EE Global: 12 Executive Dialogue Sessions Share Best Practices

Executive Dialogue sessions populated a busy second day at EE Global, featuring no less than 40 speakers, and countless great ideas to jumpstart a clean energy future around the world. The Alliance deployed a sea of writers to cover as many sessions as possible, including ones on driving policy change, the best buildings in the world, managing the smart grid, and navigating the global policy maze. 

Recap of Four of the Day's Sessions

1A: Meeting the Challenge: Moving From Policy Directives To Implementation 

One of the major themes at EE Global is 'awareness to action,' and policy directives certainly are some of the most direct ways to incite action. Speakers at session 1A took the theme to heart and covered a number of the local and national initiatives underway to reduce energy consumption.

Suggestions ranged from the conversion of 98% of traffic lights to LED lighting in Burnsville, Minn., to the European Union's 20-20-20 target and China's growth of investments in energy service companies. It was noted that 1,072 US mayors have signed the Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement, the mayors' version of the Kyoto Protocol, and that China has experienced a reduction in its energy intensity of 19.6% over the past 5 years.

1B:Demand Side Management Response and Smart Grid 

This Dialogue session highlighted the challenges and opportunities of energy data and information flows to the consumer.  Mike Valocchi of IBM noted that global surveys done over the past 5 to 6 years show that consumers' desire to take energy efficiency and cost savings actions (and actually initiating them) are increasing over time. On the appliance side, Tom Catania of Whirlpool said that energy and cost savings benefits are being built into products that will, by default, move high wattage uses of the appliance into the non-peak time periods.  

Steve Harper of Intel noted that Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), through the use of internet and e-commerce, for example, are saving ten times the energy that the ICT devices and equipment are adding to the electric load.  Despite all the progress noted by the prior speakers, Alex Laskey of OPOWER believed that adoption of home data information devices is moving forward slowly and that by 2020 it is expected that 63% of customers will still need to be engaged.

All discussants agreed that collaboration between manufacturers, utilities and the consumer is critical to moving smart appliances into the mainstream. They also agreed that aggressive policies and regulations are needed to overcome existing market barriers that are slowing the transition to matching smart appliances with a smart grid; incentives, government “leadership by example,” and development of national strategies are examples of needed policies.

1C: Best Buildings in the World: Showcasing EE Successes Michelle 

Malanca of the World Green Building Council led a discussion of case studies in building efficiency, which highlighted successes in both new construction and retrofits. Case studies -- on construction of efficient homes in expansive, often low-income communities in Mexico; the retrofit of the Empire State Building in New York; and one realty company's foray into building LEED and zero-energy homes and condominiums -- were presented by Dr. Jorge Wolpert of Mexico's National Housing Commission, Clay Nesler of Johnson Controls and Robert Smith of The Minto Group, respectively.  Besides technology, they also expanded on questions about project financing, tenant involvement and a cohesive integration of building efficiency in a community or urban approach. 

Key takeaways include the importance of timing to maximize effectiveness of energy retrofits -- by considering energy upgrades during recommissions or at a change of ownership, when other upgrades are planned -- and the importance of an integrated design approach to both new construction and retrofits.

2A: Navigating the Global Policy Maze: A Business Perspective on the Need for Harmonization 

This session provided a business perspective on energy efficiency policy with a strong focus on the buildings sector, with representatives from four global companies, United Technologies, Ingersoll Rand, Schneider Electric, and Philips Lighting.  There was a strong focus on the need for integration and alignment in buildings, coalition action, and policy.

The coming revolution in buildings is toward an integrated, holistic approach to building design and management, with, for example, LED lighting integrated into other building elements, and energy management  extending from design through use.  Echoing Fiona Harvey's earlier call for "regulation, regulation, regulation," all these business representatives supported strong standards combined with other policies -- not necessarily adding to the "maze" of regulations, but making them more effective, such as using required transparency  to improve compliance with building codes, and extending targets and requirements to existing buildings as well as new construction.