The New York Energy Week Opening Ceremony highlighted the challenges and opportunities for industry and policy involvement in promoting renewable energy technologies, setting the stage for events and panels that would be held throughout week of June 24-28. Keynote speakers included Kenneth Daly, the President of National Grid New York; Richard Kauffman, the Chairman of Energy and Finance in the Office of the Governor of the State of New York; Francis J. Murray, Jr., the President and CEO of NYSERDA; and Theodore Roosevelt IV, the Managing Director of Barclays Capital. In addition, the event featured Andrew Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard of the Solar Impulse Project, Kristin Barbato of the NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services, and David Francoeur of Genscape.
Panelists discussed the significance of finding the right balance between energy policy and the private sector. This balance would combine progressive and enlightened public policy with industry funding, particularly when addressing wind, solar, and new smart grid capabilities. While industry is leading many of these initiatives, public-private partnerships and new regulatory models will create new incentives to facilitate and promote new ideas.
For example, Kenneth Daly of National Grid New York outlined the “energy trilemma” of affordability, reliability, and sustainability. He cited the example of the Brooklyn-Queens Pipeline Project, which required federal legislation and the president’s signature to be passed, and which exemplifies public support for providing stable, clean energy to New York.
On the wholesale side, David Francoeur of Genscape provided an overview of Genscape’s ability to measure actual market oil, natural gas, power, and biofuel fundamentals in real-time or near-time to provide increased market transparency.
For individual users, panelists said the demand response and differentiation of electricity “smart thermostat” models will create incentives for industry and consumers to operate more efficiently as customers are able to invest in both information and technology.
The panelists agreed that the right regulations and government intervention can promote and facilitate new ideas. New innovation from industry is allowing increased access to real-time market data, and new technologies will further empower customers to want to use energy efficiently. While industry waits for direction at the federal congressional level, there is still a role for regulatory agencies, particularly as innovators in industry work with academia and the private sector to promote economic development.
Moving forward, key questions remain over the best regulatory approach and the question of bottom line costs to the users in energy efficiency — whether the individual is cheaper than the collective, and in the ideal regulatory model what part of the generation system should be regulated. There will be a role for new technologies in smart metering and in creating individual user transparency for energy savings data, and industry will continue to drive innovation in clean energy technologies. But ultimately, the question will be whether capital for these new developments will come from the market or from the state. At the state level, new utility business and state regulatory models could create a financing infrastructure for a competitive financing, furthering incentives for industry investment.
