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Monday, November 29, 2004
Environment - Cinergy and sustainability
There is an interesting article today on Cinergy and its CEO, Jim Rogers, in GreenBiz.com. Here is a quote from the middle of this long interview:
GW: As a coal burner, Cinergy is obviously a target for many environmental groups. How do you convince them of the sincerity of your commitments in this area?JR: I understand their motivations. I have learned to frame the issues from the perspective of all of stakeholders: consumers, investors, employees, the communities we serve and also broader societal concerns. We need to consider the interplay of goals and objectives from each stakeholder group, which sometimes are at odds with one another. We need to calibrate the conversation in terms of how it will affect everyone involved. I believe that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” If you strive to make everything perfect, you will never make progress. Five or six years ago, I tried to get more aggressive emission reduction legislation passed -- to tie SOX, NOX and mercury all together -- and to spread reductions over a period of time. If we had been able to pass that, we would have greater reductions in our plants today than we do under the current law. But everybody sort of stiffed the idea in the hopes that eventually they would get everything they wanted tomorrow, rather than get some of it today. We can’t just shut down all the coal plants -- when 52% of all electricity in this country comes from coal -- it’s just not do-able. What’s better is to determine how to make sure all the incremental coal plants are really good, how to retrofit some and how to shut down others that are really old. That gets us on the path to cleaner air sooner -- and it allows us to make real progress.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 29, 2004 04:21 PM
Posted to Environment