28 February 2008
Generating Energy While Fighting Climate Change
Podcast with renewable energy industry and policy experts
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Narrator: In this feature presentation, America.gov looks at technology-driven approaches to generating energy and fighting climate change, and how America is working with its partners in the Asia-Pacific region to create a sustainable energy future.
President Bush: The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change. And the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more energy-efficient technology.
Narrator: In his final State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress, President Bush described measures to address energy and climate change.
He also set the stage for the third in a series of major international conferences on renewable energy. In March 2008, thousands of public and private sector officials will arrive in Washington from all over the world for the 2008 International Renewable Energy Conference -- following up on previous meetings in Beijing and Bonn.
Since the close of the 2005 Beijing conference, production of renewable energy has increased dramatically worldwide. Once considered “alternative,” wind, solar, and biomass technologies are now global, large-scale businesses.
The United States, with its partners around the Pacific Rim, launched the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate in July 2005. Next, we’re joined by industry and policy experts to explore how the partnership works…
The Asia Pacific Partnership, or APP, is truly a partnership in every sense. Companies from all participating nations work alongside governments on eight task forces. For the companies, sustainability is the new reality, and is quickly defining business strategy.
Richard Brent: We’re a company that’s been in business since 1927. We have 6,000 employees; we’re in 93 countries....
Narrator: Richard Brent is Director of Government Affairs for the company Solar Turbines. He explained how the company’s Chief Executive summed up the challenge facing their business.
Brent: We will be a sustainable company. We are socially responsible. Now tell me how we’re going to do that and grow profitably. Not -- we want to grow profitably and we have to do it sustainably.
Narrator: Solar Turbines is owned by Caterpillar, a global leader in heavy equipment manufacturing. For many global companies of this size, sustainability and social responsibility are now becoming integrated into the core values and operational routines of the business. Movements in the business world described as shareholder activism and corporate social responsibility have signaled to executives that change is underway. But more than any other factors, the issues of energy security and climate change have increased the level of risk to businesses and societies. Three years ago, Brent along with representatives from other leading companies, received a call from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Brian O'Hanlon: We first looked at companies that were already engaged in the APP partner countries.
Brian O’Hanlon manages the APP program in the U.S. Commerce Department’s Office of Environmental Industries.
O'Hanlon: For the rest of the companies it’s been more of an organic process. First of all, we got APP up and running, we have worked with our U.S. government colleagues to start getting the word out in a variety of fora -- mass media, large events, and then one-on-one contacts.
Narrator: Around the region, American companies are joined by their counterparts. The Confederation of Indian Industry was founded over 112 years ago, and plays an active role in India’s development process by working closely with government and nongovernmental organizations. The Confederation is India’s premier business association. But in addition, it focuses on human resource development and projecting a positive image of business in the community -- two keys to sustainability. Sundaresan Raghupathy is senior director and head of the Green Business Center.
Sundaresan Raghupathy: We at CII believe that the Asia Pacific Partnership is an excellent mechanism to facilitate technology transfer and networking on areas of clean and green technology. From a developing country perspective, there are maximum benefits in the following areas: a) access to technology, b) access to best practices and institutional mechanisms, c) access to exports.
Narrator: The market for clean energy and related “green” technologies has been described as one of the largest commercial opportunities in history. Many large companies are dedicating significant time and investment to the pursuit of that market. And the importance of a multilateral, government-backed project-development program is evident to participating companies.
Brent: I can remember vividly sitting next to a photovoltaic company, we we’re both talking to each other and saying this is a great program. This is the ability to use the convening power of the government to take our technology to other countries and have them understand it has the backing of the United States, so we all raised our hands and said we’d like to participate.
Narrator: Up next, the process behind the Asia Pacific Partnership, and how the energy and climate challenges are leading to innovations in the traditional relationship between enterprise and government.
The twin challenges of energy security and climate change demand innovation not only in technology, but in policymaking as well. Companies accustomed to a regulatory-driven relationship with governments may find the APP a little confusing. What exactly is the APP? O’Hanlon explains…
O'Hanlon: APP is a very unusual program. There is a funding component, but that really is minimal funding. This is really time for us to sit down and to connect you with policymakers in these partner countries and have you tell us what you need to create an enabling environment and they want to know how that works – do they go to meetings, trade missions, oftentimes you will see industry if they’re brought into international processes at all as a side consultant who will comment on drafts after they come up or before they have been formulated. Industry’s really not used to sitting down with policymakers working collaboratively on the project as it develops.
Narrator: In fact, both government and industry representatives sit on each of the eight APP task forces that develop and implement the Partnership’s action plans. Five of the task forces address individual sectors: buildings and appliances, steel, cement, aluminum, and coal mining. The remaining three task forces concern energy supply from fossil fuels, renewable energy, and power generation and transmission. Each region brings different priorities and expertise…
Raghupathy: We in India are looking for a lot of technologies related to clean coal technologies. Building and energy consumption is also a very significant factor. The Indian green building industry is going in a very significant fashion. There’s a tremendous demand for green buildings. So building automation and the green building materials technologies will help us in a big way. To be globally competitive, we need to do something significantly in terms of cost reduction.
