Alstom interview on OnPoint, asserts support for clean tech market certainty through pricing carbon
With Senate Democrats expected to make a decision on how to proceed on energy and climate by the end of next week, how would utility-only proposals affect industry? During today’s OnPoint, Joan MacNaughton, senior vice president of power and environmental policies at Alstom Power and a former senior energy official in the United Kingdom, gives her take on the utility-only proposals circulating in the Senate and explains how they would affect clean energy investments.
Monica Trauzzi: Joan, Senate Democrats are busy negotiating a climate and energy package and they’ve scaled back all the bills and are now focusing on a utility only option. How likely is it that a scaled-back version will even get the votes for passage this year?
Joan MacNaughton: Well, I think people are very concerned about getting the bill passed because without the bill we don’t have the clear signal we need to stimulate investment in clean technologies and in clean power. It’s hard to say, at this moment, whether the scaled-back bill will be just enough to get over the 60 vote hurdle in the Senate. I mean we all hope so. We’re all keeping our fingers crossed that the senators concerned can be successful.
Joan MacNaughton: Alstom has the whole portfolio of technologies. It also offers its services to make power stations more efficient, which helps to reduce the emissions for any given unit of power that’s produced. We’re developing a big play on carbon capture and storage, which is a way of taking the carbon out, and, therefore, any of these options actually, if they create certainty in the market, would be helpful to Alstom. I mean we have made big investments in this country over even the last year. We’ve created 300 plus jobs at Chattanooga where we’ve invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a big turbine factory. We’ve created another 300 million — 300 jobs, I beg your pardon, 300 million would be the answer to all of your concerns.
Monica Trauzzi: Specifically, which proposals that are on the table at this point does Alstom support?
Joan MacNaughton: Well, we’re in favor of cap and trade. We would prefer to see cap and trade economy wide and, as I say, as a first step to start with the utility’s sector, we think that could be a necessary station on the journey if you will. We’re actually also in favor of regulation to try to prevent people from building unabated stations which are not going to be good investments in the long term. But precisely how you do that I think actually has to be a matter for careful consideration and I don’t think we have a strong view on the detail of that, provided directionally the government’s going in the right way.
To view the full interview, click on: http://www.eenews.net/tv/video_guide/1191