Pole Position Forrest Beanum, Vice President of Government Relations, Coda Automotive Oliver Kuttner, CEO, Edison2 Bill Reinert, National Manager, Toyota Michael Robinson, VP for Environment, Energy and Safety Policy, General Motors Dan Sperling, Member, California Air Resources Board; Professor, UC Davis Fifteen years have passed since a major automaker has attempted to market an electric vehicle. Within five years, rare will be the auto showroom that lacks one. But before EVs dominate the market, industry, policymakers, and consumers will have to grapple with some unresolved questions, says this panel of industry giants and start-ups. Those questions are a primary reason why “in pure electric cars, there’s very little first-mover advantage,” says Bill Reinert, National Manager, Toyota, “when you’re out there trying to figure out where the infrastructure’s going to go, and how the tow service works, and what happens when the charger doesn’t charge your car.” Dan Sperling, member, California Air Resources Board, disagrees that carmakers should avoid positioning themselves as a leader in the EV race. Yes, there are technology and scaling challenges, he says, but being first “does create a hallo for the entire company, which Toyota understands better than anyone – what the Prius did.” Michael Robinson, VP for Environment, Energy and Safety Policy, General Motors, is coming to see the benefit of that green hallo. His company has sold 2,000 units of its extended-range electric car, the Chevy Volt, since it went on sale in late 2010. Half of those sales have come in California, Robinson says, and 90% of total sales have been to Prius owners. Oliver Kuttner, CEO, Edison2, says carmakers need to figure out how to design electric cars to be lighter and more efficient. “If we were to re-think the way a car is built, and built the car in a more efficient way, like an airplane,” you could downsize the battery – the most expensive piece of an EV, costing upwards of $10,000 to $15,000 per car. During the Q&A, an audience member asks if automakers might be underestimating the demand for EVs. “Absolutely,” responded Forrest Beanum, Vice President of Government Relations, Coda Automotive. He cites Coda’s reading of independent studies finding that 40% of consumers want to own or drive an electric vehicle. What might make the difference this time is that carmakers appear to want EVs to succeed. It might seem counterintuitive, says GM’s Michael Robinson, but “we’re actually pulling for one another to be successful. We want the technology to be successful.” Dan Sperling agrees. “We’re way ahead of the regulatory process. We’re way ahead of the market process. Standardization issues are a challenge. This is a big adventure – and hugely important. We have to make this successful,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on May 12th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tim Flannery Professor of Science, Maquarie University; Chair, Copenhagen Climate Council; Author, Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet Greg Dalton, Vice President of Special Projects, The Commonwealth Club; Founder, Climate One - Moderator Tim Flannery doesn’t do pessimism. Flannery explains the source of his optimism, a major theme of his new book, Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet, in this Climate One conversation at the Hoover Theatre, in San Jose. It stems from what he says is a popular misunderstanding of what natural selection actually is. “This is not a ‘survival of the fittest world,’” he says, referring to the phrase used as shorthand for Darwin’s perceived worldview. “This is a world where evolution has spawned extraordinary interrelationships, interactions, and co-evolutionary outcomes.” Over the last 10,000 years humanity has built what Flannery describes as a “super-organism” – a level of organization similar to that of ants, termites, or bees. And the glue that holds the super-organism together is the division of labor, interdependence. “That means,” says Flannery, “that the survival of the super-organism becomes all-important to us. We can’t afford to back up the planet.” And as “we form this one great super-organism, where we are all interconnected, we gain the capacity to deal with environmental challenges.” And for the biggest environmental challenge of all, climate change, Flannery sees reason for hope where others despair. Take COP15, the momentous United Nations climate change conference convened in Copenhagen in December 2009. Conventional wisdom holds that COP15 was a failure. Flannery disagrees. “I think it is self-evident it wasn’t a failure,” he says. The meeting was the setting for the largest-ever gathering of heads of state. Countries accounting for 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions made reduction pledges. Flannery sees progress across the map. China is a global leader in wind and solar energy, and is preparing to launch regional carbon cap-and-trade systems. India has enacted a small tax on coal and recently launched an aggressive energy efficiency trading scheme. South Korea is spending 2% of GDP on green growth. The European Union raised its 2020 emissions reduction target from 20% to a minimum of 25%. The United States is halfway to reaching its goal of reducing emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. “The job now for us,” Flannery says, “is to knuckle down and make sure that our countries carry their fair share of the burden. We need to have hope. We need look at things over the right time scale. And we need to re-gather the energy that’s required to carry this further.