Energy Will Be Focus of Bush Visit; Johnson Controls to Host President on Monday
By THOMAS CONTENT
President Bush will visit Johnson Controls’ new hybrid battery laboratory in Glendale on Monday and then deliver a speech on energy policy at the company’s offices in downtown Milwaukee.
The president’s visit is one of a number of trips around the country to highlight points he raised in the State of the Union address last month. Energy policy was the topic for one of the most memorable portions of that speech, when Bush declared that Americans are “addicted to oil.”
“We’re very excited to have President Bush visit our facilities,” said Monica Levy, a Johnson Controls spokeswoman.
Based in Glendale, Johnson Controls is Wisconsin’s largest company as ranked by sales. Founded after Warren Johnson invented the room thermostat in 1883, the company today is the world’s leading producer of car batteries, and it makes air conditioners, heating equipment and devices that help building owners save on energy costs. Johnson Controls’ automotive business, based in Michigan, makes seats and interiors.
The company, which opened the $8 million lithium-ion hybrid battery laboratory last fall, is part of a consortium using Energy Department research dollars to develop a longer-lasting, more efficient hybrid car battery.
In the Bush administration’s proposed fiscal 2007 budget, the Energy Department is seeking $30 million in funding for next- generation hybrid batteries such as those being developed by Johnson Controls. That’s up $7 million from the current fiscal year budget.
“We’re quite excited about it,” said Sam Bodman, the secretary of energy, during a telephone interview Friday. “These are batteries that can be charged faster and can run longer and are really a major step up.”
Johnson Controls hopes to develop batteries that can last for the life of a car, longer than current hybrid batteries. Hybrid cars alternate between gasoline engines and battery power.
“That’s the hope, and all of that has yet to be proven,” Bodman said.
Energy has been top of mind for the president in recent weeks. He mentioned it again in his weekly radio address Saturday.
“The best way to meet our growing energy needs is through advances in technology,” Bush said Saturday. “We will pursue promising technologies that will transform how we power our vehicles, businesses and homes so we can reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign sources of energy.”
Hybrid solutions
The hybrid battery proposal is one of a host of initiatives Bush outlined in the State of the Union speech. Others include additional research for coal gasification and carbon sequestration; more funding for solar and wind power development; and a more than 60% jump in funding for research to use wood chips, corn stalks or switchgrass to make ethanol.
The proposals came as the president said that America needs to reduce its reliance on imported oil.
“America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world,” Bush said.
The energy initiative was announced less than a year after Congress passed its first comprehensive energy bill in more than a dozen years, but as the impact of skyrocketing oil, natural gas and heating oil costs is being felt by consumers when they open their monthly utility bills. That bill has been criticized as providing too many incentives to the oil industry at a time of rising oil prices and profits for the industry.
“It’s been pretty clear for some time that crude oil and natural gas prices and markets have been very tight,” Bodman said.
“It’s a tax on the American public, and therefore if the American consumer is paying $1 a gallon more, that’s $1 that he or she is unable to spend on other goods.”
Bush’s visit comes less than a year after he appeared with Johnson Controls Chairman John Barth at the Energy Efficiency Forum, an event co-sponsored by the company each year in Washington, D.C., to highlight the importance of energy efficiency.
Johnson Controls’ building efficiency business contracts with federal agencies such as airports and military bases, as well as private firms, to manage their buildings and retrofit them to add solar panels, day lighting, more efficient furnaces, controls and lighting, all with an eye toward reducing customers’ energy bills.
The building efficiency business, which now includes the York International air conditioning and heating business, accounts for roughly $11 billion in annual sales for Johnson Controls, a $32 billion company.
The presidential visit to discuss energy issues comes during a period where high energy costs are eating into corporate profits and resulting in higher home heating costs for Wisconsin residents this winter.
“It really shows how much energy has become a front-page, kitchen table issue,” said Jennifer Giegerich, state director of the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group, which advocates for renewable energy and stepped-up reliance on energy efficiency and is critical of the Bush administration for not going far enough to promote renewable energy.
The attention being paid to energy issues includes the state Legislature’s consideration of a bill to increase the amount of renewable electricity generated in Wisconsin to 10% by 2015. A similar national mandate, opposed by the Bush administration, failed to pass in the federal energy bill that Congress adopted last summer.
The state Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on the bill, which would increase the supply of power generated by wind turbines, solar panels and waste-to-energy systems.
WEBCAST
Representatives of Johnson Controls said they could not release details of the visit, but said the company plans an Internet Webcast of Bush’s energy speech in Milwaukee. That Webcast is expected to begin around 11:40 a.m. at www.johnsoncontrols.com.
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