SPX CEO Chris Kearney Participates in National Discussion on Energy
At The National Summit in Detroit, Michigan, SPX Chairman, President and CEO Chris Kearney served as a panelist in a discussion focused on energy, titled “A Realistic Assessment of Reliable Electricity Supply.”
The 90-minute town hall, which took place on June 16, also featured Anthony F. Earley, Jr., chairman and CEO, DTE Energy Co., and was moderated by Marvin S. Fertel, president, CEO and chief nuclear officer, Nuclear Energy Institute Ltd.
After introducing SPX to the audience as a key contributor to energy solutions around the world, Chris focused on the growing demand for energy.
“We must realistically look at the world’s growth requirements, and the demands they will be putting on our energy resources and production,” he said. “In its 2008 World Energy Outlook, published last November, the International Energy Agency estimates that $26 trillion will be spent globally on power and energy infrastructure from 2007 through 2030.”
“More than half of this investment is expected to be spent on power infrastructure. China alone plans to add some 800 gigawatts of generating capacity of all kinds – including coal, nuclear, oil and natural gas – in just the next eight years. That’s more than the entire electrical capacity of Europe. It’s substantially more electrical generating capacity than all of North America and South America combined,” he added.
Chris also discussed America’s competitiveness and emphasized that future growth will require massive transfusions of new energy, including replacements for aging infrastructure and the intelligent use of abundant resources such as coal.
He said the existing energy infrastructure in the United States is increasingly inadequate. “The average age of our transformers is about 30 years,” he said. “Losses on our over-burdened transmission lines have almost doubled since 1970, meaning some 10 percent of all the electricity we generate is simply wasted. And our economy takes a financial hit of somewhere between $25 and $180 billion each year.”
“America can produce the energy we need to grow and remain competitive in the world economy. I have no doubt about that,” Chris said. “If possible, we need to remove political considerations from the equation and simply do what makes sense – good, common sense. And we have to start doing it now.”