Google Energy Guru Pushes Congress to Insulate America

By Andrew C. Revkin



David M. Herszenhorn, who covers Congress, sent me a note from
Washington today on an interesting hearing held to explore the
role of efficiency in cutting Americans??? expensive energy
appetite.

Here???s David???s report:

WASHINGTON -??? Dan Reicher, Google???s guru of all things related
to energy and the environment, came to Capitol Hill on Wednesday
with some ideas on how to keep Earth from overheating and poor
families from freezing this winter in the face of sky-high prices
for heating oil.

A central proposal, laid out in testimony before the Joint
Economic Committee, was a national program aimed at cutting heat
and electricity bills in 10 million low-income homes over a
decade. The existing federal ???weatherization??? program saw its
Energy Department budget eliminated recently. The hearing was
called ???Efficiency: The Hidden Secret to Solving Our Energy
Crisis.???

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and chairman of
the joint committee, said he planned to include the weatherization
proposal in a bill later this year. ???I am very interested in the
low-income home weatherization program,??? he said. ???And I???m
going to put in some legislation to move it up.???

Over in the main part of the Capitol, lawmakers have been locked
in a bitter stalemate over energy policy, with Republicans pushing
for increased oil exploration, including expanded offshore
drilling. Democrats, meanwhile, insist that drilling should be
limited to existing leases on federal lands. Both sides say
efforts to produce energy from renewable sources should be vastly
increased, but they disagree on how to do so.

Mr. Reicher offered an array of ideas to a mostly receptive panel
of lawmakers. In addition to weatherizing 10 million homes for
low-income Americans, which he said would cost about $2 billion
annually, he also said Congress should establish a mechanism
called the Energy Efficiency Resource Standard that would set
efficiency resource targets for electricity and gas suppliers over
a given period of time.

He also called for a national ???renewable portfolio standard???
to increase the amount of electricity produced by sources other
than fossil fuels. Some two dozen states have a hodgepodge of such
requirements now for their utilities. This issue has divided
Congress deeply in recent years. Other proposals included a
greater focus on boosting fuel efficiency, the improvement of
electric cars and increased tax incentives for the construction of
energy-efficient buildings.

Perhaps Mr. Reicher???s most intriguing comment, though, was his
observation on the role that information technology will play in
helping solve the nation???s energy problems. ???The increasing
interplay between energy hardware and information software ??? and
the corresponding rise of the Internet and the connectivity it
brings ??? adds to the potential to make and to use energy more
productively,??? Mr. Reicher said. ???From smart meters and smart
appliances to smart homes and a smart grid, we are poised to
significantly advance our ability to monitor and manage
energy.???

Presumably Google foresees a role in helping consumers or
companies do this. It???s already aggressively pursuing
investments in what it calls ???Renewable Energy Cheaper than
Coal.???

Mr. Reicher???s unit at Google (which straddles its for-profit
side and its dot-org grant-making arm) has been capitalized with
more than $1 billion in the company???s stock to address the
issues of climate change, energy, global poverty and global
health.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/google-energy-guru-pushes-congress-to-insulate-america/

--
Kyle J. Fricker
Chemical Engineering
University of Florida