A little over two years ago I was attending a conference on clean energy, one of about 15 that year that titled itself a clean energy "Summit". As I was attending on behalf of the company I worked for at the time, an electric utility, I was very invested in the topic. I was surprised about halfway through the group of panel discussions on the second day of the conference when one of the panelists, who worked for a solar energy company - pointed me out in the audience and noted that he was happy to see even utilities now participating in these events. Apparently he had missed day one when a utility executive was on one of the panels - albeit garnering criticism from those around him even as he outlined programs and initiatives very similar to what they were outlining.
At the intermission after being pointed out, I walked up to the solar company executive, a very nice gentleman with whom I have conferred many times on issues and alongside whom I have advocated in unison for some pieces of legislation. I asked him why he'd chosen to point me out and he said he wanted others in the group to better understand that utilities were not their enemies, that even 'we' were finally coming around to face reality. I nodded, but I have to admit that was a backhanded compliment on the heels of a reluctant and half-hearted acknowledgement - it's like when my children say out loud to each other in my presence ' Even mom isn't that stupid".
Quite by accident I have spent almost all of my career working in and around the utility industries, as a regulator, in a legislative committee with oversight over utilities, with private law firms representing municipal and private utilities, and then as a utility executive. In each of my roles I was pigeon-holed in some way. I was a consumer advocate at my regulatory agency. I didn't view utilities as the enemy - they were regulated and they were offering a public necessity. Their profits were capped, their operations overseen, their rates established by the regulatory agency. That said, I was a fervent advocate for consumer interests in the rare instances when anti-trust enforcement had to be particularly broad (mergers) or when market abuse was suspected. It was assumed because of my job that I was a liberal Democrat and was anti-business. So it surprised a lot of people when a pro-business legislative chairman asked me to be his committee consultant during the California Energy crisis in 2000-2001. In that capacity I worked for the legislative body and my job was to ensure voting members had clear analyses of all legislation and understood all implications. It was also my job to hear from vested interests and include their letters and feedback for the committee. We also had to negotiate major pieces of legislation. It was my job to make sure everyone had clear, accurate information to make the choices they were going to make, not to try to influence them, and when working on legislative language - to try to guide the process in a way that resulted in legislation that did no harm and was in the public interest. That is not an easy task when so many people believe so strongly in what they bring to the table. Nobody walks away with a whole loaf. Even the most altruistic person has a self interest and those have to be identified and quantified and you have to leave your ego in some other room in some other building and just get the job done. Half a loaf will feed a lot of people, and to me it would be inexcusable to walk away from the ability to do some good because we couldn't do what I wanted to do. In all of my capacities since that time I haven't ever waivered from that stance. I represent an interest, but I am acutely aware of the public interest and of needs beyond my own. I will advocate always consistent with doing no harm and moving progress forward. Anything more than those things is excisable from a 'must have'. Knowing the implications of what is being sought, what will be gained or lost, is also key.
So, that takes me back via the long route to being pigeon-holed. It is ironic at this stage in my career to be pointed out as an environmental laggard, but someone finally willing to be pulled along with progress. The energy business is a vital business to everything all of us do. It is the fuels we consume for transport, the heat in our homes, the lights at our businesses, and every electronic device we depend upon for information, security and commerce. One hundred twenty-five years ago if you walked through the streets of any major city in America, but especially in the more populated east, you would have seen plumes coming from factories, wires everywhere across the streets from the various phone and new electric companies in every locality. If you went to the theatre at night you would have coughed due to the gas lamp fumes, and strained your eyes to see clearly in the dim setting. Only in Germany at that time would you see gas-fueled vehicles on the road, and just a few of them, as up until then the land speed record for vehicles was held by electric vehicles. By 1900 the electric light had proliferated, cleaning up some of gaslight mess and creating the viability of around the clock work, and a year later mass produced petroleum fueled vehicles were on the road, because they could go faster than electric ones. Fast forward to 2015 and electric vehicles are re-surging, albeit slowly and we're having to slowly change our paradigm by first doing hybrids that take us hundreds of miles farther on a tank of gas and acclimate to plugging in a vehicle and having it run solely on electricity, or on some other carbon neutral fuel. Of course, we fuel our electric generation that fuels those electric vehicles, that fuels our factories and chip makers (free form foundries - of which we have fewer and fewer in the US.. Our data and electronic driven lifestyles are also fueled by electricity. So we're also cleaning up the sources of electricity.
