Register and get 30% off standard registration with our DISCOUNT CODE: ELS-energypriorities30

Mark has dedicated his 30-year career to working with utility and Fortune 1000 customers to deliver value, success and profitable growth. He has deep experience in sales, product marketing, go-to-market strategy and profitable general management of ongoing business operations.

Clearly communicate the value of your clean energy technology innovation. Talk to P5 Group today.

As Itron’s senior vice president of Customer and Market Experience, Mark is responsible for leading Itron’s sales, marketing, channel management, business development, customer support and customer success activities across the full company portfolio. Prior to joining Itron, Mark oversaw consulting, support, hosting and account management at Silicon Energy.

The #energyleadershipsummit2020 will have two keynote speakers.

Paula R. Glover, President and CEO of American Association of Blacks in Energy, will open the virtual conference.

The American Association of Blacks in Energy is a national energy trade association that represents all sectors of the energy industry. Paula leads a 2000-member association with 40 chapters nationwide. The association’s focus is to represent the voice for African Americans and other minorities on energy policy, regulations, and environmental issues.

Paula directs the association’s strategic plan, business development and policy positions. She represents the organization before energy industry executives and national and state policy makers. She is an industry thought leader for issues around diversity and inclusion. Her work on international energy issues underscores the importance of energy to improve the quality of life for people throughout the African Continent.

The association under Paula’s leadership has partnered with the US Department of Energy on its Minorities in Energy initiative as well as business development programming for minority entrepreneurs. She has also testified before Congress about the impact of policies on underserved communities.

Paula has more than 25 years of experience in the energy industry, including 15 years in both electric and natural gas distribution companies where she has worked in government affairs, regulatory affairs and economic development. In March 2014 Paula was appointed to the National Petroleum Council by U.S. Secretary of Energy, Dr. Ernest Moniz. She continues to serve on the Council having been reappointed by Secretary Perry in 2016 and Secretary Brouillette in 2020.

The summit agenda will continue with a featured plenary session where regional experts will debate “Re-Envisioning  the Grid for Deep Decarbonization” followed by three breakout tracks.

Our session picks:

Track A: Zero Net Energy: Scaling Solutions, featuring Haley Gardner, International Living Future Institute, and Lawrence Tsang, Convergent Energy + Power. The market potential is exciting.

Track B: The Equity Imperative: Advancing Environmental Justice in the Clean Energy Economy. This issue is no longer on the fringes.

Track C: Energy Storage: Connecting Renewable Supply and Resilient Demand.

Register here for the event, which will be held online November 12, 2020. Get 30% off standard registration with our DISCOUNT CODE: ELS-energypriorities30

Join your peers on November 19, 2019 at the Washington State Conference Center in Seattle to explore the nexus of energy, climate change, and the region’s economy with more than 400 industry leaders and policymakers from across the Northwest.

There’s plenty of room in the exhibit hall, so sharpen your B2B marketing messages and reserve your space. This event attracts the C-level energy executives and utility managers you’re looking for.

Presented jointly by the CleanTech Alliance and the Northwest Environmental Business Council, this unique event connects policy with practice and addresses the industry’s current challenges and future opportunities.

Register before November 1, 2019 to take advantage of early bird registration rates. Click here for more information.

https://art19.com/shows/the-energy-gang/episodes/5193958f-63ec-4f0e-85d8-f8e7ab0807ad/embed?theme=dark-blue
This installment of “The Energy Gang” podcast dives into the pros and cons of new solar import barriers that took effect February 7, 2018. Sudden 30 percent tariffs are indeed spurring talk of new onshore solar module assembly plants, says guest Julia Pyper.

There’s a hitch: The plans that solar manufacturers are discussing would not represent enough capacity to meet the volume needs of a growing solar industry in the United States. Installers and developers are at risk of losing jobs because of capacity constraints. Some manufacturers had signed multiyear deals before the quota was imposed — so U.S. jobs could already be on the chopping block.

New manufacturing would make up for the job losses, right? Not even close. Module manufacturing is highly automated. Any plausible number of new U.S. plants are not likely to employ thousands. And when the economics change, those plants can close as easily as they opened. Tariffs intended to encumber solar exporters for the next four years are likely to harm America first.

