By Jennifer Kho
Cleantech companies at the Clean-Tech Investor Summit in Indian Wells, California, said the U.S. State of the Union Address on Tuesday night left them with plenty of unanswered questions.
As they watched President George W. Bush on several big screens at the conference, conference-goers’ reactions were clearly mixed. Some shook their heads when the president advocated more clean coal and nuclear power, one clapped loudly when the president promoted battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and one let out a sarcastic “Oh yeah” when the president said good policies in Washington had led to progress.
During his speech, President Bush called for a 20 percent reduction of gasoline usage in the next 10 years, cutting total imports “by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.” (“Only 25 percent of our oil comes from the Middle East,” commented Joel Makower, a principal at Clean Edge, a research firm and a co-producer of the summit.)
To reach this goal, President Bush proposed a mandatory fuels standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017—five times the current target—and fuel-economy standards to increase cars’ miles per gallon.
“America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil,” he said. “These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment—and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.”
Overall, cleantech companies said they were happy with the president’s interest, but their enthusiasm was tempered with the lack of details about how to reach the goals he set.
“He just said ‘global climate change’ and the words ‘serious challenge’ in the same sentence,” Mr. Makower said immediately afterward. “I’m glad he mentioned climate change, but he didn’t say anything about what needs to be done. Considering that this is a bigger threat than global terrorism is, I’m glad he’d talking about this stuff and I’ve only got one thing to say: ‘Welcome to the 1980s.’”
Hearing the president’s rhetoric about cleantech is bittersweet, he said. “It’s exciting, but I’m also sad about the time and opportunity we’ve lost to build technologies and markets that would lead to more security and competition,” he said.
Ron Pernick, another principal at Clean Edge, said all the targets President Bush set are important, but the big question is how he will support them.
“We got no details about that,” he said. “He said 35 billion gallons of biofuels by 2017, but he didn’t say how he was going to make that happen.”
He wonders if the speech signals the coming of a renewable fuels standard with real teeth, for instance, or Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards requiring every manufacturer to attain an average MPG goal.
Ben McMakin, senior director of governmental issues at VanNess Feldman, a legal firm, said he was skeptical. “He’s often made commitments in the past and hasn’t followed through with funding and leadership,” he said. “He’s promising things 10 years out instead of doing what he can short-term. I think the interest is good, but I don’t think he’s doing all he can.”
Still, Stewart Sonnenfeldt, vice president for corporate development at solar firm Practical Instruments, said the president’s mention of renewables shows the political momentum is favorable to cleantech
“The pendulum is going to swing so far the other way,” he said. “You’re already seeing some of it, and I think you’re going to see a lot more. The political momentum is going to be hard to reverse.”