Leveraging Knowledge: Transferring Energy Services To New Markets

Authors

  • Michael F. Bobker Director of Strategic Development Association for Energy Affordability

Abstract

In newly competitive energy markets long-term customer commit-
ments will be sought and gained from value-added energy services. The
concept of selling energy services rather than a regulated commodity is
part of an emergent “sustainable development” paradigm which re-
quires transformation of corporate and consumer cultures. Information
systems and knowledge management will be central to transferring new
energy services concepts and capabilities. Global energy companies will
accelerate change as they create collaborations which deploy their infor-
mation through technology-based knowledge management systems.

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Author Biography

Michael F. Bobker , Director of Strategic Development Association for Energy Affordability

Michael Bobker is the director of strategic development for the Association for Energy Affordability and its public interest energy services company, Affordable Energy Solutions, whose mission is to serve low-income communities in New York State. Mr. Bobker has more than 20 years of experience in energy services and building engineering, at the community level and in the private sector serving many public agency clients. As chief operating officer of an ESCO and in consulting engineering practice and turnkey construction, he has managed energy audit programs, public facility upgrading projects, and commercial and institutional retrofits. He has particular expertise in boiler plants and micro-cogeneration. Mr. Bobker is a Certified Energy Manager and holds graduate degrees in sociology and international business. He is also presently a research associate at Columbia University’s Program on Information and Resources, investigating the potential roles for utilities in transferring climate change abatement technology.

He can be reached at mbobker@aeany.org or mbobker@aol.com.

References

An economic analysis of this issue is provided by Duchin and Lange

The Future of the Environment Oxford Press 1994 using an input-output

world model. Under their assumptions about the rate and extent of ef-

ficiency change in various sectors, the CO 2 abatement goals of the Rio/

Kyoto Conventions will not be met.

Such improvements in technology are subsumed by economists under

“technical progress” as opposed to increased inputs of labor and/or capi-

tal. “Knowledge” has an ambiguous status in the traditional (Cobb-

Douglas) production function. The human capital school (see especially

by G. Becker) treat knowledge as an attribute of human capital as it is

trained and educated. Others categorize it as an element of “the residual”

which accounts for growth over and above what can be accounted for

by labor and capital inputs.

Economic efficiency will encompass energy efficiency insofar as energy

is fully priced (i.e., without subsidy) and even more so if taxed to ac-

count for externalities.

Strategic Planning for Energy and the Environment

For a recent summary see Scott, M., Parker, G. and Currie, J. “How to

Build Markets for Energy-Efficient Technologies” Strategic Planning

for Energy and the Environment v. 18 no. 4 1999

Recent technical economics has begun to treat knowledge creation, fo-

cusing on the R&D process. See the literature on endogenous growth

such as P. Romer or M. Scott. There has been less economic attention

to the spread and use of existing knowledge, such as we are primarily

discussing in this article. Japan’s astounding growth and that of other

East Asian “tigers” are probably suggestive here. Their skill has been in

adopting and commercializing technologies not creating them. See also

the discussion of R&D by C.I. Jones Introduction to Economic Growth

This is recognized in the idea of “joint implementation” of CO2 emis-

sions abatement where a developed country uses its capital to buy a

more cost-effective abatement project in a developing country.

A. Streicher “The Future of the Global Power Industry” Hagler-Bailly

Perspectives v. 1 issue 3, 1998

Laudis and Graedel “Manufacturing” in D. Richards and G. Pearson,

The Ecology of Industry National Academy Press 1998

Re-visioning and re-inventing are a widely discussed theme in popular

social science of the 1990’s. Perhaps the best known and most accessible

development of this theme for business is G. Hamel and C.K. Prahalad,

Competing for the Future, Harvard Business School Press 1994

See C. Flavin and N. Lenssen, “Reshaping the Power Industry” in L.

Brown et al, State of the World 1994, Worldwatch Institute/Norton 1994

for a fuller discussion of utility industry events and trends since the

’s and the shift towards an energy services model. The de-regula-

tion of an industry typically leads to a phase of commoditization and

pure price competition as new entrants attack previously protected play-

ers. For this reason it appeared that utility deregulation would lead to

market dominance by lowest cost sources, particularly coal, wheeled

regionally. Initially utilities “stripped down” inessentials such as man-

dated energy service programs, to gird themselves for price wars. But

this phase was short, perhaps because of short-term supply constraints

(it takes about 10 years to site, permit, and build a new coal plant) and

the large number of existing players (not everyone can be a cost-leader).

Instead, the majors have begun competing on the basis of “value-

added.” See, for example, “The Billion-Dollar Battle” Energy Manager,

v. 2 no. 1 January 1999. Also see E. Smeloff and P. Asmus Reinventing

Spring 2001—Vol. 20, No. 4 77

Utilities: Competition, Citizen Action, and Clean Power, Island Press

for case studies of utilities adopting integrated resource responses

to deregulation.

See Bartlett and Ghoshal, Managing Across Borders, Harvard Business

School Press 1989

The most accessible treatment is C. Shapiro and H. Varian, Information

Rules: a Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, Harvard Business

School Press 1999

Rogers, E., Diffusion of Innovations, Free Press 1995 (4111 edition)

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Published

2023-09-30

How to Cite

Bobker , M. F. . (2023). Leveraging Knowledge: Transferring Energy Services To New Markets. Strategic Planning for Energy and the Environment, 2020(4), 62–77. Retrieved from https://journals.riverpublishers.com/index.php/SPEE/article/view/20461

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