“The Energy Gang” is an informal industry-insider podcast for green energy business listeners. Co-hosts Katherine Hamilton (Partner at 38 North Solutions) and Jigar Shah (founder of SunEdison), led by Greentech Media Editor in Chief Stephen Lacey, jump on a conference call every week to spar about the headlines. They share their deep industry knowledge and engage in lively discussions about the technologies, policies and market forces shaping a global energy transformation.

This anthology of energy podcasts would not be complete without this show. Stephen Lacey and I started podcasting about energy wa-a-ay before most people knew what a podcast was. We became friends while he was a reporter-producer at Renewable Energy World and I had just started Energy Priorities. We’ve supported each other’s podcast work, appeared on each other’s shows and collaborated on web pieces together.

Please share your thoughts with us and your colleagues by posting this on your favorite social media network. We’ve provided sharing buttons to make it easy. Mention @TheEnergyGang and @Cleantech. You can also send comments to me by email.

Each Earth Day, which is the anniversary of the founding of Energy Priorities, I hope it will be the year when sustainable energy policy will live up to the unbridled optimism I felt in 2004. I have been scrounging in recent months for ways to restock that optimism, and I found plenty.

Sustainable energy has survived retropolicy administrations before. Everyday environmentalists don’t remember the incoming George W. Bush administration as being so threatening because we didn’t have Facebook and Twitter back then. As expected, that administration was in the pockets of the fossil fuel industries. It was damaging, but not the end of the world.

Sustainable energy has survived an obstructionist Congress before. It was in exactly that political climate that the United States joined the rest of the world in the Paris climate accord, which large businesses including some in utilities, oil, autos and coal still defend.

“Why the US should stay in the Paris climate agreement”
Ban Ki-Moon and Robert Stavins in The Boston Globe

Granted, the outlook has taken a turn for the worst. If that wasn’t evident on inauguration day when the Republican administration’s “America First” philosophy put sustainable energy last, then it is evident today as that embryonic government tries to back out of the Paris Agreement and dismantle renewable energy subsidies, the EPA, and Energy Star.

Gloomy headlines notwithstanding, here are five reasons I feel optimistic for sustainable energy this year:

Businesses and consumers are global.

Not only is the rest of the world way ahead of the United States on sustainability, it is not slowing down. U.S. businesses are working to minimize that gap because being behind will limit growth. Outside this country there is no uncertainty or doubt about global warming; corporate silence on greenhouse gas emissions is complicity in the status quo.

Today it is hard to find a business of any size that confines its businesses within our borders. (My college advisors found it curious, decades ago, that I wanted to study small business and international business. Because, I said: soon all business would be global.) Globalism is real, it benefits Americans, and it’s here to stay.

Many major U.S. companies have embraced sustainable energy as part of broader efforts to bolster their triple bottom line. They see that their global marketplace is made up of consumers who prefer and, in the long run, will demand responsible products made by sustainability-minded businesses.

“Is American Enterprise More Powerful Than The President Of The United States?”
Ken Silverstein in FORBES

Investors hold the purse strings.

Even if environmental policies are rolled back, investors have shown that they won’t stand for giving businesses carte blanche to disregard environmental governance. Pension fund investors and university stakeholders have demanded divestiture from polluting businesses. Some of the largest funds have championed responsible investing for a decade or longer. Activist investors, even conservative institutional investors, can do the same in any public company including utilities.

“Investors Sharpen Focus on Social and Environmental Risks to Stocks”
Randall Smith in The New York Times

States are stepping up climate policy.

States have financial influence on the national stage. Some states will meet climate action commitments without the Paris agreement, which is good PR for Governors.

The states, not feds, make utility regulatory decisions about how much to support renewables and efficiency. And utilities always think far beyond the current administration, often planning 40 to 60 years out.

Governors can insist that “investing in American infrastructure” includes sustainable energy and a smarter grid. Or at least refuse to participate in building dead-end fossil fuel infrastructure like oil pipelines and coal terminals.

States also have legislative options including taxation. State-level carbon tax policies are an option for financially strapped states. A well crafted price on carbon applied to energy production and transportation fuels should be possible in several states.

