Bill Clinton opens the National Clean Energy Summit

The National Clean Energy Summit began today in Las Vegas with an opening address by President Bill Clinton. One of the first things I noted when I arrived is that based on the number of business suits I saw people wearing, people here mean business.

Like Al Gore, Clinton talked about the challenges facing America--a slowing economy, terrorism, and global warming--and their common roots in our dependence on fossil fuels. He noted that while the U.S. failed to ratify the Kyoto climate change agreement, only six to eight of the countries that did are actually on track to meeting their commitments. That means 150 or so aren't.

He listed the top ten initiatives that the federal government, the states, and non-governmental organizations should take on in order to make meaningful progress on weaning ourselves off oil and coal:

1. Pass legislation to create a carbon cap and trade system in the U.S.
2. Make tax incentives for alternative clean energy sources longer in duration. These industries need six to eight year incentives to ramp up as quickly as necessary; the current one to three year tax breaks won't do it.
3. Have the government partner with utilities to improve the efficiency of the power grid and ensure that it can move electricity from those areas with a lot of solar and wind capacity to the places where people live.
4. Follow California's lead and give utilities the ability to make money from energy conservation, not just selling electricity. One big way they could do this is by financing the retrofit of homes and other buildings to reduce energy use. (One figure he cited: only about $5 billion a year is spent on improving the efficiency of buildings around the world, a tiny sum when compared against the potential savings.)
5. Accelerate the transition to compact fluorescent lighting and energy-efficient appliances.
6. Invest in carbon sequestration research.
7. Move beyond corn ethanol. Speed up development of cellulosic ethanol and eliminate or work around the tax on Brazilian sugar cane ethanol. (The latter is produced much more cheaply than corn ethanol.)
8. Close landfills and use the organic matter to generate useful heat. The CO2 produced would still impact the climate less than the methane that leaks from landfills.
9. Invest in hybrid and electric vehicle technology as well as high speed rail.
10. Demonstrate that the developed and developing worlds are in this together. He noted that we are popular in much of sub-Saharan Africa because of our efforts to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS there.

Clinton also talked about the importance of capturing the world's imagination by helping a U.S. state or small country to become energy independent by switching to clean energy sources. Potential locations he mentioned included Liberia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, and Nevada.

Right off the bat, Clinton made the point that if the case for switching to clean energy cases is based on limiting its impact to global GDP, the effort will fail. A winning argument will have to focus on the economic benefits. Just as financing the construction of the interstate highway system with a gasoline tax increased the cost of driving, the overall economic impact was still overwhelmingly positive for both individual consumers and the nation as a whole. Investing in a new energy future for America will result in new jobs and allows us to maintain or increase our standard of living.

And he pointed out that maintaining the status quo is costly: we're borrowing money to pay for our addiction to oil.

Europe, it was stated, is moving ahead. Ten years ago the U.S. had 44% of the world's installed solar power capacity. Today we're around 10%. Germany leap-frogged us by changing what energy sources they subsidized.

Clinton said that he prefers Obama's energy plan but still thinks John McCain was better on energy issues that the typical Republican. He added that he thought offshore drilling was overrated as part of the solution to our problem.

The summit continues tomorrow with a full day schedule of keynote speeches and panel discussions. I'll post video of Clinton's address later.