Richard Kauffman Biography

Richard Kauffman has only been on the job for eleven days, so he must be careful what he says in front of a large group. Kauffman, the new chairman of energy policy and finance, said as he began up the keynote at the Agrion Energy & Sustainability Summit in New York City, "I'm not talking about fracking and I'm not talking about what's going to happen to LIPA." Despite speaking in broad terms, Kauffman hinted at what he may handle as New York's first Energy Czar. Kauffman discussed the utility industry's overall difficulties, including high capital expenditures and the fact that, in at least a dozen states, big business customers can save money by using combined heat and power (CHP) instead of paying their utility. The issue is a growing "Aunt Millie" effect, in which fewer individuals are absorbing the entire network's expense. “It's been dubbed 'circling the drain' by some in the utility industry,” said Kauffman, who served as a senior assistant to US Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu before moving to New York. He believes that when the cost of CHP and fuel cells falls, as it has for solar PV, the Aunt Millie effect will become much more pronounced. He added that governments will have to look beyond decoupling and rate design changes to identify answers for a shifting energy landscape (without saying whether this would happen in New York). He wondered aloud, "Are we placing utilities and consumers in a situation where they have to pay for two systems?" “We need to think about this more extensively and be ahead of the curve.”

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