Weekly Insider (Milling for Clear Thinking on Energy)

Traveling through today, back next week. In the meantime here is public record testimony given last week—to US Congress Joint Economic Committee on energy efficiency—by my friend and the clearest thinker I know on energy: Mark Mills a partner at Digital Power Capital (an affiliate of Greenwich, CT hedge fund Wexford Capital LLC), author of Forbes Energy Intelligence column and co-author of The Bottomless Well (Basic Books, 2005).

"Efficiency: The Hidden Secret to Solving Our Energy Crisis"
Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee for the opportunity to present some thoughts on the role of energy efficiency in the U.S. economy. In one way or another, I've been involved in and studied the technologies of energy production and use for several decades. And in recent years, specifically in the pursuit of energy tech venture capital opportunities, I've had the privilege to talk with hundreds of entrepreneurs and companies involved in developing advanced energy technologies, and visited with dozens and dozens of them. This experience has made me quite optimistic about our long-term capability to meet the nation's energy needs – notwithstanding the caveat that there are substantial challenges in the near term.

The solutions to energy-related geopolitical, economic and environmental challenges are not going to be found in anything new in basic physics. The primary energy sources we have today are those we'll need to use for quite a long time – hydrocarbons, carbohydrates, sun, wind, water and uranium. Nonetheless, history will record that we are today on the cusp of an energy revolution – one involving efficiency – with implications as deep and far-reaching as the industrial and electric revolutions of the previous two centuries. Each of those previous pivots in history was similarly anchored in profound changes in the efficiency with which we could use basic energy resources.

The emerging efficiency revolution directly derives from our nation's collective investment of trillions of dollars in the intellectual capital and infrastructure of the silicon and digital economy. It is not a single device, or solution, but the emergence of an entirely new structural approach to energy efficiency – a hybrid energy economy. The nature and implications of this technological paradigm shift are epitomized by the hybrid-electric car....

Click Here for a Full Transcript of Mills's Testimony

(Photograph provided by Dani Simmonds)