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National Strategy on Economy, Energy and Environment
Technology and environmental leaders today announced a new initiative to develop a national strategy for information and communications technologies (ICT) to improve the energy efficiency of the economy. The Digital Energy Solutions Campaign is made up of leading technology companies and organizations as well as environmental and energy conservation groups working on energy efficiency initiatives. The Campaign will work with the incoming Obama Administration and Congressional leaders to educate and promote how ICT strategies can make our economy robust while at the same time becoming increasingly energy efficient and environmentally friendly.
“As Congress considers a new economic stimulus package, adopting policies that drive ICT implementation can not only provide a near-term boost to our economy but also help us achieve the long-term goal of making our economy more energy efficient,” said DESC Co-Chair Stephen Harper, Global Director of Environment and Energy Policy at Intel.
DESC members include the technology sector leaders Dell, EMC, HP, Intel, the Technology CEO Council, and Verizon. Non-governmental organization members include the Alliance to Save Energy, The Climate Group, and the World Wildlife Fund.
The fact that DESC was launched at the Smart2020 Conference reflects the group’s goal of working with established and leading authorities such as The Climate Group and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) to drive the adoption of a national strategy to utilize information and communications technologies to boost energy efficiency.
The event is a product of the recent study of the same name by The Climate Group and GeSI, which found that ICT-enabled solutions could reduce global carbon emissions by 15 percent by 2020.
“There has never been a time in which the future of our economy, our energy needs and environment have been so inextricably linked,” said DESC Co-Chair Paul Brownell, Senior Manager, Federal Government Affairs at Dell. “We must take an approach that leverages technology to make our economy more energy efficient and promotes new green industries that will spur a wave of growth and job creation.”
DESC outlined a policy framework to make private industries and government more energy efficient, create behavior changes to make us more energy efficient and reduce ICT’s energy needs. Among its proposals, DESC calls on Congress and the new Obama Administration to establish a national strategy to build political support for, and prioritize the critical elements of, a program to promote the role of ICT in driving economic, energy and climate solutions. Such elements might include:
- Implementing utility decoupling so that a utility’s profit is no longer merely tied to the volume of sales but to how efficiently the utility delivers energy.
- Creating incentives for green tech infrastructure such as parking-garage facilities for plug-in hybrid cars. National programs are needed to ensure standards are set to accelerate the market.
- Implementing policies to promote smart buildings, including federal government model building codes for the construction of building that use less energy. The federal government can also lead by example with the construction of its own “smart buildings.”
- Creating incentives to encourage telecommuting such as allowing businesses to accelerate the depreciation on the home work equipment.
- Creating education and promotion programs for Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS). HEMS can reduce energy consumption by 30 percent in homes are currently offered but because of the lack of incentives for utilities are not widely encouraged or adopted.
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