Can Sochi Lead To A New Alternative Energy Coalition?

During the late 1980s, I had the good fortune, thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation, to lead and facilitate an Aspen Global Forum between Russian and U.S. leaders in Sochi; the site of the present Olympics. The subject was economic development in the then already fragmenting, Soviet Union.

Sochi was beautiful but back then was a relatively small resort city for vacationing Russian nomenklatura. I have three memorable funny stories (at least for me) related to Sochi. I will try linking them, for better or worse, with the need for alternative fuels.

Getting to Sochi at the time provided a unique experience. The U.S. delegation which included a former U.S. Senator, several Wall Street titans, the editor of a major national newspaper, leading members of the Denver business community and myself (I was a Dean at the University of Colorado at the time) were told when we arrived at the Moscow airport in a snowstorm, we had to fly out of Moscow’s second smaller airport. We all dutifully were taken by shuttle, very slowly given the snow, to what seemed like an old, a very old facility. We quickly boarded what appeared to be a jet plane on its last legs. It was late at night and the snow was still blowing strong. The plane’s seats were broken and the bathrooms didn’t work. The cabin crew was nice but spoke only in difficult to understand broken English. Not an auspicious start to the trip. Two members of our delegation asked the pilot for 10 minutes to go into the terminal (an exaggeration of the term) to buy two or three bottles of vodka to give us courage and calm our nerves. They did get permission. It turned into a fun flight.

After we checked into the Intourist Hotel in Sochi, we all went to bed. One of the members of our delegation was a smart, tough, but very funny reporter and op-ed writer for the Rocky Mountain News. She came down the next morning and indicated most of her winter clothes were stolen from the room, while she was sleeping. I went up to the Manager of the hotel and told him what had happened. He was dutifully contrite. Every day while we were there, the reporter received a nice gift of new winter clothing to wear in the snow. At the end of the week, I thanked him and said, next time, have them take my clothes!  He laughed. I was serious!

The Russian delegation hosted us in the summer home of an apparently famous Russian oligarch, whose name I forget, about 100 or so miles from Sochi. They took us there in big Army helicopters. We flew over and between the mountains and valleys of the Caucasus. The mountains were covered with much snow and looked gorgeous. One of the Russian guides opened the door so we could get a closer view. A big mistake! A member of the U.S. delegation, a well-known war experienced woman journalist, based I believe at the time in D.C, shouted close the f….n door. “I have covered many wars and been shot at. I survived. I don’t want to go down in a helicopter. We can look at the snow through a window.” She was right. At that point the helicopter seemed tilted at a significant angle to please us. We all were a bit scared but didn’t want to hurt our Russian hosts. She had no such fear. The door was closed.

If anything, except fuzzy memories, ties these stories together, it’s the snow and the mountains and a thought about building a coalition around alternative and renewable fuels to save the beauty of both and to the jobs they provide both up and down stream.

Based on the over 50 degree temperatures in Sochi during the current Olympics and the lack of abundant snow, The New York Times indicated that Daniel Scott, a professor of global change and tourism at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, was stimulated to project the future of winter sports. He noted that with a rise of global temperature possible by 2100 of 7 degrees Fahrenheit, there might not be many snowy regions left to hold the Winter Olympics.  He concluded “that of the 19 cities that have hosted the Winter Olympics, as few as 10 might be cold enough by midcentury to host them again. By 2100 the number will shrink to six.”

Of the 960,000 winter sports industry jobs are supported by winter sports in the U.S. 27,000 have already been lost because of lack of snow, according to a recent NRDC report. More will be gone next season if snow fall totals continue to decline.

If we can easily check the box on one or more of the following: concern for the health of the economy, concern for the environment, concern for the quality of our water supply and the availability of water, concern for the future of the ski industry and winter sports off and on mountains, then even if we don’t ski, and even if greenhouse gas is not a top priority for some , we should be able to foster a strong coalition between environmentalists, business, nonprofits,  natural gas and renewable fuel  advocates. Its mandate would be to work on speeding up use of alternative natural gas based transitional fuels  and helping place electric cars on a faster and cleaner track to market acceptance. The strategy is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it will at least get the country started on a path that will reduce harmful environmental impacts of gasoline including significant GHG emissions and other pollutants. It may also help slow down the browning of our mountain areas and the closure of winter resorts and the manufacturing and retail sectors that serve them.

America needs a good dose of pragmatism and probability curves to guide its fuel policies. Advocates of natural gas based fuels and renewables should be able to coalesce around the President’s agenda with respect to weaning the nation off gasoline (one of the biggest carbon emitters) and gasoline only vehicles.

Assuming electric utilities continue to switch from coal to cleaner natural gas; scholars suggest that electric cars will be of help in reducing total carbon emissions. But EV’s are not yet ready for prime time for most low, moderate and middle class households, in light of the relatively low mileage secured on a single battery charge, the absence of retail distributers, the small vehicle size and price. When they are, let the competition begin, remembering all the while that real change in emissions and reduction of pollutants, will come after the conversion of large numbers of existing cars to flex fuel vehicles and their ability to use natural gas based fuels. Back to Sochi and indeed to the mountains throughout America, when we are asked every Christmas whether there is a Santa Claus, lets us be able to look up at magnificent snow-capped mountains and collectively say, yes there is a Santa Claus and then sing loudly, Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow.