KEMA participates in President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness session
KEMA and Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness combine efforts to create jobs in the energy industry.
July 1, 2011 –
In June, KEMA's Global Director Management & Operations Consulting, Rob Wilhite, participated in a “listening and action session on the smart grid and energy” with members of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. On behalf of KEMA, Mr. Wilhite was invited to attend and take part in this private event, held at North Carolina State University, along with several senior executives from various energy companies. The Council is chaired by Jeffrey Immelt, CEO and Chairman of General Electric. Information gathered from the session was later shared with President Obama.
Beginning 2009, on behalf of
GridWise Alliance, KEMA already
demonstrated in an analysis (available
here) for the team of, by that time, President elect Obama, that the deployment smart grid technology in the US will lead to an increase in the number of jobs. The focus of the sessions revolved around the promotion of job creation in the energy industry with particular attention paid to Smart Grid technology. The June session was led with other council members from NextEra Energy, Southwest Airlines and Comcast Corp./NBC Universal. Throughout the session, several opinions of job creation in the energy industry were discussed.
The Council on Jobs and Competitiveness was created in January 2011 with an objective to get Americans back to work, with the purpose of strengthening the U.S. economy. Prior to the Council, Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board provided administration support and expertise as the US economy attempted to recover from an economic crisis. As the country enters a new stage of recovery, Obama asks the Council to put its focus on finding ways to encourage the private sector hire as well as devoting time to creating American competitiveness.
U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke stated that there are four key drivers to increase energy jobs and competitiveness in the U.S. including (1) scale what works, (2) develop open standards, (3) secure the grid, and (4) empower consumers with more choice and data privacy protections. He later made a statement that Smart Grid implementation requires decoupling mechanisms and TOU rates.