Current Innovation: Battling bureaucracy by Jeff Morris - 1.3.07 How do we support tomorrow's innovations from the confinement of bureaucracy?
It's a question with which governments throughout the Pacific Northwest have been plagued for ages. How does government, made of up well-established boxes and lines of authority, nurture innovations that often destroy the boxes and silo views those very agencies and ministries are built upon?
I think the answer is quite simple: We can not rely on the current systems we have in place. Innovations need to be supported by specific charters under the leadership of a single agency.
I applaud cities like Portland, which had the foresight of creating its Office of Sustainable Development, and leaders like Oregon's Gov. Ted Kulongoski for designating a point person in charge of sustainable development.
In most cases, enormous effort is spent to set up a forum for discussing new technologies with state or provincial governments. More often than not, several agencies share the authority to help implement new technology, but none have enough authority to actually adopt it. Often, separate agencies actually work in opposition because of their unwillingness to cede authority or allow their budgets to be threatened.
Several years ago, a law was passed which required all state agencies to look at fuel cells as a primary back-up source of power when replacing or acquiring new power systems. But in Washington, only one fuel cell has actually been acquired. Agency managers are only asked to find ways to keep every light bulb in a building lit during a power outage, and therefore fuel cells rarely receive a glance.
Do agencies really need this type of power consumption to function for few days? Can agencies plan to operate with fewer lights and thus give small yet cleaner generation a chance? We may never get answers to these questions if we allow the current system of fractured execution to fester.
With an agency forcing other branches of government to look at sustainability and life-cycle costs, clean energy innovation can be better supported. Just like an environmental ministry goes after polluters no matter where they are, we need a sustainable energy office to investigate ways to make cleaner, more efficient, self-generated power. Just like we refit our old buildings to be more energy efficient, governments must change their current ways of thinking.
We must start to evaluate the best technologies at tomorrow's true cost, including global warming and pollution, rather than simply looking for the lowest bid.
The other fault in current systems is that policies supporting cleaner, newer technologies don't come with pre-packaged special interest groups to support them. In 2002, Washington state passed one of the first biodiesel production policies in North America. But few signed up to testify for the package of bills. A few groups took credit afterwards, but it was the extraordinary effort of Rep. Brian Sullivan (D-Mukilteo) that ensured the bills' passage.
Yet when gas and diesel prices spiked this past year and some of the larger environmental groups decided to enter the fray, you couldn't find a room big enough to hold a meeting on biofuels. With this additional attention, we set a new mandate in Washington which requires that 2 percent of all diesel sold in the state be biodiesel.
Unfortunately, the same political attention resulted in the shift of many key implementation questions to yet another agency with little energy expertise: the Department of Agriculture. In Washington sate, we have nine different agencies with a hand in developing sustainable energy. Of these agencies, not one is consistently identified as a leader in energy policy.
If every Northwest state and province has an office focused on renewable energy to set a few prime directives, all agencies could use those directives when developing agency energy use policies. These new bureaucratic efficiencies will result in agencies that make decisions based on actual cost rather than cheapest bids -- and help foster a less polluted and more productive region.
As Director of the Northwest Energy Technology Collaborative (NWETC), headquartered at the Washington Technology Center, Jeff and his team work to accelerate growth of the energy technology industry in the region. The U.S. Department of Energy recently recognized his achievements there by naming him a "West Coast Power Player". In addition, Jeff is starting his term in the Washington State Legislature.
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