Chad Holliday
American Business Leaders Call for Revolution in Energy
Technology Innovation
Group urges scale-up in investment, systemic reforms to create jobs, address national security, solve environmental challenges.
A group of America’s top business executives released in June 2010 a plan to make
America a global leader in energy technology innovation, and in meetings at the
White House and with Congressional leaders called for urgent action to begin the
national transition to clean, affordable and secure supplies of energy.
The American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC)—whose members include Bill
Gates, chairman and former chief executive of Microsoft; Norm Augustine, former
chairman of Lockheed Martin; Ursula Burns, chairman and chief executive of Xerox;
John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins; Chad Holliday, chairman of Bank of America and former CEO of DuPont; Jeff Immelt, chief executive of GE; and Tim Solso,
chairman and chief executive of Cummins — said in its report, “A Business Plan for
America’s Energy Future,” that reforming and strengthening U.S. investment in
energy innovation is the most critical element to securing America’s future.
“The world faces many challenges, but none more important than taking im-
mediate and decisive action to develop new, inexpensive clean-energy sources that
avoid the negative effects of climate change,” Gates said. “Low-cost clean energy
is the single most important way to lift poor countries out of poverty and create
more stable societies. The whole world would benefit from this, and the United
States can and should lead the way. The time for action is now.”
“We must reinvent our energy future,” said Chad Holliday, who serves as AEIC
chairman. “A giant leap in energy technology investments and reform of our cur-
rent system can make America a global leader in what will be the largest new mar-
ket of the 21st Century. We have seen huge dividends from similar American
investments before—in information technology, defense technology and medical
technology. But up until now, energy investments have gotten short shrift. That has
to change if we are to control our energy future. This has to be at the top of Amer-
ica’s agenda.”
The American Energy Innovation Council plan contains five recommendations:
The full report and supporting documents and other materials can be found at
www.americanenergyinnovation.org.
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CW: Describe the role the American En-
ergy Innovation Council is playing.
Holliday: The American Energy Innovation Council evolved from the idea that
we know how hard it’s going to be for
government to impose a tax on carbon or
a cap and trade. We concluded if we could
make a clean energy that is cheaper than
the current sources we won’t have to
worry about that. People will naturally go
to it. So that’s really how it started. Rather
than first say if it could be done it would
have already been done, which is the kind
of answer a lot of people give, we looked
at the issue and said we really haven’t
tried seriously to come up with viable alternative energy. The members spent a lot
of time together and it wasn’t just a bunch
of staff people doing the work. We sat
down, talked about it and concluded that
there is a very reasonable chance that we
could have an energy technology breakthrough here and so that is why we proposed the funding to President Obama.
He’s not funding as much as we suggested
and of course it’s not passed Congress yet,
but I think we’re encouraged. This doesn’t
have to be a bi-partisan issue.
CW: What kind of funding are you re-
ceiving from the government? How much
will it take to make real change?
Holliday: We estimate we’re spending
about $5 billion a year on energy research
at the government level. We believe it
needs to be $16 billion. We need an additional $11 billion and we need to hold that
for about a decade and we need to be sure
the funds are spent wisely. The board of
the American Energy Innovation Council
can make sure of that. Equally important
is the handover to private industry. We believe that as newly developed technology
reaches the commercialization stage, private industry needs to come in and put
their money into it, which lowers the taxpayer burden but also gets them more
committed to making it a success. So that’s
one of our key recommendations is we
have what we call a prototype development facility but that is where private industry and the government would partner.
