Jim Rogers and Duke Energy

I had the privilege of attending the HBS Energy Symposium yesterday and although sobered by Frederick Palmer’s Peabody Energy opening keynote about the necessity of using abundant and cheap coal for our global energy requirements (look for my post later this week), I was inspired by James Rogers and his commitment to the environment. Jim Rogers is the Chairman, President and CEO of Duke Energy and he measures his success by what his grandchildren will tell their grandchildren about his efforts today to solve our CO2 emissions problem.

Rogers believes that all people deserve access to electricity and he is working at Duke Energy, on Capitol Hill and in Copenhagen to provide it and to reduce emissions at the same time. His afternoon keynote covered a lot of Cleantech categories, but I decided to post it under Smart Grid because Jim Rogers and Duke Energy are doing a lot of Smart Thinking. Duke Energy is operating as if the U.S. and Copenhagen climate change initiatives already had been enacted.

The primary objectives for the company are to modernize and decarbonize their power generation AND to make their communities served as energy efficient as possible. Rogers has added these goals to the historical mandates of economic and reliable energy for customers. Duke Energy produces 96% of it’s power from coal and nuclear generating plants.

From 2010 to 2050, Duke Energy’s entire fleet of generating plants will be replaced since the average plant life is 40 years. What plants should be built to replace their existing fleet? He mentioned coal, nuclear, natural gas and renewables, but emphasized the need for technological solutions to achieve environmental parity. Coal requires carbon capture and storage (CCS), natural gas only halves the CO2 emissions of coal, and renewables require energy storage if used on a large scale due to the intermittent supply of solar and wind power.

In an effort to learn more about distributed generation and support CO2 emissions-reducing capital outlays for their customers who earn, on average, approximately $40,000/year, Duke Energy is funding residential solar panel installations. Rogers wants to shift the company from “generation to the meter to generation to the application” thinking. Duke Energy is working with technology start-ups and he sees the company becoming a distributor of smart technologies to their customers. He also believes that today’s energy efficiency measures will be considered primitive in 5-10 years.

In a recent pilot program conducted with 40 customers, energy consumption was reduced by 20% without customers perceiving any change in usage. A suite of smart ideas were implemented to achieve this reduction.

On the international stage, Rogers believes that ultimately an agreement between the U.S. and China who together are responsible for 50% of CO2 emissions in the world could be a catalyst for significant progress. He also believes that building a “ladder of cooperation” rung by rung between U.S. and Chinese companies will foster a closer relationship between the two countries required for an agreement. Actions speak louder than words and China is or will soon be number one in photovoltaic, battery and wind turbine production.

The time for “half measures” is over. The time for wind, but not eminent domain or for natural gas, but not if it comes from offshore is over. We also need to realize that “every job is a green job”. Everyone can and must do what he or she does every day more energy efficiently. The transition will not be cheap or easy or quick, but it must be fair and it must begin now.

Rogers emphasized the need for “cathedral thinking” where, for example, three generations built Notre Dame over 100 years based on “vision, commitment and faith”. His even better analogy was the Cathedral of Florence which was worked on for over 100 years before anyone knew how to build the massive dome to complete the cathedral. Brunelleschi won the dome competition by inventing the Dome design approximately 100 years after the cathedral was started! Rogers wants us to employ “cathedral thinking” in China time since we don’t have 100 years to solve the problem.

Jim Rogers is a stronger believer in technology to make smart energy decisions for us than in all of us constantly thinking about and making wise decisions about energy use at home.