Speaker

Andrew Liveris Chairman and Chief Executive Officer The Dow Chemical Company

At Thursday's CERAWeek Power Day Lunch Daniel Yergin, IHS CERA Chairman, welcomed the audience and introduced the keynote speaker Andrew Liveris, Chairman, President, and CEO, The Dow Chemical Company. Mr. Liveris began with a rare opening for a CEO of a multinational company: "We need government." He explained that there is no substitute for strategic planning to address the long-term challenges currently facing humanity and repeated that "we need government in this arena to help markets function better." Mr. Liveris named three key needs: policies that mandate energy efficiency and conservation, government that helps companies take on risk so that it can be leveraged and taken across the market, and urgent action on climate change. Emphasizing the last point, he told the audience that we need "less talking, more doing" and that "the fact of life is that we have done next to nothing about this, and that is a disgrace."

Mr. Liveris discussed how important institutionalizing energy efficiency has been to Dow since 1990 when the company set a goal to reduce its energy intensity by 25 percent by 2005. It designed metrics, systems, feedback loops, and other internal policies to leverage best practices from within. When Dow successfully met the company goal in 2005, it set another one: to reduce energy intensity by a further 25 percent by 2015. In addition to looking within, Dow also seeks best practices from outside and has found being part of the "Save Energy Now" consortium with the US Department of Energy to be very helpful.

In discussing Dow's commitment to culture of innovation, Mr. Liveris described a new development--a solar shingle that can be installed by any normal roofing contractor and which he believes will become "solar for the masses." On biomaterials Mr. Liveris was less optimistic; in ten years they will likely be a very small part of the market, although Dow is seeking to overcome the hurdles.

Moving on to job creation and the amplifier effect of his industry, Mr. Liveris discussed plans to make investments in other parts of the world as well as to build new plants in the United States and keep jobs here. He emphasized that "the world needs people who can make stuff."

In response to James Mulva, CEO of ConocoPhillips, who called natural gas "the gift" and to Daniel Yergin, IHS CERA Chairman, referring to oil as "the prize," Mr. Liveris said his moniker for natural gas was "a treasure," but clarified that "this [US] shale gas needs to be proven...we need a little more certainty." He was, however, a little more forthcoming toward the end of his remarks: "I'm an optimist--I believe shale gas is a game changer."

Covering a variety of topics in his question and answer period with Dr. Yergin, Mr. Liveris made clear as gas is "a treasure," he is not in favor of putting the fuel "into places it should not be going." One use he cited is transportation for light duty vehicles: "I think the CNG [compressed natural gas] thing is nonsense," and said that CNG compares unfavorably with current fuels, such as diesel.