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Historic Hoover Theatre in San Jose, CA on May 4th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Member, United States Senate (D-CA) in conversation with Greg Dalton, Founder of Climate One at The Commonwealth Club In this Climate One conversation at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, in San Francisco, Senator Dianne Feinstein touches on some longtime pursuits – national security experience and protecting the California desert from development. She also pledges to investigate the safety of the US nuclear fleet, protect children from toxins, and continue to shield California’s coastline from oil drilling. Feinstein is clear that clean energy is California’s future. “Energy is the largest source of new jobs for this state,” she says, citing an estimate placing the number at 100,000 additional jobs. Those new energy jobs – such as building large solar thermal power plants – should not be located, however, in the state’s undeveloped desert. “There is plenty of land in the desert that is disturbed that can be used. I think all of these [solar] companies are essentially finding other places to build, where there is no real environmental challenge to things that are endangered like desert tortoises,” says Feinstein. A trickier problem, especially in the wake of the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear complex, is how to ensure the safety of, and store spent fuel from, America’s nuclear reactors. Insufficient attention has been paid to the full nuclear fuel cycle, Feinstein says. “I believe very strongly that we need either regional or centralized nuclear fuel storage. It’s asking for trouble to keep hot rods in spent pools for decades and dry casks right along the side of nuclear reactors. I think they should be moved right away.” She also pledges quick action on plant safety. “I’m going to try to push as far and as fast as I can push to see that we really take a good look, a real examination, of all the facilities,” says Feinstein. Feinstein warns against the danger posed by exposure to chemicals, especially for infants. Of particular concern is Bisphenol A (BPA), a known endocrine disruptor, which, she says, is added to the inside of canned goods and baby bottles. “I become very interested in chemicals that are added that we know very little about,” says Feinstein. Though a proponent of greater energy efficiency (in the Q&A, Feinstein cites her decades-long quest to boost fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles as her proudest Senate achievement) Feinstein says now is not the time to raise the gas tax. “I’d go slowly on that. We have very long commutes for workers in this state,” she says. “This is not the time, when gasoline is this high, with the nation trying to pull itself out of recession. We need to keep gasoline below the $4 mark right now,” Feinstein says. She blamed speculators for the high prices: “Demand is down, and supply is even – so what can it be?” She reaffirms that oil companies should not look to California’s coast for additional supply. “The people of California have spoken through initiative. They don’t want oil drilling off the coast.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on April 27, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Measure What? Michel Gelobter, Chief Green Officer, Hara Eric Olson, Senior Vice President, Advisory Services, BSR Glen Low, Principal, Blu Skye Forward-thinking companies are coming to realize that sustainability isn’t just good for their bottom lines; it makes it easier to win over customers and compete in the market, say three corporate greening experts. As new tools such as carbon accounting software become more sophisticated and widely adopted, the panelists say, benefits will accrue not only to more efficient companies but to customers better able to trust companies’ green claims. First, says Eric Olson, Senior Vice President, Business for Social Responsibility, companies need to figure out whether they should they be listening to their customers, or leading them. Olson leans toward the latter. “There is a school of thought that says what we are talking about is so complex that what consumers want is for us to solve the problem for them,” he says. “They’re not going to sit down and ask for fair trade coffee – they don’t even know what that is. But they do know that they want a product that doesn’t have practices behind it that they wouldn’t believe in,” he adds. In a relatively recent shift, companies aren’t making green strides just because regulators forced them to. “Sustainability leadership about five years ago was very compliance oriented. Sustainability leadership today is about competitive advantage. It’s about innovation,” says Glen Low, Principal, Blu Skye, a sustainability consultancy. In a rapidly changing landscape, smart companies that pivot toward efficiency now, be they small firms or industry giants, will be big winners, says Michel Gelobter, Chief Green Officer, Hara.