I attended today’s Bryan Cave Clean Tech Roundtable at the Broad Stage at Santa Monica College – thanks to my pal Donna Gentry.
It was a terrific day spent on Renewable Energy and if you follow my Twitter feed you got some of the highlights during the three hour agenda.
The agenda included: Bob Foster, Mayor of Long Beach; Jeremy Snyder, General Manager of Tesla Motors; Steve Westly, Former State Controller, Bobby Shriver from the Santa Monica City Council, John Chiang, the California State Controller; Bill Locker, the California State Treasurer and the once and future Governor of California, Jerry Brown.
Here’s Part One of some Greenius video of our very impressive Attorney General from his keynote that closed the program. The pro shot video will be up in a week or two on the Bryan Cave website
That’s one of the two Tesla Roadsters that Tesla Motor’s Jeremy Snyder brought for show and tell out in the parking lot. It attracted a lot of attention but so did his comments during the “Clean Technology in California: Opportunities and Challenges” panel to start the day.
I was particularly impressed with former California State Controller, Steve Westly who was fairly pulsating with energy having just gotten back from China, Japan and Western Europe where he reports that “something dramatic is happening in clean tech.”
He says it’s not just a bubble, that it’s being driven by governments around the world. China’s just committed to a 50% solar subsidy in the last 30 days, Westly told us.
He went on to say that China has stepped up their auto requirements from 37 miles per gallon to 42 miles per gallon – compared to our own new CAFE standards of 25 miles per gallon to 39 miles per gallon. And China’s putting their standard in place within 24 months.
Norway is now pledging to become completely carbon neutral – not by 2050, but by 2030.
And in the US, not only is the Obama administration providing a major stimulus program, but 31 states are enacting incentives and mandates to require clean alternative energy for utilities.
“There is something dramatic happening out there,” says Steve Westly
He sees four key areas to make money in the Clean Technology Revolution:
1. Utilities the AMI Smart Grid – massive investments about to happen in this area.
2. Clean Building Materials – everything from LED lighting to solar panels
3. Batteries and Electric Vehicles – he is convinced that within hybrid cars will be an asterisk because electric cars will rule the roads.
4. Recycling – Simply put, the United State is the Saudi Arabia of garbage. We are the most wasteful nation on the planet and we need to get serious about recycling everything and converting it to fuel.
Wesley believes we are in a race with China to see who is going to lead in this next generation.
Jerry Brown believes renewable energy is going to need some help. Check out his comments in Part II of my exclusive video shot about 12 hours ago.
Creative Greenius 