Pomerance and Associates

Shockwave à la Securing America’s Future Energy

July 14, 2011 | by Rachel | filed under: Ari Fleischer, Arun Banskota, energy security, Enterprise Holdings, FedEx, Fred Smith, NRG Energy, Pomerance & Associates, SAFE

What this country needs is the bejeezus shocked out of it, according to Securing America’s Future Energy, a nonprofit aimed at ending our country’s oil addiction once and for all. Its National Summit on Energy Security, held July 12-13, at the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown staged a “war-room” emergency preparedness exercise called “Oil ShockWave,” which shows the downward spiral we’d find ourselves in should a catastrophe strike our oil supply.

The conference, however, went beyond the wargame to feature serious players in the world of energy on how to advance the country through innovative resources.  Among them were David Sandalow, the DOE’s Assistant Secretary for Policy & International Affairs, Frederick W. Smith, Chairman, President and CEO of FedEx Corporation, Andrew Taylor, Chairman & CEO of Enterprise Holdings and Arun Banskota, President of NRG EV Services. (Banskota, incidentally, spoke at the 2011 Washington Auto Show’s Green Car Summit.)

The gist of the conference was this: we should shore up our own oil reserves and, since 70 percent of crude oil in this country is used for transportation, we oughtta put our energy into electric vehicles to protect our nation’s economy and security.

SAFE’s affiliate organization is the Electrification Coalition, which advocates for the adoption of EVs. Both are led by Robbie Diamond.

Also, there was a sense that meeting these goals would rest on a partnership between government and industry. Sandalow, in fact, stressed his concern about fashionable talk against government, despite the fact that government assistance has borne great achievements, like, for example, the Internet. And, of course, there was talk about China whipping American butts on this with its government mandates for EVs.

In other news from the event:

Enterprise, the world’s largest rental car company, announced an expanded roll-out of EVs to help consumers make the leap from gas-powered cars. It’s a particularly brilliant stroke of marketing because customers very often purchase cars like the ones they rent, Enterprise says. After an accident, there’s a psychological attachment to the rental car, which is viewed as safer than the one that just got banged up. But will Enterprise make a profit, asked Chuck Todd, NBC’s Chief White House Correspondent, who interviewed CEOs Andrew Taylor and Fred Smith. “It’s pay me now, or pay me later,” said Taylor, who noted the socio-political imperatives to adopting EVs.

Still, money is on our side, Smith says, citing an unprecedented union of affordable batteries, vehicle range and the ability to recharge. EVs costs 75-80 percent less per mile than their gas-using counterparts, said Smith, whose company has 250 million vehicles. And, don’t forget, he cautioned, oil is the weapon that Al-Qaeda said it will use to “bring the U.S. to our knees.”

Smith is a straight-shooting, logical thinker who articulates resolute action plans in off-the-cuff (or at least they seem that way) bullet points. His confidence-inspiring comments and command of U.S. history elicited one audience member’s call for him to run for president.

I guess you could call it a full day of “Shock & Awe,” starting with the mock meltdown.

People joke that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people. But it felt pretty much just like Hollywood during the “ShockWave” simulation, where D.C.’s muckety mucks played other muckety mucks in the midst of the melodrama, heightened by cables dispatched to the panelists and a mock CNN, called GNN or Global News Network, beaming in updates fraught with tension.

Regarding America’s lack of a thoughtful and wide-ranging energy plan, Susan Schwab, a former U.S. trade rep acting as national economic adviser to the president, quipped: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Schwab also quoted Churchill’s line about America always doing the right thing — after it has exhausted every other option.

Here she is in this picture — you can tell who she is as she’s the only she.

Below is a shot of the full “Cabinet,” which included Ari Fleischer, former White House Press Secretary, Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat, former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Stephen Hadley, former National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush, John Hofmeister, former President and CEO of Shell Oil and Ambassador John Negroponte, former Deputy Secretary of State and Director of National Intelligence.

Although the visual above may be blurry, the picture is quite clear:

The U.S. can’t afford an energy emergency. Our nation’s health depends on it.