuel source side, as well as the grid in the infrastructure
side. I guess I’d like to take us further down the grid all the way to
the home and into office building. You know the place where we
sit and the place where we live.

We do believe the American people get it, but we also know from
our research that less than 25% of Americans understand that the
single biggest user of energy in our country is residential-
commercial buildings. 40% of the energy in our country is used in
homes and buildings, 74% of the electricity. So if we’re really
going to take on the issue of the grid, I guess I would echo
President Clinton’s comments. The first thing we need to do is start
walking today on the energy efficiency of the places where we
work and live.

For most of us, unless we’re wealthy enough to hire an architect to
build us a home or we’re big enough corporation of government to
be involved in design phase of our building, we inherit that
infrastructure that we live in. And this is an important part of the
infrastructure of our country and really I don’t think our policy
generally deals with construction as though it’s a part of our
nation’s infrastructure in fact it is.

I think there’s an opportunity through this coalition and through
new policy to establish a public private partnership between good
government regulation that establishes performance standards and
construction that encourage us to get to higher levels of efficiency
that gives incentives in existing buildings to get them to higher
levels of efficiency; we’ll see that with weatherization. We are
eager to get in the game. I'm trying to figure out how to get the
weatherization money into the marketplace to get our economy to
be more energy-efficient.

We believe with the size of this challenge that has to be a critical
and visible element of any solution and definitely this coalition is
up to that challenge.

Sen. Worth: Great! Thank you very much and we appreciate that Mike of
Owen-Corning has certainly been a leader along with your sort of
sister company I guess Corning in terms of the revolution that
existed before in fiber optics.

Nat Simons, do you want to give us a window on your perspective
of how philanthropy and organized philanthropy is helping to
engage the public and keep the standard as high as possible?

Nat Simons: Thank you Senator Worth. I don’t have anything really prepared to
say today be I really was thinking about everything that everybody
was saying around the room. But in thinking about the
conversation to that, I have been struck with a couple of things.

I've only been working on this issue and the issue of climate
change and energy is really what we’re focused on entirely at this
point. For a short time, we don’t have the perspective as many of
the people in this room, and it is interesting because I remember
talking to many people and the first really large thing I got
involved with was with the Energy Foundation Rose McKinney
James and Eric Heitz at the back there on the issue of Renewable
Portfolio Standard, Renewable Energy Standard and also CAFE
standard and try to push that through in ‘07 and we didn’t get the
RES through as people all around this table know. We did get the
CAFE through and that was very exciting and to me it was well
that was good and now let’s keep going.

And to see the reaction of everybody in the environmental
community and this energy community as to how dramatic that
was I didn’t feel that. I'm like okay well that’s just the first step we
have many things to do obviously. And I think that to see a group
of people around the table and to see the consensus that surrounds
this table that we have to get moving is obviously very exciting.
But, as Governor Pataki so eloquently said when the rubber hits the
road or I suppose when the electrons hit the grid I suppose is by
word saying it, then it’s a different game.

And I think that the role of philanthropy is more than anything to
just facilitate the process. There are many different stakeholders
and they all have to be brought together. The Grid is perhaps the
best example that we can think of I think where there are many
desperate interest and to get it done quickly is going to take a
Herculine effort from all sides. Because it’s not really a question of
whether we move to a low carbon economy, I think it’s clear that
we’re moving there and it’s clear that we’re going there. I think
there is probably complete consensus around the room if that’s
going to happen. The question is how quickly.

So, the role of philanthropy is really to facilitate that process in
every respect because it’s not going to be ramming something
down the throat of certain people. We know that that’s not going to
work we’ve seen that—we’ve watched that movie before and we
know it’s not going to happen. And we can’t take this momentum
and let it stall. So philanthropist, foundations have a huge
responsibility. They can’t put this on the ground. They can’t build
the windmills. We can’t build the new generation of efficient cars.
We can help to facilitate the process. We don’t have any
stakeholders that we have to represent. We can represent the
United States, we can represent humanity. We can do the things
that need to happen to bring people together to find common
ground and to move the ball forward and I think that that’s really
the role that philanthropy needs to continue to do.

And on last note, again, there are many, many great work—much
great work has been done by philanthropist and certainly by
NGO’s and working with Carl Pope at Sierra Club and many,
many others. But there just needs to be capital to move in from
philanthropy. There needs to be more funders and I think that
foundations are starting to understand that that they have many
legacy positions, some of them are constrain by their mandate. But
everything which they do is going to be jeopardized by climate
change. All the good work that they do—feeding people, clothing
people, educating people, trying to raise up the world from poverty
is all jeopardized by climate change. So it’s in everybody’s interest
this happens. And I certainly hope that more capital comes in from
existing foundations and from new foundations and hopefully we
can—because it’s needed. It’s really needed.

