Phase II of Renewable Energy in America

National Policy Conference

November 28-29

Cannon Caucus Room, Washington, DC

American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)

<Applause>, and I am also a Notary Public. <Laughter>. Sorry I left that out. Well it's a delight to be here and it's an honor to just bask in the reflected glow of the people who really put this conference together.  It's been an outstanding morning and I am glad to Co-Chair,   I am honored to Co-
Chair this panel with Pat Wood.  You all know Pat Wood.  He is the former Chair of FIRK [ph?] and he is the guy that everybody wants on their team.  You could say he is the A-rod of energy these days and just a great guy to work with. So you will hear from Pat shortly.  I want to be brief but kick this off, because as I think back to the first ACORE conference, we couldn't have had two Co-Chairs of a panel that were both Republicans, but that's changed dramatically.  And as Andy Karchner said this morning, the red and blue have gone away, especially when we are dealing with this issue. But I will, with your indulgence, start with a story, I think it is a story I told at the very first policy conference that ACORE had.  And just after what I heard this morning, it just applies so much I have to say it again with apologies to those who heard it before.  It is about politics.  It is about the story of two Congressmen who every year went on a hunting trip up in the north woods.  And one year they were up hunting and each one of them bagged a big moose.  And they dragged the moose back to the camp, and the pilot was standing there, their guide and he said, well congratulations but we have a problem.  I have a small single engine float plane.  I can take two hunters and one moose or two moose and one hunter, but I can't take everything.  And one Congressman said, in outrange he said well wait a minute.  Last year the exact same thing happened and your competitor took us, so let's go. He said okay and they piled everything on the plane. The plane started up and took off and in a few seconds it sputtered and fell into a clump of trees.  When the dust cleared, one Congressman said to the other where are we?  And the other one said we are about 80 feet farther than we got last year. <Laughter>.  So it's you know, it's been unfortunately the story of environmental and energy policy making for the last 20 or 30 years in many cases. But now as we've heard today, we know that the plane is inadequate.  We also know that we can build a better plane. And what it's going to take is a lot of skills and talents coming together to figure out how to build that better plane, so every year we don’t just keep repeating sort of the ground hog say story again, and that is what we are here to talk about.  And this conference has been great, because it has expanded our outlook to the global outlook.  And this afternoon we are starting to talk about, well where do we go from here?  We seem to be together on the promise and the opportunity and the need and the urgency.  Where do we go from here?  So just a couple of thoughts to kick this off, and then to turn it over to this outstanding panel that we have. At Sale Ventures, you know when we look at a clean tech business we look at it from the standpoint of traditional business analysis and traditional business metrics. And when it is an energy company, we look at how it's going to penetrate the energy market. We don't look at it as an alternative or at alternative energy markets, but we look at the energy market as we heard earlier today.  And I think ACORE's biggest contribution, it came on the scene at the right time thanks to Mike's vision and a lot of other people, to say we need to take renewable energy from being the politically popular cause that everybody likes to talk about and give speeches about, and transform it as it needs to be into a mainstream business, and that is what ACORE has done.  So now as we look at where we are today in 2008, just a personal perspective, everybody always talks about, particularly in election years but probably every year at a conference like this we'll talk about this is a pivotal year.  This is a watershed.  We have heard a bit about that, but this really is a pivotal year for a lot of reasons.  If we look at the factors that we have heard about here today, the ones that I think are particularly important is first, we now have major sophisticated money of every category from every major financial institution in the world committed in a big way, not just sort of a rounding error, well we'll do sort of a PR commitment to this industry, serious financial commitments from serious financial players, $100 billion we heard Michael talk about this morning.  Second, as we look at these companies, we have with no disrespect to the pioneers and they are some great people, but we now have business teams that are experienced business managers, people who come into this alternative energy companies and understand immediately who the customer is, and that the customer is not the government grant maker, but the customers are real customers out there in the energy market.  Third and very important, this is a real awakening in the United States of key institutions, not just quote "just the administration", but a real awakening of key institutions in this country to the urgency of climate change and the reality of what I just talked about, the fact that this is a legitimate business, that the smartest financial minds in the world are committing themselves and committing their capital to this business. That is a very important awakening.  And I think what you heard Andy Karshner talk about this morning is something that I think is a very important process, this major emitter is what will probably be you know, be more and more referred to as MEMs, the major emitter meeting or the major economy meeting process that the Administration began to pioneer last fall and will be carrying through the g8 and beyond.  Based on my own experience is a sign of a really new serious concrete commitment by this Administration and of course Andy is, there is no better advocate than Andy that this problem needs to be solved.  It needs to be embodied in agreements.  It needs to be embodied in commitments.  But as we heard this morning it needs to involve every country in the world.  And fourth, it is an election year and in my view change is the big word.  You talk to young people.  You talk to people of both parties, change is the big issue. And the change issue is particularly important now, because there is a fundamental undercurrent of concern about American leadership in the world, American economic leadership, political and cultural leadership in the world.  There is a concern about it.  None of us are throwing in the towel or giving up, but there is a real concern about that.  And alternative energy, renewable energy is not the only answer to the challenges that America faces.  But I think everybody is now seeing it an important projection of the United States in this century into the world in terms of our innovative skills, our technical strengths, our entrepreneurial strengths.  You saw the dramatic disproportionate balance of venture capital money in the United States.  It is not a coincidence.  It is all part of the culture here.  Obviously this is a global issue and we've have heard about it and we will hear more about what the global renewable energy community needs to do to be sure that renewable energy is really part of the solution to climate, and that is really my last contextual point. And that is in spite of everything that I have just said, we know particularly in this country that there are a lot of skeptics including sophisticated people who say, yes this industry is coming, but for the next 20 years it is really not going to be a major factor in reducing green house gases, that in 15 or 20 years it will be, but it is not likely to be during this critical period coming up. Obviously, we don't believe that, but it is important for us to be pulling together.  We can't force the success of the business and at the end of the day, the renewable energy business needs to succeed based on offering a superior value proposition to the energy market. We know that that is happening and can happen. The primary things holding it back in my view can be characterized as we also heard this morning and you have hear me talk about many times, turf, fragmented information, turf, institutions not effectively communicating and working together. And that is really what this conference is all about is getting all the key sectors on the same page, so that the difficult progress we have to make is not held back by just unnecessary miscommunication or people kind of protecting their sand boxes. So we want to be on the same page in the global situation and we have the best possible panel we could have, so I will shut up and turn it over to the great panelists that we have.  We have assembled experts and it is too bad that, did you mention Governor Vilsack?  Governor Vilsak who really very much wanted to be here had a significant illness in the family and so was not able to be with us. But we have assembled, even in his absence, the leaders, the best mix of leaders from the financial community, the business, the energy business community, government and NGO sector as well to talk about their views of the current situation, what the priorities need to be in 2008 and going forward.  So let me start by and then Pat will take over, but let me start by introducing our first speaker, a good friend and a wonderful man, Admiral Dennis McGinn.  Denny is in all of our views a navy hero.  He has a long successful career in the navy.  He was Commander of the Third Fleet, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations and throughout all this was always an innovator.  He got the energy, the new energy economy passion while he was in the navy, innovated many things.  He has been a Senior Vice President of Batelle, been involved in major non-profit and for-profit enterprises and is always, everything he does he brings energy, leadership and passion about the new energy economy.  Please join me in welcoming Admiral Denny McGinn. <Applause>.