Energy Roundtable: Chris Gibson

Q: How did you become interested in energy policy?
CB: I grew up in a working class family in Columbia County. My dad was a working class laborer with the trades. I’m 50 years old this year, so when the gas and the home heating prices were spiking in the 1970s, that crushed my family. You see a lot in the political discourse about helping the middle class. Let me tell you—want to help a working class family? You have them pay less for energy. Right now we’re paying $1.60 less for gas and paying $1 less for home heating. I mean, some of the people in upstate New York drive 30 to 40 miles one way to get to work, so when you’re talking $1.60 less for gas, that’s real money! When you look at the GDP growth—and this last time it came in at 2.6 percent, but the quarter before at 5, and in the previous quarter above 4—that’s in part driven by the fact that middle class families pay 96 percent of their take home pay. And when they get it in their pockets, historically, they spend it.

Q: How can the U.S. lower energy costs? 
CB: Let me talk about some specifics: You talk about lowering energy costs now—that means I support expanded [oil] exploration. The President said two weeks ago that he wanted to do more exploration off the Atlantic coast. I support that. When we expand supply, generally speaking, that lowers price. I support the pipeline, not only because I think it will expand supply, but also when you look at risk, when you look at New York State, we take on a significant amount of risk with the Bakken crude oil moving through the state in the Mohawk Valley and the Hudson Valley. We need to attenuate that risk, and what’s more risky, moving by vehicle and train, or by pipeline? I would argue that there’s more risk in the former. So the U.S. State Department talked about the fact that they’re looking at the pipeline as carbon-neutral, because when you add up all the CO2, moving it by truck and then by train, you’re at about a wash.

Q: What about renewable energy? 
CG: I want to be clear that my policies are very pragmatic. I’m looking to lower energy costs today. But you know, this is a country that can do hard things. We’ve shown that—we’ve put a man on the moon. And we can be the country that perfects clean and renewable energy and when we do that it will democratize energy. We will transform the way we produce, convey and consume energy when we are able to drive down, for example, the total cost of photovoltaic for solar power. We have a program now called the SunShot program, and I have been working to try and plus up that account. It’s research and development and prototyping to drive the total cost of photovoltaics down to $0.06 per kilowatt-hour. It’s a very aggressive goal, but I’m optimistic that we’re going to make significant progress because we’re using some of the same approaches, and indeed some of the same engineers that we used for your iPhone and your iPad are now focused on renewable energy and solar power. That would be nanotechnology coatings and composites, and substitute materials, because you need the gold and silver now for manufacturing and of course you see the price of that. I think we’re going to see significant progress in driving down the total cost of solar power. And it’s not just solar. I support wind power, geothermal, biomass—there’s room for even more improvement there in biomass. It will be good for the economy, it will be good for our foreign policy—less reliance on fossil fuels—and it will be good for the environment. We also need to look at means of conveyance, and it looks like the state is moving in the right direction with its focus on microgrids. Microgrids empower local communities: Look at the Oswego Electrical Co-op in Oswego County. These electrical co-ops are already working. They actually vote on their budgets and they vote for their leaders and hold them accountable. So when people say that microgrids can’t work, I say “It’s already working!” And I know that the state is looking at maybe working to proliferate that and that that would be very helpful.