Coatings World - March 2011

Chad Holliday

“It’s very hard to debate the fact that the planet is warming. That is a
scientific fact. You can’t debate that greenhouse gases have con-
tributed to that. What becomes much more difficult to understand is
the ultimate impact of climate change and how quickly it will come.”

CW: What is your main argument to government to make them
take this issue seriously?

Holliday: If I was making it today I’d say look what’s happening in North Africa, and look at how unstable the world is and look how dependant we are on all these foreign sources of energy. No one can guarantee those sources are going to flow forever. From that standpoint and as prices of commodities, including energy, start to run up, we need the security of predictable cost that we can live with and this is all with out even mentioning the environmental impact. I think there is a pretty good case of convincing people that spending $16 billion per year is not going to be a waste. We’ve also discussed this as a national security issue. It’s a much softer argument to make, but as I look at it there’s about $60 billion that the government spends on defense research today. So if we take $11 billion out of that to get us to our goal of $16 billion, they still have $50 billion left. It’s not like we’re asking them to cut back to nothing. I think that investigating alternative energy sources might be a better deployment of defense research spending to see if we get some breakthroughs.

CW: What are some possible alternative energy technologies the
American Energy Innovation Council is investigating and how
far away would they be from implementation? Is it possible to get
clean, cheap energy?

Holliday: For the technologies that are really cheaper than the
ones we have today and are really clean, we’re talking a decade.
In addition to hydrogen fuel cell technology, obviously advances
in solar energy would make a big difference, bio-fuels from non-
food sources such as waste cellulose and nuclear energy clearly
could be a piece of the answer. In our request for funding from
the President we were very careful not to pick which ones would
or would not make it. Wind energy could also be a piece of the
answer but again have to find a way to get the cost down. There
is one project ongoing now that does not use wind towers with
the three big blades to source energy. This project uses some-
thing that looks more like a jet engine and it’s much more effi-
cient than the three blade model currently in production. It’s not
perfected yet but is one example that there’s some real hope here
on for a breakthrough.

CW: As the former head of DuPont, you have a great under-
standing of the coatings industry. How do you see the climate
change and energy issues affecting business strategy in the coat-
ings industry?

Holliday: My advice to the coatings industry would be to take advantage of all the energy savings and energy efficiencies that are available today. I think one of the biggest mistakes is there are good projects that even if you don’t believe there will be a cost to carbon make good sense for your company today. I would implement those. I think that’s smart and it’s amazing how many people haven’t done so yet. Second, I would look at my markets and see which markets really do have a high cost impact to the environment and I would say those would be my growth markets in the future. I would also be thoughtful about my supply chain and the environmental impact it might have in the future. Third, I would ask if there is any way I could make coatings more efficiently in terms of energy expenditure with less green house gases. I wouldn’t think about it in the typical large volume applications, but I think there could be some specialty applications that make sense. The fact is we’re going to need coatings and in the long run this shift toward a more environmentally friendly future will be a plus for the coatings industry. CW

The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer (a pro- tocol to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer) is an international treaty designed to protect the Ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances believed to be responsible for ozone depletion. The treaty was opened for signature on September

16, 1987, and entered into force on January 1, 1989, followed by a first meeting in Helsinki, May 1989. Since then, it has undergone seven revisions, in 1990 (London), 1991 (Nairobi), 1992 (Copenhagen), 1993 (Bangkok), 1995 (Vienna), 1997 (Montreal), and 1999 (Beijing). It is believed that if the international agreement is adhered to, the ozone layer is expected to recover by 2050.

Due to its widespread adoption and implementation it has been hailed as an example of exceptional international cooperation, with Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations quoted as saying that "perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date has been the Montreal Protocol.” It has been ratified by 196 states.