National Clean Energy Project Part 13/16

Leaders from the public and private sectors met in Washington, DC on February 23rd to discuss ideas to reform U.S. energy policy, and pave the wave for our economic future part 13/16.

National Clean Energy Project Part 13/16 Mr. Wirth: Rose, you’ve been a state regulator and an energy consultant and part of the Energy Foundation Board. Is the constituency there? And then we’re going to go to Jeff Bingaman. Is the constituency being built there that’s going to help Jeff Bingaman pass the energy legislation that’s so critically needed? Thank you for being here. Rose James: Thank you, Senator. And on behalf of a variety of advocates in this room from the state of Nevada, Senator Reid, before I begin, we certainly have to extend our appreciation for your extraordinary leadership in this regard. And for those of us who have been on the ground, literally for now a couple of decades, this is indeed an extraordinary opportunity. I think that we have, through the work over the last couple of decades, built for you a very strong network of advocates who understand these issues, who feel the pulse of the communities in which they work and understand the challenges that we face with this current economy, looking forward to what they believe are the tremendous opportunities coming out of this technology. You know, I’ve been focusing on policies at the state level for a number of years. And we’ve put together what we think is a very strong framework. But it has become increasingly clear over time that what we really need is the federal leadership to make this happen. We absolutely need to have a plan, and we absolutely need to know that people on the ground are interested in the economic development opportunities for them. My colleagues at the Energy Foundation, as an example, have told me that if we can move toward serious planning for transmission, planning that will allow us on a regional basis to cooperate and bring together this network of advocates, just in the state of Nevada alone with two transmission lines, we could talk about up to 2,000 megawatts of renewable development which would translate into 16,000 construction jobs, 1,000 of those in transmission alone, and then potentially 3,500 permanent jobs. That is meaningful. And the advocacy network that we have developed, in large measure through philanthropy, could serve as a strong partner for you in terms of making the advances that we need to achieve our long-term goal which is outlined, once again, around the words on this table clean energy, an abundant resource. And clearly, in the state of Nevada, we have it all. We have geothermal, we have solar, we have, you know, a tremendous opportunity for biomass which we’ve not discussed here in any large measure. But we have it, and we are ready and prepared to assist you in this regard. Mr. Wirth: Senator Bingaman, you’ve been listening to a lot of inputs and a lot of advice here. I hope this is helpful for your chore. And do you have the public support for doing what you have to do? Jeff Bingaman: Well, I think there’s great public support and a great opportunity, obviously, to move toward a much more efficient system for use of energy, a much more clean system for production of energy and transmission of energy. And we need to sort through the difficult questions of jurisdiction between the states and the federal government. We need to be sure that the necessary authority exists at the national level to do some of this planning that we’ve been talking about as so essential and that Carl referred to. And then I think we do have to be sure that we do it in a way that helps us use the grid in the smartest possible way because the great, as everyone recognizes and many have said around here, President Clinton said it very well, the greatest near-term opportunity is in saving energy. We can become much more efficient in the way we use energy, and the smart grid will allow us to do that if we just have the wit to figure out what the elements are that will get us to a smart grid. So I congratulate you on this conference and everyone who has participated. I think there’s a strong consensus to move ahead aggressively, and I hope we’re able to do that. Mr. Wirth: Thank you very much, Senator. And that is a good summary for a momentary pause. We had promised our good secretaries a noon time witching hour. And I know that Secretary Salazar and Secretary Chu have another session that they have to go to for a lunch. And we promised our senators as well a similar time frame. So let me see if I can just sort of set the engagement for the remaining time together. We would like to get Michael Thaman from Owens Corning to talk some about some of the technologies that are available. And ask Nat Simons to give us a bit of a view on his perspective of the role of outside philanthropy and advocacy to get this to happen – and then close with Vice President Gore and Boone Pickens and finally John Podesta.