Narrator: A central feature of the Partnership is the generation of action plans by task forces. Solar Turbines was selected to participate on the Renewable Energy and Distributed Generation Task Force. Brent explains how sustainable energy can be achieved through many methods, such as combining heat and power generation and how one technology is a key element of a sustainable energy future.
Brent: Combined heat and power is the crown jewel of distributed generation because it is the most efficient, and for one fuel, say natural gas, it delivers electrons, it delivers steam, so I can condition a building, I can provide industrial heating...
Narrator: Part of the focus of the renewable energy task force is market deployment in order to make renewable technologies cost-competitive. Companies cooperate with their government counterparts to facilitate demonstration projects. In this case, that means traveling to rural areas to identify local needs and appropriate technology-based solutions.
Brent: When we were asked to put together projects, they were not necessarily projects that were market-enabling or study projects where we could spend the next few years trying to figure out whether it made sense. We want to put iron in the ground. Real projects with our hardware, not just my company’s but lots of companies’ hardware that could make a difference to a village, for energy poverty alleviation…
Narrator: U.S. government agencies leading the policymaking side of the Partnership, like the Departments of State, Energy, Interior and Commerce, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Agency for International Development, welcome the technological expertise of private sector participants. Opening the development process at the earliest stages to private participation is new to many organizations, but the resulting range of policy options is the big payoff. O’Hanlon agrees...
O'Hanlon: It’s the industries and technologies that are guiding the policymaking process. I think that industry helps us to save time in looking at the menu of policy options that we have on the table and helps us to be more accurate in our remedies. It’s a little bit of confusion and then growing excitement as together we try to talk about how this program could benefit them.
Narrator: Up next -- how will this unprecedented partnership between government and enterprise delivers results that impact climate change, energy security, and the lives of millions of citizens...
Brent: I’m convinced that the private sector drives as hard as the public sector does. In fact, it’s not a government-to-government dialogue. It’s a government/private sector to government/private sector dialogue.
Narrator: According to recent studies from the United Nations, investments in renewable energy reached $71 billion in 2006, a record, which represents a 43 percent increase over 2005. Similar growth is expected in the future. The Washington International Renewable Energy Conference seeks to expand the scope for private sector participation in addressing the twin challenges of energy security and climate change.
The conference focuses on several issues central to Asia Pacific Partnership activities such as technology research and market adoption. While this year’s conference allows participants to consider and share new information and developments, programs such as the Asia-Pacific partnership facilitate trade in new technologies. But it also adds another element. U.S. Commerce Department’s Brian O’Hanlon…
O'Hanlon: Not only is it trade facilitation but it’s more a deployment mechanism; a broad enabling framework that would allow these technologies to flourish.
Narrator: The Asia Pacific Partnership is an example of a true action-based partnership with full private-sector participation. It is primarily concerned with achieving results, which guide the policymaking process, rather than policymaking guiding expectations on results. O’Hanlon explained that the APP is in full compliance with the goals and spirit of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
O'Hanlon: While there’s been fears that this was a replacement or an alternative to Kyoto, this is very much a complementary program. This can happen in any sort of policy environment – with Kyoto, post-Kyoto, or without one.
In America, technological developments, which include hardware, operational and manufacturing processes, and even new ways or organizing existing materials, can come from anywhere. The partnership is providing the policy environment that companies say they need to make rapid progress. Professionals like Richard Brent see real opportunities for innovation and progress.
Brent: We’ve reached out a number of times to other industries in the United States -- small, medium, and large -- and said you’ve got to get involved, please turn in a project, this is very exciting.
Narrator: For American companies like Solar Turbines and their counterparts around the region, the potential benefits are considerable. And those benefits are accessible to companies of all sizes. Small and medium enterprises in the United States are the backbone of the economy, and often provide new insights into technological developments. But for many of these smaller enterprises it is difficult to dedicate time to exploring fiercely competitive foreign markets. Professionals such as Richard Brent realize the APP doesn’t solve this for companies…
Brent: What it does though instead is it says to the Koreans we want to see your technology, too. We want to know that we can truly partner. It’s not a one-way street and this has opened up a lot of peoples’ eyes that there can be a dialogue amongst industry on sharing best-value technologies…
Narrator: New technologies are the key to effectively fighting climate change while lifting millions in the developing world out of poverty. Both are required -- and must advance together. Across America and the world, enterprises are answering President Bush’s call to design and deploy new and clean energy technologies. The Asia Pacific Partnership is helping provide the financial, policy and business frameworks that will power a sustainable energy future.
The Washington International Renewable Energy Conference is hosted by the United States government in cooperation with the American Council on Renewable Energy. This year’s conference is the third global ministerial-level conference on renewable energy, following events in Beijing in 2005 and Bonn in 2004. The conference brings together government, civil society and private business leaders, and features a trade show and 75 official side events.
Visit the conference Web site at www.wirec2008.gov
This podcast is produced by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs. Links to other Internet sites or opinions expressed should not be considered an endorsement of other content and views.
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(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
