Recently, we held a roundtable discussion at Tigercomm headquarters in Rosslyn, Virginia with former Virginia Governor (now Senator-elect) Tim Kaine, as well as 10 clean economy business leaders from the mid-Atlantic region. One of those leaders was Ned Hall of the AES Corporation. Here's a brief description of Hall's work in helping to build a clean energy economy.
Ned Hall is Chief Operating Officer, Global Generation and Executive Vice President of the AES Corporation. Mr. Hall was named Chief Operating Officer, Global Generation in October 2011... In 2003, he relocated to Arlington to focus on Global Business Development where he led the company’s wind efforts as President of AES Wind Generation... Mr. Hall served as Chairman of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) from May 2011 through May 2012. He currently serves as a Board Member of AWEA.
In the Tigercomm clean economy forum, Hall spoke about AES's work with integrating advanced, lithium ion batteries into the power grid. Hall mentioned Virginia's voluntary renewable portfolio standard (RPS), noting that "Virginia has had less success...than other markets in terms of trying to attract investment from competition or third parties because of the dominance of the utilities," and made the point that "competition works better for all of us." Hall discussed the size of AES's renewable power portfolios. Tim Kaine responded, "2,000 megawatts of wind and 500 megawatts of solar says...these are proven technologies that are working." Finally, Hall talked about how clean energy should be seen as a "bipartisan issue," given that "80 percent of the [wind power] generation is in Republican districts and 67% of the jobs are in Republican districts."