NORMAN — During a panel on alternative energy Friday at the University of Oklahoma Price College of Business, Paul Dickerson told OU students that in order to keep the future of alternative energy bright, burgeoning energy fields and traditional energy fields must work together.
“We need Congress to not pit new energy against old energy,” said Dickerson, a partner with Haynes and Boone. Dickerson launched a Clean Tech practice group for his company in 2008. Dickerson spoke with panelists Ron Bolen, managing director of HFBE Investment Banking, who has more than 16 years experience in the energy sector, and Michael Skelly, founder of Clean Line Energy Partners. Skelly’s business is currently working in Oklahoma to establish transmission solutions to take clean energy from where it is produced to customers. All panelists were there to address the question posed by the business college: “Is alternative energy a fad or business opportunity?”
Mark Sharfman, director of the Division of Management and Entrepreneurship and professor of strategic management for the business college, said he felt the panelists emphatically answered the question in their remarks as they spoke of the future of the field.
“This is an industry which has grown very quickly,” Skelly said. Almost everybody believes that there need to be new sources of energy, Skelly said. He noted that the challenge is getting people to invest in the infrastructures to lead to the sustainability of alternative energy.
Dickerson said this lack of investment by the government and the American people is the reason that the U.S. is losing in the clean energy race. He said that the U.S. has the technology to support the growth of alternative energy. What it lacks is the capital and the policy to support the industry.
Bolen said he believes part of the solution lies with getting traditional energy companies interested in supporting alternative energy.
“I think it really, really, really relies on the new set of managers coming up in traditional energy companies,” Bolen said.
Dickerson agreed, noting that one source of energy doesn’t need to wipe another off the grid. The nation, he said, simply needs to diversify its energy portfolio.
Aaron Wright Gray 366-3533 pop@normantranscript.com
