Steven Chu: Four Years of Low Hanging Fruits

Dr. Steven Chu can get plenty of results in the next four years, by placing into operation the financial mechanism to exploit the lowest-hanging fruits in the demand side. Such mechanism, enabled by the EWPC EPAct, will shift us away of the fossil fuel era vicious pervasiveness into the emerging digital era virtuous pervasiveness that will spread the clean energy revolution.

Steven Chu: Four Years of Low Hanging Fruits

By José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, Ph.D.
Systemic Consultant: Electricity

First posted in the GMH Blog, on December 12th, 2008.

Copyright © 2008 José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without written permission from José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. This article is an unedited, an uncorrected, draft material of The EWPC Textbook. Please write to javs@ieee.org to contact the author for any kind of engagement.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Environmental Capital blog (ECb) post “Steven Chu: Probable Next Energy Secretary Big Efficiency Fan,” by Keith Johnson, says “That doesn’t mean all of Dr. Chu’s energy solutions are moon shots. The lowest-hanging fruit now and for years to come, he says, is plain old energy efficiency.”

This WSJ ECb post (Steven Chu: ‘Coal is My Worst Nightmare’) also by Keith starts with "So Steven Chu, President-elect Obama’s … choice to head the Department of Energy, is a proponent of energy efficiency and conservation as the first step in rejigging America’s energy mix." It then follows with "But since conservation alone won’t do it, what are his ideas about finding new supplies of energy?" [See update of ECb post of December 14th in U.S Power Service is Regulated as a 3rd World Country]

From what I read, most of the above comments are about the pervasive supply side mental model, which will give Chu a chance to enable demand side solutions in the next 4 years, while promoting supply side and demand side innovations. To do it he will need a delivery mechanism to finance the development of the resources of the demand side, which is a mass market.

Such delivery mechanism can be enabled under the electricity without price controls (EWPC) market architecture and design Energy Policy Act (EPAct). Under the EWPC EPAct, Second Generation Retailers will compete with one another to develop business model innovations that will replace the obsolete price control business model.

In order to introduce the EWPC EPAct, however, there is a big question in the EWPC article Will Dr. Chu Turn Around the Power Industry?, whose summary says “As President Obama picked Nobel Prize Steven Chu as the Energy Secretary, that knows what he is talking about the environment, he will need to enable Mr. Obama’s leadership to be able to turn around the global power industry to complete a global energy deal that is a prerequisite to complete the global environmental deal.”