How to Avoid an Energy Crisis

Schneider Electric hosted a panel discussion on the looming energy crisis during a recent event in Newport, R.I.

Chris Curtis, CEO of Schneider Electric, discussed these issues with Neil Rasmussen, APC founder & CIO; Paul Hamilton, senior vice president, Energy University; Dave Cappuccio, research vice president, Gartner Inc.; Andrew Lawrence, research director, Eco-Efficient ITT & The 451 Group; and Ronald H. Bowman Jr., executive vice president, Tishman Technologies.

What's the one thing you would want to see done in the next six months about energy efficiency and the energy crisis?

Lawrence: Everybody knows about the global problem. When you go inside a company, their carbon [emission rate] is on their minds. I want to see an awareness of CEO's actions — beyond financial.

Bowman: If there's a frothiness in the awareness, it's in metering. It's all about measuring, measuring, measuring. But there's no liquidity. Thirteen years ago, Nortel would finance something. Now, they won't finance. There's no liquidity. Liquidity is a huge logjam.

Rasmussen: In business, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Right now, inefficiency doesn't mean "broken." That's what we need to change.

Cappuccio: Money — that's the green that really matters to IT people. When they can save money, that's important to them. In the IT industry, they're not really educated [about energy efficiency]. If you go into a data center today, you could probably see 60 percent of what they do as wrong.

What relationships will have to change to address the energy crisis?

Rasmussen: Listen, we're in the low-hanging fruit stage here. The things that are out there are so silly and stupid. It's the next level that will require instruments to make things visible.

Bowman: China is moving as fast, if not faster, than we [the U.S.] are. They're more invested in solar. They're about to be more invested in wind. They're spending the intellectual capital, doing the right thing.

Hamilton: If you look at the regulatory policies of China, they are pretty advanced. They have the ability to execute things very quickly. That said, there's a huge energy problem there. All the energy is on the coasts. Inland, they're still burning coal. Somewhere, the dynamics are very different. I would say we are in a better position to criticize.

Rasmussen: The first step the government has to do is get some standards in place. One of the real problems is going to be backward compatibility, which really just protects the status quo — and the status quo is not the answer.

If anybody needs [to be criticized] for a lack of policies, it's [the U.S.]. We've just been asleep here. Regulation is going to be tough. Don't we need to see a stick or a carrot?

Rasmussen: Putting taxes on energy: You can't go there. It's just not going to happen. Even the cap-and-trade is getting diluted. But standards can be passed, like they did for refrigerators.

Hamilton: You have to give the industries rules or regulation, but tax things — I think there will just be too much resistance.

Is it too late to avoid an energy crisis?

Bowman: I'm pulling for the home team. In 2007, we set aside a $1 billion for this, but haven't touched it. We're a quarters country. We're driven by profit. We're victims of our own immediacy.

Rasmussen: We certainly have an administration that's committed. I was just in the White House, essentially, to receive a lecture from [U.S. Energy Dept. Secretary Steven Chu]. He said, "You guys have to get your butts in gear."