“There are a lot of companies, like a Wal-Mart, that are taking pretty aggressive actions right now,” he says. “The biggest value of scale is the size of the bets that you can win. The best use of large capital is winning big-risk bets. There’s a history of very big industries emerging from these kinds of pivotal moments.” Sustainability represents one of those pivotal moments, he says. All the positioning among agile companies looking to gain a green edge has led to a relatively new development, says Eric Olson: companies influencing policy in a progressive direction. These companies, Olson says, are clamoring for Congress to act, by stating: “We need a level playing field. We need incentives. We need long-term, predictable signals around the cost of energy sources in order to be as competitive as we should be.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on April 15th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cell Power: Sprint CEO Dan Hesse Dan Hesse, CEO, Sprint Nextel Sprint wants to be recognized as the green leader in the wireless industry, says CEO Dan Hesse in this return visit to Climate One. Hesse warns against the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile and announces the release of the fourth phone in Sprint’s green series, the Samsung Replenish. “As we meet here today,” Hesse says, “the innovative power of the wireless industry is under serious threat” by the proposed AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile. Much had already been written about the possible implications of the move for consumers and pricing, he says, “but to my surprise, very little attention had been paid to its potential impact on the wireless industry’s ability to foster innovation” – including innovation in the green space. “Wireless technology helps consumers by providing new ways to reduce, re-use, and recycle,” says Hesse. Take telecommuting. Just 3.9% of Americans regularly work outside the office, he says, even though wireless technology gives them access to the same information at their office desks. Hesse says Sprint is also working to address one of the industry’s lingering dilemmas: waste. Just 10% of mobiles phones are recycled each year in the United States, he says, meaning some 140 million phones end up in landfills. In 2008, Sprint set a goal to recycle 90% of the phones it sells. The new Samsung Replenish “is as green as we could make it,” says Hesse – energy-efficient, housed in recycled plastics, and made from 82% recyclable materials. In an effort to “take green really mainstream,” Hesse says, Sprint is lowering the monthly rate for the Replenish by $10 per month. The green moves and others – including connecting ECOtality’s Blink electric vehicle charging network, purchasing wind energy for its corporate headquarters, and upgrading the energy efficiency of its network – are done to improve the company’s brand, Hesse says, but also to motivate employees. “The thing about green is your people want to make it. They’re excited and love the fact that this is what we’re really focusing on, and that we have made it to a goal they care about,” Hesse says. “I’ve had zero pushback in getting people aligned and wanting to do it.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on April 15th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nuclear Power: Setting Sun? Jacques Besnainou, CEO AREVA Inc. Lucas Davis, Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Jeff Byron, Former Commissioner, California Energy Commission This panel agrees that nuclear power, despite offering the promise of carbon-free electricity and safer next-generation reactors, is challenged by steep upfront costs and where to store spent fuel. Jeff Byron, formerly a member of the California Energy Commission, says the Fukushima tragedy offers the nuclear industry and its regulators a sobering learning opportunity. “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission just can’t go ahead and rubber-stamp license renewal applications,” says Byron. Uncertainty over how to proceed has put the United States in a bind, he adds. The US nuclear fleet is aging, with every reactor at least 30 years old. “We really want to retire them,” Byron says. “We’re extending the license of every one of these existing plants well beyond their intended design life. These are 50-year-old designs. I wouldn’t get on a 50-year-old aircraft if you paid me.” Lucas Davis, an energy economist based at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, warns against the prohibitive expense required to replace all of those aging plants. “If you look at lifetime costs, including waste disposal at the end, the levelized cost of nuclear, with updated cost and fuel numbers, is about $0.10 per kilowatt-hour compared to $0.05/kWh for natural gas. That’s a big gap,” he says. Despite the obstacles, Jacques Besnainou, CEO of