Overheard this week at EEI's remarkable conclave of power industry leaders in the city by the bay:

David Ratcliffe, Southern Company, "We're literally on the cusp of new energy technollogy development - a whole new world."

Peter Darbee, Pacific Gas & Electric, "No other industry faces the challenges we face."

Craig Mundie, Microsoft [chief research and strategic officer],"We need to be on a zero carbon quest."

Dennis Welch, American Electric Power [exec vp environment] "We have the largest opportunity... we are going to solve this problem using all technology."

Roger Efird, Suntech America [president], "Utility companies getting interested in solar are going to change the landscape."

More to come in EnergyBiz - the magazine.

Interesting factoid. Mundie said that if computers can be made to fire up and go to sleep more rapidly and responsively, then it would cut carbon emissions 3 percent - and save us all $22 billion. Nice pocket change.

Also, some of the big coal burning utilities openly were dissing the FutureGen coal CCS research project - and their grumblings were confirmed in news accounts today that the power industry is pulling back on its support of the effort.