HOUSTON - The air is cracking with excitement and ideas at CERA Week, which is today attracting a record attendance of several thousand from around the world.
Some of the highlights. More coverage to come in EnergyBiz magazine.
Greg Boyce, chairman and CEO of Peabody Energy, the largest coal company in the US: "We cannot conserve our way to global prosperity." And on the promise of carbon sequestration underground, the solution to global warming: "We have enough storage for hundreds of years."
Linda Cook, Royal Dutch Shell executive director, gas and power, "A barrel of oil saved is better than a barrel of oil discovered."
Donald Evans, Energy Future Holdings Corp. chairman: "We want more Texans to use less electricity."
Deryk King, Direct Energy chairman and CEO: "We have a greenhouse gas problem now but lack the political will to say and do what must be done." And, "It's not neccesary to bankroll energy efficiency initiatives through the ratebase."
Best of all at these events is James Rogers, Duke Energy chairman, president and CEO, who is calling for a global energy race akin to the arms race: "We need a competition among countries as to who can become most energy efficient." And "The most energy efficient economy is going to be the most successful one in the future." And "How do we make money in a low-carbon world? We must embrace new technologies."
Then evoking the image of the magnificent cathedrals of Europe that took centuries and many generations to build and complete, Rogers said of our energy economy, "We need a long-term vision. It will take many generations to solve this problem." And then, ominously but thoughfully, Rogers observed, "Name one revolution where there wasn't casualties."
Wish you were here. Don't you?
To satisfy the comments of Linda Cook, Donald Evans, Deryk King, and James Rogers, to start a revolution, it is necessary to make EWPC a shared vision to restructure the electricity industry to: 1) eliminate the barriers to the development of the demand side and 2) to enable the integration of uncertain generation. All that is needed to get the political will going is to get the shared vision to the public at large and "do what must be done. . ." without the need "to bankroll energy efficiency initiatives through the ratebase," as Mr. King suggests.
The ongoing communications revolution is the fuel (pun intended) that reduces transaction costs and introduces the innovative networking effects that allows demand to be integrated to power system planning, operations and control. That way, utilities as we know them and their perverse incentives and barriers disappear and energy efficiency on the demand side will be able to do its job of "saving barrels of oil" with efficient pricing and not on average rates.
The key institution, to integrate demand and make money under EWPC, is the competitive second generation retailer operating at the federal (and eventually global) level that also take on the front and back office operations of the utilities enterprise: the casualty of the revolution. The new utility has a transportation (integrated transmission and distribution) compact at the federal level with a responsibility to transport at ultraquality, facilitating the integration of uncertain generation.
For more details (90 articles so far) go to the EWPC Blog at the link http://www.energyblogs.com/ewpc/