US-based AREVA Inc., insists that policymakers maintain nuclear in the energy mix. ”I’m not saying nuclear is the solution. But there is no solution without nuclear energy,” he says. Lucas Davis agrees, offering that he’d welcome to be proved wrong on the question of costs. “Get in there and prove to us that you guys can build reactors on budget and an on time. That would change everything. But, to be fair, for 60 years the industry has been saying that costs are going to come down and the empirical evidence on it is pretty mixed,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on April 8th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Energy Policy: What’s Next? T.J. Glauthier, Former Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy James Sweeney, Director, Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, Stanford Tony Knowles, Chair, National Energy Policy Institute; Former Governor, Alaska The United States does not have a national energy policy. In this panel convened by Climate One three experts long involved in the US energy debate conspire to shape their own. The plan: steadily increasing the cost of gasoline at the pump, replace diesel with liquefied natural gas for heavy trucking, harvest cost-effective energy efficiency opportunities, and boost the production of shale gas.“These are not new issues,” says former Alaska Governor Tony Knowles. “Unfortunately, I think Tom Friedman said it best: ‘Our national energy policy is more the sum total of our best lobbyists, rather than our best wisdom.’” Politics, not science or economics, has shaped our energy policy, Knowles says. A proposal recently put forward by the California Secure Transportation Energy Partnership, where Stanford University’s Jim Sweeney is a member, would add a penny per month to the state’s gas tax for 10 years. Tony Knowles cited a similar proposal recommended by the National Energy Policy Institute, which would increase the federal gas tax by $0.08 per gallon each year for 20 years with the goal of reducing oil consumption by 1.5 million barrels per day. Knowles and T.J. Glauthier, a former Deputy Secretary at the US Department of Energy, advocate for retrofitting the country’s heavy trucking fleet to run on domestic liquefied natural gas (LNG). “We’ve got truck stops all over the country. If we spent some money helping build out the natural gas refueling parts of those truck stops, and provide some help to trucking companies for the conversions, there’s a huge benefit,” says Glauthier. Jim Sweeney, Director of Stanford’s Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, emphasizes the abundant opportunity that exists for consumers to save money with energy efficiency improvements. We just have to get the incentives right. “People talk about those as the ‘low-hanging fruit.’ Unfortunately, some of that fruit has been low-hanging for decades now and hasn’t been picked, which means there’s a reason,” he says. Knowles and Glauthier also recommend that shale gas be a part of the energy mix. “It’s great for the American public, it’s great for the energy sector, to have natural gas supplies that are much larger, and they’re all domestic,” says Glauthier. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on April 5th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Duke of Energy Jim Rogers, Chairman and CEO, Duke Energy Outside of the Oval Office, one of the most influential voices in the energy debate is Jim Rogers, Chairman and CEO of Duke Energy. Here Rogers talks about the future of energy policy in the United States in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. Rogers says Duke Energy will continue to pursue new nuclear power, despite movements by some governments to rethink their nuclear strategy. “With respect to Japan,” he says, “we will pause. We will learn. And that will make us stronger and better in the future.” Rogers emphasizes the safety record of US nuclear plants and the fact that nuclear plants supply 70% of America’s carbon-free electricity. “If you’re serious about climate legislation, you have to be serious about nuclear because of the role it plays in providing zero greenhouse gases, 24/7,” he says. Rogers emphasizes that Duke Energy is investing in advanced coal, solar, wind, and energy efficiency, in addition to nuclear. “From an investor’s perspective, and from our customers’ perspective, developing a portfolio is a smarter way to move forward than making a bet on any single fuel,” he says. Even though today’s Congress appears incapable of tackling climate change, Rogers says he is making decisions now in anticipation of the day a future Congress acts to limit carbon. A critical first step is junking old, dirty coal plants. Rogers notes that the United States electricity mix includes 300,000 megawatts (MW) of coal; 100,000MW comes from plants more than 40 years old and never retrofitted to remove sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, or mercury. “In my judgment those plants should be shut down, and will be shut down over the next decade,” Rogers says. Many of those obsolete coal plants will be pushed into retirement when greenhouse gas rules being drafted by the