Council on Competitiveness, U.S. Department of Energy & Alliance to Save Energy Launch Year-Long Energy Productivity Initiative

The Council on Competitiveness (Council), the Alliance to Save Energy (ASE) and the Department of Energy (Department) today officially kicked off Accelerate Energy Productivity 2030; an initiative aimed at leveraging the strengths of the private sector to meet President Obama’s stated goal to double U.S. energy productivity from 2010 levels by 2030.

The high-level conversation, chaired by U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, included remarks from Council President & CEO, Deborah L. Wince-Smith and Alliance to Save Energy President, Kateri Callahan – as well as the perspectives from a critical gathering of private sector leaders from a variety of industry sectors focused on the most important steps that need to be taken now to meet the President’s goal, while also boosting economic output and strengthening America’s competitiveness.

Participants included Council leaders Dr. Tilak Agerwala, Vice President, Systems,IBM; Ms. Amy Ericson, U.S. Country President, Alstom; Mr. Christian Gianni, SVP, Product Development, Whirlpool; Mr. Al Halvorsen, Senior Director, Environmental Sustainability, Pepsico;  Mr. Blake Moret, SVP, Control Product & Solutions, Rockwell Automation; and Mr. Ram Ramakrishnan; Executive Vice President and CTO, Eaton.

“The fundamental driver for U.S. prosperity is productivity,” said Deborah L. Wince-Smith, President & CEO, Council on Competitiveness. “This is the core learning from and proposition of the Council’s nearly three decades long mission. Today’s new opportunity with the Secretary and our private sector leadership group is to begin mapping out the challenges and opportunities to unlock exponential competitiveness gains around optimizing our entire society for energy productivity.”

Accelerate Energy Productivity 2030 is a joint effort between the Council, the Department and ASE, and stems from the efforts and attention created through the American Energy and Manufacturing Competitiveness (AEMC) Partnership between the Department and the Council. Secretary Moniz announced Accelerate Energy Productivity 2030 at the 2014 AEMC Summit on September 17.

As part of this new initiative, the Council, ASE and the Department of Energy will co-host in 2015 three policy and recommendation generation dialogues in Raleigh, North Carolina; Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota; and, Seattle, Washington.

The insights from today’s launch dialogue will help set the framework for the dialogues to come.