CEOs Probe Pricing of Cape Wind and the True Cost of Fossil Fuels -- Many See a Long Term Bargain in Wind Energy

Cape Wind CEO Jim Gordon explains the Cape Wind plan
in 2003. Seven years, millions of dollars, hundreds of
community meetings, 12 lawsuits later...

One key idea behind the creation of PBLN was to engage, educate and empower the voices of business leaders to speak out about the issues they felt as individuals were critical to the health of the economy and society. Yesterday at our forum on the Cape Wind off-shore power project we saw this model in action, and it was described well in Mass High Tech and the Boston Globe.

50 top business leaders gathered at Akamai Technologies in Cambridge, MA where Akamai CEO Paul Sagan hosted, and Berkshire Partners Managing Director Carl Ferenbach served as moderator. And the program grew out of the stewardship of PBLN Energy/Environment Chair Mitch Tyson, whose own company Advanced Electron Beams, Inc. is poised for its breakout year, according to Mitch, in Mass High Tech.

Cape Wind entrepreneur Jim Gordon spoke first and was followed by the Senior Vice President at National Grid (Richard Rapp) who arranged to buy the power that will be produced. Both took many questions and had a lovely dialogue.

The best thing for these attendees may just have been being able to talk to each other and raise a wide range of questions. The formal presentations too were loaded with detail and data. A central issue on this topic is always price which the Boston Globe addressed by letting Scott Griffith CEO of ZipCar and Paul Sagan CEO of Akamai speak to it from their own individual points of view. Rick Heller, SVP and General Counsel at Legal Seafoods did the same - on this video and in D.C. Denison's Globe article itself.

This program is one of a series that runs 12 months a year on a range of topics programmed by our four Working Groups. The next one is July 20 - planned by the PBLN Education Working Group it will be a forum with Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Revile, entitled, "School Reform: Progress Report and the Business Case for Innovation in Public Education from K to College." Sign up by contacting Aaron Chalek at aaron@pbln.org. Thanks.

Member Spotlight

Diane Hessan, President & CEO - Communispace
According to Advertising Age Communispace is one of the fastest growing marketing and technology companies in the country, with a Blue Chip client list that would make a Madison Avenue giant jealous. A pioneer in creating online communities to help marketers deeply engage customers, Diane helped found Communispace in 1999 and hasn't looked back.