US Environmental Protection Agency come into force. Rogers prefers that Congress, not the EPA, show companies the way forward. “My hope, and the reason I don’t oppose [the EPA] doing it, is they act, and you see their rules – very limited because the Clean Air Act wasn’t written to do this. It will become obvious that Congress has to act. And maybe it will force Congress to do its job,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on April 5th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ted Danson: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them Ted Danson, Actor; Environmentalist; Author, Oceana In the mid-1980s, actor Ted Danson was walking along a Santa Monica beach when he noticed a sign: “Water polluted, no swimming.” "Trying to explain that to my kid was hard," he says. Already wealthy and famous from playing Sam Malone on “Cheers,” Danson decided then to use his celebrity to raise awareness about the plight of the world’s oceans. “It sunk in that there is a lot that has come before us, there is a lot that will come after us, and that this time were are here is not just about us. It’s about stewardship,” he says. At Climate One, Danson talks about his life in activism and the manifold threats to oceans, the subject of his new book, Oceana. “No one disagrees that we’re headed in the direction where we could conceivably commercially fish out our oceans – no more fish, jelly fish soup – if we do not stop fishing destructfully and wastefully,” he says. Danson shares a statistic that points to one culprit: rampant overfishing by big boats. Ninety percent of the world’s fishermen are small-scale operations, harvesting from the sea as they have for millennia, he says. These fishermen account for 10% of the global take. The other 90% is harvested by the remaining 10% of boats, commercial-scale trawlers, some with nets big enough to snare a 747. Once the nets are hauled up to the boat, “a third of what the world catches is thrown overboard dead or dying because it’s not the fish they’re after.” The situation is dire, but Danson cautions against despair. He published Oceana, he says, to leave those concerned about the oceans feeling hopeful and empowered to act. “When you show up en masse in an email, you literally change policy around the world,” he says. “And it’s the best feeling. To not be overwhelmed by headlines, and to know you are doing something about it. You will know, in your children or grandchildren’s lifetime whether you succeeded. And that’s cool. That’s exciting. That’s not overwhelming or depressing.” This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on March 22nd, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cloud Power: Microsoft + Google (3/11/11) Rob Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist, Microsoft William Weihl, Green Energy Czar, Google Greg Dalton, Climate One Founder, Moderator Arch rivals Microsoft and Google find common cause at Climate One promoting the energy efficiency of the cloud. Efficiency alone won’t solve the climate crisis, Rob Bernard of Microsoft and Google’s William Weihl say, but smart IT can reduce emissions, help green the grid, and save money companies and consumers money. “The very simple thing is that we can save money by using less electricity. So by investing engineering effort, investing capital in making our systems more efficient, we save money in the end,” says Weihl, Google’s Green Energy Czar. Google and Microsoft operate power-hungry data centers around the globe, so they have good reason to promote energy efficiency, but Weihl and Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, insist that their efficiency gains will be shared as IT becomes ever-more integrated into the global economy. “I would actually bet that as a percentage of global electricity use that information and communication technology will use a higher percentage over time. But in the process it will make the entire economy more energy efficient. So, yes, that 2% will grow, but the other 98% will shrink, and shrink faster,” says Weihl. Bernard cites an example. Stanford researcher Jonathan Koomey, had, he says, looked into the carbon footprint and energy use resulting from the switch from CDs to digital music. “Even in the worst case, it was a 40% to 50% reduction in the amount of energy,” Bernard says. During the Q&A, an audience member asks Bernard and Weihl what can be done to overcome the barriers holding up even bigger efficiency gains. “Most energy efficiency work I would say actually is a no brainer. But people don’t seem to have brains,” Weihl says. One big problem, he says, is the disjointed decision-making practiced at many companies. “If you focus people on total cost of ownership, lifetime cost – capital, plus operating cost – and get everybody to think in those terms, not just in terms of their own budget, you can make a lot of progress,” he says. Bernard agrees. “More and more when I go and talk to customers, the challenge is much if not more governance and behavior than it is technology,” he says. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco on March 11th, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices