My very own picture of former POTUS Bill Clinton
I have always enjoyed working for an energy efficiency utility, but this perk really took it to a new level. On October 1, President Bill Clinton himself gave the keynote address at the 2014 World Energy Engineering Conference in Washington, DC, and I was in attendance.
This was, needless to say, the highlight of the conference. Every panel I went to after that referred to his speech - "as Bill Clinton said yesterday" and such. Follow me below the fold for an overview.
I broke his address down into three main themes:
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Financing
One theme Mr. Clinton focused on was the challenge of financing non-fossil fuel energy projects.
"A lot of the things you all have been working for —solar, wind, building efficiency, geothermal...— we're on the verge of being able to achieve, but we still have a hundred year old finance system holding back 21st century energy growth," Clinton said to a group of energy and engineering experts.
"It's all in the financing. The reason we have not done more of this, is not enough companies are willing or able to self-finance, and the financial system looks at this as not a good deal," he added.
This is well known in the industry, and it was great to hear him say it. Why are people willing to finance a coal plant that has a twenty year payback, but not energy efficiency projects that have a seven year payback?
The reason, of course, is that the regulatory structure makes the coal plant a safe bet. Without gong into detail here, you have a finance and regulatory system that had a 100-year head start. For renewables and efficiency, we need to catch up.
I was thrilled to hear him specifically refer to improved transparency and rigor in energy savings calculations. Investors need to have credible information before they will put $ on the line.
Economic Development
Mr. Clinton was involved with the development of wind farms in the Dominican Republic, and it was a phenomenal success. Apparently, that island nation (well, half an island) had previously relied on diesel generators for their electric needs. This was extremely expensive and unreliable, with daily power outages and a retail electric price of $0.37/kWh. Obviously, the fuel needed to be shipped in to the island it was an economic burden to the country as a whole.
After the installation of the wind farm, the price dropped to $0.25/kWh and the reliability of the grid vastly improved. As time progresses, the addition of more wind or solar will improve things further.
His new grand-daughter
This address was on October 1, so the September 27 birth of Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky was still pretty fresh on his mind.
It was quite moving to hear Mr. Clinton talk about his own father, William Jefferson Blythe, who died three months before the future president was born. The same thoughts that went through his mind when Chelsea was born cropped up again - not only did Bill experiencing something that his father did not when Chelsea was born, now that child was bringing a child into the world. He described the experience of "seeing a brain turn on" and various "first's". Then he stopped for a minute and said "this is what it's all about."
At the end of the day, he was standing there as a grandfather who had the same feelings I had when my children were born. It really was something.
Definitely a worthwhile conference :-).