Observations at Powering the People 2.0

The Edison Foundation held their 1-day meeting, Powering the People 2.0, on Thursday, March 22.  I was able to visit for a short while, visiting the electric vehicles outside, listening to the introductory speakers and first panel, and visiting the area they called "Innovation Avenue."

My favorite moment of the entire meeting was when the President of Pepco Holdings greeted everyone by saying, "I want to take credit for the early blooming of the cherry blossoms."  I'm pretty sure he did not realize the irony of his own statement, what with the significant contribution the electricity sector makes to climate change.  (One could point out the Pepco owns no generation, but I still found his statement amusing.)

Electricity industry executives are either delusional or math illiterate. You choose.

The consulting firm, Black & Veatch conducts a survey (pdf) of the electricity industry each year, which provides insight into what the industry itself believes is happening and will happen in the future.  (Thanks to Grist for bringing this to my attention).

One of the questions and answers in particular caught my attention, because it struck me as being totally absurd.  Upon further digging, it turns out I was right; it is absurd.

Nissan Leaf

The question asked of the executives was:

What proportion of your annual energy load do you expect electric vehicles to represent by the end of each of the following years?

Here is the graph showing how they answered.