To “backstop” is to pass state regulations replicating hard-earned federal regs that the GOP administration may let backslide by reversing or simply not enforcing them. And as new fed standards stall, states can set their own efficiency standards, for example forcing old energy-hog versions of appliances and machinery off the market.

Why did I prioritize businesses before the states? For one simple reason: states court businesses to locate and stay in their states. When big business talks, governors listen.

“With Trump in White House, states must take the lead on climate change”
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis of Boulder in The Denver Post

Cities are where we live.

People find it easier to support hometown initiatives that affect them and people they know directly. And it’s easier to communicate about those initiatives to a city-scale audience with a shared experience.

In Seattle, my home city, we identify with our city and feel proud of it, even when life isn’t peachy. Residents of most cities can say the same. There’s a sense of bonding together against a harsh world – or, at least, against competing sports teams.

If you’re a behavioral psychology nerd this is the in-group, or if you read a lot of Cialdini you know it as a unity principle.

Taken to the city council level, low-income communities can have outsize influence on clean energy, air and water. Watch what is happening with environmental justice communities, e.g., WE ACT in New York.

City policies can champion ideas that spread around the globe. Copenhagen taught the world how to do bicycle lanes, and Paris launched bike sharing, both of which have sprouted in other cities around the world. City ideas can champion policies that spread, too. Mayors should stand up for a good idea, even if they think it’s impossible in their city, because other cities will be inspired.

“Under Trump, look to cities and metros to power America forward”
Bruce Katz on Brookings.edu

Positioning is flexible.

The Republican administration will work to position renewable energy and efficiency as parts of a liberal climate conspiracy. That position can be counteracted.

Repositioning allows you to change the message without changing the end goal. How should sustainable energy be repositioned? Two important marketing lessons apply today more than before.

Solve the right problem.

First, we learned people buy what they want, not what companies wish they wanted. Case in point: Prospects for home energy efficiency respond better to messages of comfort than energy savings.

That’s an example of a principle that says businesses and consumers ultimately strive to make progress toward their ideal world. Their buying decisions are tightly coupled with the next step in that direction. For some it’s simple — saving money, or keeping up with the Joneses — but for many it is more complex.

Marketing messages can be constructed to appeal to multiple drivers. Businesses justify decisions based on factors such as revenue protection, building brand loyalty, or reducing compliance risk, as well as industry-specific financial metrics. Energy efficiency can be positioned to align with all of those.

Speak the right language.

Second, we mustn’t ignore that portion of the market that says they don’t care about the environment. George Lakoff explains very well why conservatives who disavow any belief or complicity in climate change will justify buying solar panels because they want to be energy independent.

That independence aligns with their inherent need to feel personally responsible. They might never believe that global warming is anthropomorphic, but they will believe that their utility is under attack by liberal policies and cannot be relied on to supply energy.

I am not suggesting that you launch any conspiracy theories. What I recommend is to look at the language you use in marketing sustainable energy and consider how to match benefits with conservative value drivers like responsibility, self-reliance and fatherhood.

Happy Earth Day. Keep up the good work. Look away from the daily drumbeat of negative headlines and focus on preparing for the retropolicy of the next four to eight years. Luck hasn’t created a national permanent shift to cleaner energy, but your perseverance will.

Comments? Please include your colleagues in your comments on social media by sharing this. Our social links are on this page including our LinkedIn Group and Facebook Page. On the other hand, if launching social media draws you down a rabbit hole of pessimistic headlines, you’re welcome to e-mail me instead.

Seriously. As much as I’ve enjoyed concocting energy related satire at this time of year since 2005, I’m not this year, for three reasons.

First, fake news is a real problem, and the gullibility of news consumers is an even bigger one. All of the public attention to this issue is good. It is leading some media platforms like Facebook to take responsible action. I want news to be something we can take seriously again.

Second, since the 2016 election I’ve found it difficult to make light of energy/climate policies and the fools who make them.

Finally, I can’t possibly outdo The Onion. And if The Onion is struggling to come up with satire that can trump reality these days, who am I to think I can do better.

If you’re waiting for the punch line, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Please post your favorite energy and climate related April Fools’ content on social media, including our Facebook Page and Twitter. Happy April Fools’ Day.