Publication Date: Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Guest Opinion: Leading America toward a new energy future - for survival
Guest Opinion: Leading America toward a new energy future - for survival
(October 05, 2005) by Nicole Lederer
This summer marked the 25th anniversary of my arrival in Palo Alto. I came at 23 to start my first research position at Stanford Hospital while my fiancˇ attended Stanford Business School. During those years, I married and raised two daughters, both now in college.
I'm also celebrating another kind of anniversary -- with more than 600 people whom I'm proud to call my partners. I don't know them all personally, but we share an important vision as members of Environmental Entrepreneurs, or E2 -- a national, non-partisan group of business people and professionals I co-founded in 2000.
What sets us apart is our message: that good environmental performance goes hand in hand with strong economic performance -- that economic realities are the most persuasive drivers of environmental progress. Our experience proves this to be true.
Take energy. Solving America's energy problem is not just a big challenge. It's also a huge economic opportunity -- in disguise. Our national dependence on fossil fuels will make us or break us, depending on whether we seize the opportunity to at last do something real about it.
Our addiction to oil rears up everywhere, like a many-headed beast. There's the shock we all face at the gas pump, but there's a larger monetary and human cost required by a foreign policy dominated by oil.
The growing global competition for this dwindling resource will likely result in our kids and grandkids fighting future wars such as Iraq -- and by then our adversaries really will be likely to have weapons of mass destruction.
Yet that's just the tip of this melting iceberg. In addition to all the national and economic security problems we now bear in the name of oil, scientists are increasingly sure that our consumption of carbon-based fuels is causing profound, unnatural shifts in our global climate patterns -- changes that could be costly beyond imagination.
We need vision and leadership in fueling our future. But the energy bill Congress finally passed in late July does nothing to address the root causes of our problems. Our national leaders made it clear: that vision must come from somewhere else.
You'd think the bill was from a different century. We've known for years we can't possibly drill our way to energy independence. Yet the bill subsidizes massive oil-exploration operations in our country's most sensitive public lands and along our protected coastlines -- precious public natural resources are assigned little value.
Positive oil-reduction strategies in the original bill, such as increased vehicle fuel-efficiency standards and requiring that renewable resources provide 10 percent of our electricity by 2020, never got real consideration. These would have helped diversify our energy supply with clean, domestic resources while reducing global-warming pollution. Congress also killed a provision to cut national oil consumption by a million barrels a day by 2015.
The final bill does nothing to reduce our dependence on oil.
It might have made sense in 1905 to provide tax breaks and subsidies for coal, oil and gas, when the internal-combustion engine was cutting-edge technology. Today, our future depends on clean, renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies.
Last May, I and 17 other E2 members traveled to Washington to encourage members of Congress to show some of the vision needed to help America thrive in the 21st century. We met with nearly 50 legislators, Republicans and Democrats, to promote the idea that clean energy is good for both the environment and business. We presented a statement signed by more than 80 venture capitalists and investors urging Congress to set federal limits on emissions of global-warming pollution to stimulate innovation and investment in clean technologies.
Our message was well received, but many legislators are still not ready to commit to a new direction in energy policy.
Without federal leadership, we'll have to apply what I call "bubble-up economics" -- the entrepreneurial and investment communities will have to show our political leaders the light.
The "clean technology" sector -- businesses addressing resource efficiency and management problems (such as water conservation and purification, alternative-energy generation, transportation innovations, pollution controls and energy-efficient building materials and techniques) -- is expanding in spite of backward national energy policies.
Venture investments in Clean Tech now represent $1.4 billion annually, 7 percent of total venture dollars placed.
Congress may be fiddling around while the world warms, but California leads the nation in innovative carbon-emission legislation and policies. A year ago, we adopted the nation's first standard to cut global-warming pollution from cars -- requiring carbon dioxide and other pollutants to be reduced 22 percent by the 2012 and 30 percent by 2016.
Our tailpipe-emission standard, rapidly being embraced by other states and nations, will accelerate adoption of existing clean-vehicle technologies, such as hybrid engines and variable valve timing, as well as spur new innovations such as super strong, lightweight materials.
E2 supported an alternative-fuels bill, AB1007, signed into law last week by Governor Schwarzenegger, that will promote non-petroleum-based transportation fuels, with an emphasis on biofuels. The goal is to grow our fuel, not have to drill for it.
Rapidly developing economic powers such as China are aggressively adopting energy-efficient technologies to leapfrog the era of the Industrial Revolution of the mid-1800s that the United States seems so reluctant to leave behind.
If America is going to be competitive in the global market of the future, we must look forward, not backward. "Business as usual" has become far too risky and costly.
The good news is that investing in change offers enormous opportunity to re-invigorate our economy, create new jobs at home and export products of genuine benefit to the whole world.
Since I first arrived here 25 years ago, Silicon Valley defined the latest version of the American dream -- where creativity, hard work and risk taking were richly rewarded -- producing world-changing innovations.
We have the technological expertise, entrepreneurial tradition and financial infrastructure in place, We're ready to lead the next revolution.
Nicole Lederer is a Palo Alto resident, a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and co-founder of Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), www.e2.org. She can be e-mailed at nicole@nicolelederer.com.
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