opening ceremony 2

New York Energy Week officially kicked off Monday night with a star-studded panel discussion and reception held at the New York Academy of Sciences’ beautiful event space on the 40th floor at 7 World Trade Center.

The need for public/private partnerships when advancing energy initiatives was a common theme throughout the discussion, which was appropriate because that is a major New York Energy Week focus.

“The best innovation will not create a single job without attracting the private sector,” said Francis Murray, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) CEO.

Likewise, Kenneth Daly, President of National Grid’s New York business said, “It’s a great time for the industry, but the challenges are significant and the key will be partnerships between the public and private sector.”

And speaking for the private sector, Theodore Roosevelt IV, Managing Director at Barclays, stole the show with some of his colorful comments. Roosevelt heads the bank’s cleantech initiative and said he underestimated how hard it would be to grow that business.

“The equity markets are very skeptical and debt markets are closed to all but major projects,” he said. He believes the venture capital model is the wrong approach for many cleantech companies because VC’s focus is too short-term. Coincidentally, this view is shared by Michael Levi, Senior Energy and Environment Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who recently discussed his new book, “Power Surge,” with Breaking Energy.

Roosevelt sees a lack of federal policy support for cleantech businesses, saying “Congress is brain dead,” and that New York Energy czar Richard Kaufman – who was also on the panel – has “scars on his back from dealing with them [congress].”

Utilities are no longer in the business of only selling electrons, said Roosevelt, but now sell services like energy management and efficiency tools. However, that means selling less power, while still requiring a return on investments made to construct large, capital-intensive plants.

The good news is he believes some of his quantitative analysts may have discovered a way to profit from underpriced risk in the cleantech market. “When the quants are right and start making returns, other industries will notice,” he said.

New York State’s Chairman of Energy Finance, Richard Kauffman, agreed, saying the model for how regulatory regimes and markets interact in the power sector has to be gotten right. This is a major component of the billion dollar New York Green Bank Kauffman is currently formulating.

There is a need for financing tools to pay for things like better load management systems – which could include smart meters – and these finance mechanisms could come from the market, rather than ratepayers, he said.

For example, some people are willing to pay more for certain services, like smart, programmable thermostats. And maybe there is a way to work backward from the customers willing to pay for these services, rather than the current top down approach that applies cost increases to all ratepayers to help fund power grid improvements and energy efficiency programs.

“We need technologies that make customers say ‘I want that,’” said Roosevelt.