Securing the West
Securing the Competitiveness of
Western Manufacturers
Global Energy Transformation is not only about developing and implementing new energy efficient technologies and technologies that support the use of renewable fuels. In order to make this into an opportunity to secure future economic growth, we need to make sure that Western firms (from the United States and Europe) emerge from this challenge strengthened and with a large number of new competitive technologies. We must not allow China, India and other emerging economies to become the main powerhouses of the global clean tech industries!
We have already experienced how Japan has taken a permanent place among the global leaders in many industries, and Western companies have gradually learned to compete against Japanese companies by increasingly applying the management principles developed by them.
An article in The New York Times on the 30th of January 2010 warns that Western economies may shed its dependence on imported oil from the Middle East, only to emerge as dependent on clean technologies from China.
Now, we face a new challenge. Strong voices are heard from high level business leaders, saying that we need to organize and manage the development of new energy technologies, in order to achieve this with precision and cost effectiveness.
In an article in The Washington Post of the 2nd of August 2009, GE CEO Jeff Immelt and venture capitalist John Doerr call for increasing government investments in clean technology industries in order to secure future American leadership in these areas.
In his recent book “Our Choice”, the uncontested global leader in the area of sustainability, Al Gore, provides the following vision:
“The turning point came in 2009. The year began well, with the inauguration of a new president in the United States, who immediately shifted priorities to focus on building the foundation for a new low-carbon economy.”
Through his plan for reducing the dependence of the United States on imported oil from the Mideast, the oil industry legend T. Boone Pickens argues for large a large scale government program to expand the production of electricity from wind in the US mid-west.
In a broschure from 2008, Volvo (the world leader of the heavy truck industry) CEO Leif Johansson calls for high level agreements among nations about the renewable fuels that we need to develop and implement on a large scale in the near future.
In order to transform global energy systems with speed and precision, and make it possible for Western industry to emerge as winners in this race, we need to run the transformation as a large scale planned and managed change program similar to the Apollo program.
Global Energy Transformation Institute is one of the clearest advocates of managed change in the energy sector that at present makes its voice heard in the debate in Western economies.
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Mats Visits GWU June 21
