Different Reasons to Love Renewable Energy
I had an experience yesterday at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum in San Francisco that I thought I’d share. Right before lunch, I took the opportunity to pose a question to the panel on the stage, prefaced with this announcement:
I see a few people around the room checking the latest news on their cell phones, so it’s probable that I’m not the only person in this room who knows that President Obama has rejected the Keystone XL pipeline. Now some people will say that this is a symbolic gesture, and I don’t dispute that. But ask yourself: What does it symbolize? To me, the answer is obvious. It means that the US, despite all historical indications to the contrary, actually does have an energy policy, and it’s one that contemplates the welfare of the world’s people while rejecting the corruptive effects of the oil companies’ money and power. If this makes anyone else in this room as proud to be an American as I am myself right this moment, I call upon them to join me in a round of applause.
Here’s the punch line: I got the smallest smattering of applause, to which I muttered to the guy sitting behind me: “Oh well, that wasn’t particularly rousing, but thanks anyway.”
My take-away: Finance people really don’t care too much about the underlying asset class. As the lady who sat next to me at lunch explained, “You have to understand that, to most of these people, this could just as well be pork bellies, oil and gas, or commercial real estate.” She was completely correct, of course. She went on to provide encouragement: “The good news is that renewable energy is a very big deal on investors’ radar screens at this point, and it’s getting more so every year.” Right again.
I did take some solace, however, when the interim president of the hosting organization, ACORE (the American Council on Renewable Energy – Dan Reicher, pictured above) came over to shake my hand and thank me for the comment. It felt good to know that there was someone of some substance there who didn’t think I was out of my gourd.
Re: Mr. Reicher:
Dan is Executive Director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, a joint center of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Law School, where he also holds faculty positions. Reicher came to Stanford in 2011 from Google, where he served since 2007 as Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives.
Reicher has more than 25 years of experience in energy and environmental policy, finance, and technology. He has served three Presidents including in the Clinton administration as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Department of Energy Chief of Staff, as a member of President Obama’s Transition Team and Co-chair of the Energy and Environment Team for Obama, and as a staff member of President Carter’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island.
Craig,
Possibly your comments received a lukewarm reaction because most people see the question of Keystone in more simple terms that your more esoteric view.
Most people see the issue simply as a decision of how to transport Canadian oil from Canada to oil refineries in the southern US. Rail or Pipeline.
The concept that without Keystone, the Canadians with abandon oil production, is bizarre. At the best the US will continue to import Canadian oil albeit by a less safe, less economic, and far less environmental method. At worst the Canadian sell to Asia, and the US resumes it’s dependency on places such as Venezuela and the Gulf States.
Possibly also, many people see this as a decision made by a President, and party, heavily beholden to it’s largest source of considerable campaign contributors, the vested interests representing the rail option.
Did you really imagine the Chief lobbyist for the RFS would be unbiased about an oil pipeline ?