remains consistent over time. >> okay. next question. >> thanks. >> john harper with npri. my question is for mr. rogers. if anyone else has comments i if anyone else has comments i would aph@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) that will enable the plug-in hybrid. that will enable our ability to manage solar on the roof top. we are prepared to make those

investments, and we will make those investments. but what you find, what we are finding is that we started out looking at 900 different companies in the funnel. we dug into 250. and we tested the products of 100. we are piloting five. there are a jillion great ideas out there, but trying to get them narrowed down to the ones that really works is a challeng. the real challenge is the immigration in egration in the . no one, each company has its own deal. there is no company in the historic suppliers like ge or siemens or abb this isn't where they make the big part of their money. so in a sense we are creating a capability of integrating the technologies and actually building the road map of how you

upgrade your distribution and you create the apps beyond the meter and you tie it all together in communication. that is really the better way to talk about. i have tried to get away from using the word smart grid because everybody has a different definition. it's like 10 blind man standing around an elephant trying to describe it. i try to narrow its to upgrade the grid, come up with the apps. >> a state regulatory commission that regulates price might not necessarily be the best government mechanism for a technology company looking to advance technology. it is one of those things that is probably outmoded. >> i would say maybe not. i am reluctant to challenge the

president. [laughter] >> mr. chairman, go ahead. >> and that is, state commissions really understand the balance between affordable, reliable, and clean. you have to think about it as 50 different laboratories around the country. some of our states have been very supportive of us doing this in terms of smart, in getting the right incentives for energy efficiency. other states have said let's do pilots. other states have taken different approaches. our point of view is that if we can't convince them of the value for in the consumer then it is our fault. so we are going to prove it one way or another because we believe deeply that it is the right thing to do. but i think it would be a huge mistake, and i know lisa hinted at this, having the federal government step in and mandate things. over the last hundred years

state commissions have done it. that is why we have universal access where the real price of electricity is flat. that has been done by state commissions, and with the right charters they can also achieve this transition. >> i think this is kind of where the vision thing comes in. we don't need to know what color the cat is. it needs to catch mice. we already regulate gasoline based on performance standards. we don't tell bp which molecules we want in it. we say we want them to explode this way when they are in your engine, and we don't want them to fly off into the air when they are lying on the ground. we have performance standards. there needs to be real-time pricing for consumers. i am interested in my scripts, but i am also interested in enabling the ron popeal.

he is the pocket fisherman and the stovetop rotisserie. that is exactly what we want on the smart grid. we want the weirdest possible solution to air-conditioning that pulls an electoral load off the grid in the heat of the day. it is not necessarily going to be something that i come up with sitting in an office, and it is not right to be something to end comes up with sitting at the utility. it is going somebody sitting in a trailer saying, we can do this differently. here is how. that is the opportunity. that is where the vision thing comes in. >> you started with subsidy. jim nailed it right. we need to move away from words

like subsidy and instead and investing in our population and labor force and providing the incentive. one in the front. one in the back. >> we talked a lot about increasing the speed of innovation and ecosystems. how do we enhance, improve the speed of our monetary analysis and feedback systems, so that we can also avoid some of the problems like we have seen with corn ethonal. we introduce some of these new untested technologies. >> you could have imagined the price of tortillas will be affected by energy decisions in the united states. >> actually, another example. we need to print think through e unintended consequences. you can't always identify them all. you need to have a little things

in terms of solving it. take shell gas, which everybody calls the game changer. we don't quite know what the environmental impact is point to be of that yet. we know that water, from arizona y'all really know this. we have seen it all across our country. water could be the next oil in the 21st century. if shale gas takes an incredible amount of water with chemicals and the potential to contaminate aquifers, we might find ourselves champion shale gas as a game changer. and at the end of the day find ourselves in the same trade-off. water versus fuel that we did with ethanol. so we really need to think your way through this and remember the lessons learned before. >> one of the things, i want to

add, we have been urging the economic implications of every single project idea that they advance from science forward which is a new way of engaging in some of these things to catch some of that earlier. >> can i just say one thing? absolutely think, i spent three years on capitol hill. really inculcated this idea that you have to think about the whole system and the implications of technology beyond the immediate horizon. but we also are susceptible to the way that what is sort of the convenient way to think about things. the whole corn, ethanol causing corn prices to increase is one of those little ideas that just as convenient and has stuck in our heads. every food economists that has looked at this problem has concluded that, in fact, those corn prices went up because of demand in china and india and the rest of the world, especially for their increase in need for meat and not for

ethanol. it is an idea. it is often, often repeated, but i think especially with so many press in the room it is important to understand that that was not the cause. we absolutely need to pay attention to it. there are a lot of problems with corn ethanol. increasing food prices is not one of them. >> i read one other footnote. we bought sugar-based ethanol coming in from brazil, which would have been been a cheaper alternative and a better alternative. we continue to block it today. so to your point we need to look at this comprehensively and understand if our true mission is to wean ourselves from oil then why not sugar ethanol from brazil? why block that? >> the reason -- >> i'm getting the signal.

gary's comment is going to be the last comment. >> the reason is pretty straightforward. the whole corn ethanol episode has very little to do with energy policy. it is all to do with agriculture. the wto closing in on farm subsidies. there needs to be another way to deal with this problem, and that is the way it was dealt with. no energy person i know thinks that it had anything to do with energy policy. >> there is politics around agriculture in the united states? [laughter] >> none. >> i'm sure their lobby did not have any influence on it either. >> let's thank our panel this morning. [applauding] we will make sure that everybody we have there e-mail addresses and so forth. you'll get the video. we will send you the web archive. so thank you for being here. we want to thank the new american foundation for working with asu to advance this. hopefully we have some good ideas generated here today. thanks a lot.

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