Just as clean energy mattered in the 1880s and 1890s when Thomas Edison managed to beat everyone else to market with his viable incandescent bulb (Nicola Tesla lacked the pragmatic affiliation with commercial interests and so his inventions were slower to get to market, if they made it to market), it matters today. Edison, Tesla and all of the other innovators faced significant opposition from the existing technologies and their commercial partners - and economics was at the core of the arguments not to move forward with electricity. Gas lamps were cheaper. Electricity would never be as cheap as gas. But because the long term economic benefit far outweighed the short term expense (the return was exponentially larger than the risk) electric light went forward. What was able to get to market - bright, efficient, clean light - changed everything, and it also cleaned up the air. Of course, to make it proliferate there was also the need for what we call central station generation of electricity - big power plants. If you wanted electric light in Montana you had to generate power there and get it to your house - so the plants had to be built everywhere. And in cities eventually they stopped having so many phone companies and so many lighting companies and there were fewer lines everywhere hanging over the streets. Cleaner, more efficient energy mattered and it fueled economic growth and is what made the 20th century so different from the 19th. Imagine your life today if its invention and proliferation had been stalled 5, 10, 25 years? And over the course of the evolution of providing electricity, subsidies have existed to get things to market. Sometimes it's private capital - such as supported Tom Edison - and sometimes it's public subsidy - like what jump started the nuclear generation industry, or built all those dams across the country that generate clean hydro electricity. Now the time from lab to market is so much faster you don't even need long term subsidies, especially as technologies mature. People just need to adapt and adopt and the innovation will continue to build.
So why would we want to slow innovation today? We have so many more people on the planet. We have technology that never would have existed had we relied solely on existing, affordable and unclean fuels. The electric light replaced the gaslight beginning in the late 1880s, and yet the natural gas industry proliferates to this day. The petroleum fueled vehicle remains the dominant transportation choice for cars, trucks, buses, ships, heavy equipment, and electricity as a fuel as well as other alternative fuels are growing very, very slowly. The air that people breathed in the early 20th century even in clogged cities once gaslight was largely replaced, was much cleaner than the air they breathed before, although tailpipe emissions from vehicles were beginning to offset this. Even if we replace only one fourth of all vehicles with electric or other carbon neutral fuels over the next 10-20 years imagine the change not just in the air your breathe, but in the lack of run off into our rivers and oceans, the lack of toxins getting into our soil. Having more electric transit will also mean people spend less time in their cars, even if they are fossil-fueled. Cleaning up ships, heavy equipment, that UPS or FedEx truck that runs around your neighborhood and picks up from your office twice a day, trains, buses, cars - even having electric bikes to make it more convenient to be on two versus four wheels - all make a huge difference. And cleaning up the fuels that create electricity will also make a huge difference. As will being open to new ways to generate locally, to store energy, and most of all - to be more efficient and use less than we have been. It's a process and each bit of incremental change has exponential positive impact. We may not be able to zip to the best case right away, but we can take a number of very positive leaps forward - very significant, very impactful progress.
What would be a shame would be to not act. We know how many of us there are on this planet and how many more there will be soon. We know you need commerce to feed nations and the costs and impacts of the choices we make. We know what a wonderful gift this earth, its mountains, rivers, seas, and most of all the air we breathe are. Just like Edison and other innovators were able to move 19th century thinking forward using technology and pragmatic realities about economics - we can do that today. It has nothing to do with political affiliation or industry alliance. We have the technologies, and we continue to improve upon them. We can get from here to there and clean energy is the cornerstone of how we should proceed. It is not an abandonment of what has come before - it is a progression forward, responsibly but profoundly. What we need to accomplish to clean up our electric generation, our transportation, manufacturing and other processes is so much more modest than the revolutionary force that was the electric light and central station generation - and what we can accomplish if we are willing to continue to push forward will have a much more profound effect on the 21st century and beyond. There is room for all at the table if we're all willing to settle for half a loaf and consume only our own share. No one will go hungry, the old will be replaced by the new in time. It won't even seem like the dynamic change it is, but the effect is that there will be a 21st century and beyond. That we will be able to live it here, on this planet. The return far outweighs the risk.
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