Name: Fortune 500 CEO Encourages Trump to ‘Stay Engaged’ in Clean Energy Discussion
Uploaded: 2017-06-01
Duration: 4 min 23 s
Description: American Electric Power's CEO offers Trump advice ahead of his decision regarding the Paris climate agreement.

Nick, the world is waiting to see if President Trump is gonna pull out or support the Paris Climate Agreement. What do you think he's gonna do? I would like to think that if he does pull out, it's with conditions to re- engage because I think it's clearly important that we engaged from an international front And really could be a negotiating tactic to withdraw and re- enter. But I think it's important for us to stay engage from international standpoint. So what are the risks if the US is not officially part of this climate change Effort because won't individual companies, and states, and cities still try to meet their goals of reducing carbon emissions? I think certainly it's great to be part of the worldwide effort. But the individual states have different views of how to get there. So they may see flexibility in terms of their opportunities to change resources and how quickly they do that may be different. So, there will be some degree of flexibility involved But at the same time, the trajectory is the same. So I really believe that, from our perspective, we will continue to provide resource plans that move toward that clean energy economy and our states will certainly recognize that that is the best approach. Everybody has an opinion on the environment and climate change. Here you are As chief executive of the largest power transmission system in the country. If President Trump asked for your advice, what would you tell him? I think he should stay engaged. Stay engaged in the process, work with the world community, focus on the solutions that are in front of us and as a matter of fact, Those solutions are different today than the way they were even five years ago, so its imperative for us to continue to stay focused on what the prize is, and that's that cleaner energy economy. Let's talk a little bit about coal because, as you know, President Trump has been promising to revive the coal industry and bring back coal mining jobs. I mean, do you see that this revival is really on the way? I mean is this for real? I don't think it's a realistic expectation to think that coal is gonna come back in a big way. The reason is is because you have multiple different sets of resources and technologies that weren't available from the past. We didnt' have renewable resources as economical as they are today. We didn't have battery technologies. We didn't have certainly Big data analytics that support the grid. Those are areas of advancement that weren't even there. Matter of fact, we didn't even have shale gas activity five years ago. So to make investments today based upon a large investment like that with a lot of risk versus smaller investments, a multitude of different smaller investments You would mitigate your risk going the other direction. So at American Electric Power, you have made a dramatic shift away from your cooperations. You've been transitioning to natural gas and alternative energy. Are you gonna stay on that path, or can you see with this new climate in Washington that maybe make a new commitment to coal? We're gonna stay on the path that we're on, because we get a lot of questions from investors. We get a lot of questions from customers about, we want to have renewable solutions. We want to have clean energy solutions. And we, from the AP perspective, we wanna be as benign to the environment as we can. Mm- hm. So we're gonna continue to focus on our ability to achieve those objectives. That makes us a sustainable business. We've been around 110 years, we plan on being around 110 years. So it's really a long term view going forward. So you mentioned your customers, a lot of your customers are big Fortune 500 companies like Amazon, like Walmart, what are they telling you? What are there expectations? They have expectations of being supplied by clean energy solutions mainly Wind or solar type activity, and we want to be responsive from that perspective. So we, when we see the sustainability of our company going forward, we've gotta be responsive to our customers and their expectations of what resources we supply them with. And clearly that's, in today's environment, it's around renewables. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

American Electric Power's CEO offers Trump advice ahead of his decision regarding the Paris climate agreement.