Event Title
Building New Energy Economies: Policy and Business Models
Location
Board Room, Carnegie Institution for Science
Event Website
http://ipsonet.org/web/page/512/sectionid/375/pagelevel/2/interior.asp
Start Date
4-12-2009 2:00 PM
End Date
4-12-2009 3:00 PM
Description
Chair: Guillermo Izabal, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Abstract: The Obama Administration in its first year has done extremely important work on energy policy, including placing intelligent, experienced people in key positions; re-creating federal incentives for renewable energy and investing significant amounts in research and development of clean, renewable energy technologies and practices. At the moment, while we do not know what level of Renewable Energy Standard will be implemented, the fact that our government is close to instituting a RES is tremendously meaningful for expanding renewable energy. But does it do enough to create diverse business models of renewable energy projects that will at the same time catalyze renewed economic development across American rural communities.
Community ownership of renewable energy development, and in terms of wind we call it Community Wind, is a triple strategy of increasing renewable energy to address climate change, enhancing local and national energy security and stimulating sustainable, robust economic development in rural communities. We know that development of wind energy in the next decade will take place on rural lands. The most important issue the Administration faces is not merely re-fashioning the American manufacturing economy to make turbines and solar panels and the many other elements that make up the supply chain; neither is it transmission, although this is an investment and project of great magnitude. The greatest policy issue the Administration faces is ownership and business models. The American wind energy industry to date has been developed almost entirely by a handful of large, usually multinational, corporate interests that could utilize the federal Production Tax Credit. When the economy tanked, the wind industry tanked as well. President Obama faces an unprecedented opportunity to introduce policies that will transform the business opportunity of energy production so that ordinary community people - farmers, ranchers, rural landowners - can access incentives and programs to assist them to develop a multitude of distributed renewable generation such as wind farms that will not only power the country but power local economies, as well.
Building New Energy Economies: Policy and Business Models
Board Room, Carnegie Institution for Science
Chair: Guillermo Izabal, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Abstract: The Obama Administration in its first year has done extremely important work on energy policy, including placing intelligent, experienced people in key positions; re-creating federal incentives for renewable energy and investing significant amounts in research and development of clean, renewable energy technologies and practices. At the moment, while we do not know what level of Renewable Energy Standard will be implemented, the fact that our government is close to instituting a RES is tremendously meaningful for expanding renewable energy. But does it do enough to create diverse business models of renewable energy projects that will at the same time catalyze renewed economic development across American rural communities.
Community ownership of renewable energy development, and in terms of wind we call it Community Wind, is a triple strategy of increasing renewable energy to address climate change, enhancing local and national energy security and stimulating sustainable, robust economic development in rural communities. We know that development of wind energy in the next decade will take place on rural lands. The most important issue the Administration faces is not merely re-fashioning the American manufacturing economy to make turbines and solar panels and the many other elements that make up the supply chain; neither is it transmission, although this is an investment and project of great magnitude. The greatest policy issue the Administration faces is ownership and business models. The American wind energy industry to date has been developed almost entirely by a handful of large, usually multinational, corporate interests that could utilize the federal Production Tax Credit. When the economy tanked, the wind industry tanked as well. President Obama faces an unprecedented opportunity to introduce policies that will transform the business opportunity of energy production so that ordinary community people - farmers, ranchers, rural landowners - can access incentives and programs to assist them to develop a multitude of distributed renewable generation such as wind farms that will not only power the country but power local economies, as well.
http://www.psocommons.org/dupont_summit/2009/schedule/11