Senator Worth: Nat thank you very much, and that certainly is reflective of earlier
comments from President Clinton we’re going to hear from in
closing in just a minute.

Before getting to closing, let me ask Jon Wellinghoff from FERC
or Fred Butler from NARUC both of them had been part of it has
been discussed earlier this morning, both of them in a critical
regulatory positions from the Federal Authority and the State
Regulatory Authority that either of them have a closing summary
comments they might like to add to the discussion. Jon.

Jon Wellinghoff: Thank you Senator Worth and again I want to thank Senator Reid
and John Podesta for putting this together and having me here with
this great group of people and the topics we’re addressing here.

In summary I think what we have to remember here is certainly
what Congressman Markey and Robert Kennedy said and that is
that the framework of the markets has to be left and right. And
taking up President Clinton’s theme of not forgetting about energy
efficiency in framing those markets right which forecasted
responsibility over the wholesale electric markets, we need to
ensure the consumers understand their part and can be part of those
markets that in fact they can play a part in being integral part of the
grid with the main response of what I call dispatchable
conservation. And so, hopefully a good portion of the $11 billion
that we have in stimulus package will be used for augmenting and
encouraging this dispatchable conservation so consumers in
essence can participate in the grid. Once they can participate, once
that they can see how they can control their loads—we control the
load in this building, we control the load to the residential building
in a way they can help the grid. Ultimately that will have the effect
of making consumers know that what were doing overall with site
and transmission and putting renewables in is to what they are
doing as well on their grid side.

And we talked about earlier needing storage, I think we have
plenty of storage in this country. The thermal mass and the
buildings in this country is more storage than we need. We just
need to know how to control it. We have the way to control it from
a standpoint of technology. We need the infrastructure, we need
the communication standards and I think there is the discussion
about communication standards and FERC is responsible to do
standard for the Smart Grid working on NIST on that, it has to be
done two-set faster. We need to get moving on that faster. If we
can do that though consumers then can understand how they are
part of this grid process. And being part of that grid process I think
will humble the head much faster. Thank you.

Senator Worth: Thank you Jon. Fred Butler. I'm going to come back to Boone
Pickens if I might.

Fred Butler: Thank you Senator. And let me once again thank the organizers of
this.

It reinforces in my mind that we are living in an extraordinary time
that we can sit around this table and have this discussion that we
need to have. I've repeatedly said that the times we live in remind
me of the opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities—it was the
best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a time of reason, it
was a time on insanity.

We all know why it’s the worst of times—the economy and what
we’re dealing with. But it’s the best of times because we’re
focusing on some issues that we have not been able to focus on for
a long, long time and that is a good thing. Now, we isolated three
components of this which was planning, deciding and cost
allocations. Let me focus on the planning aspect and talk about the
position of the states which I represent from the National
Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in addition to
being a regulator in my own state of New Jersey.

The members of congress know how difficult it is to get consensus
among the 50 states. I have my own little congress of 237 semi-
utility commissioners and it’s very difficult to get consensus from
them. And consensus has been for the last number of years that we
are opposed to federal takeover of the deciding responsibility and
that continues to be the position. However, there has been a
discussion that is ensued among those states that is leading to
consideration of perhaps a shared responsibility but the planning
process needs to start with the states and the state plans and the
state perspectives and then go into sort of more regional approach
then we can talk some more about who has the ultimate deciding
authority. Because if you have involvement in the planning process
when the line is drawn and you can say, “Yes, we realized that that
level of transmission needs to be built, that that amount of
transmission needs to be built and it needs to be built here.” in
general here then states can get more involved and can get on
board.

I also think that it helps explain to the public at large who are
going to be impacted by that transmission line and believe me I
have studied transmission lines and I have studied gas pipe lines
and the transmission lines are the ones that get in people face and
the ones that they get upset about and they come to state capitols
and state commissions. So the states are moving, the states are
thinking about this. I'm here to tell you that we’re willing to work
and work to a solution that we can all live with. Thank you.

Senator Worth: Thank you very much Fred and you’ve certainly pointed two of the
major issues that Senator Reid and his legislation are going to have
to grapple with on the regulatory jurisdictional issue and deciding
issue overlapping and very complicated, very difficult but
absolutely critical.