Energy People: Barry Worthington

Barry Worthington is the Executive Director of the United States Energy Association (USEA), the U.S Member Committee of the World Energy Council. USEA has one hundred fifty members across the U.S. energy sector, from the largest Fortune 500 companies to small energy consulting firms. Mr. Worthington represents the broad interests of the U.S. energy industry and meets with domestic and international energy leaders to advance information and unearth partnerships to develop energy infrastructure projects across the world.

USEA's team of international energy specialists works with the U.S. federal government, energy companies and energy ministers to build out energy infrastructure in developing countries. Mr. Worthington and his team have developed thousands of energy projects globally, from geothermal drilling operations in sub-Saharan Africa to smart grid electricity projects in central Europe.

PUF's Steve Mitnick: You are one of the faces of the U.S. energy industry internationally. I'm sure there's been a lot of talk about political changes in the U.S. with the election and the new administration, including its impact on energy. Do you have any thoughts about what you've been hearing and the questions people have been asking?

Barry Worthington: The USEA is the U.S. member of the World Energy Council. We were created in 1923 to serve in that role. We have counterparts in about ninety-five countries.

People in other countries are always fascinated by U.S. elections. This time, because so many of the pollsters had discounted Donald Trump, many people outside the U.S. were more surprised than people here, that he was successful.

They get snippets of U.S. news from the major international news media. Of course, everyone gets CNN around the world now, but they don't all get the other channels. So people were getting a little bit of a different perspective in other countries than we were here in the U.S.

During the campaign, if you looked at my hometown in north central Pennsylvania, you did see a lot of Trump signs; you didn't see Hillary signs. 

Many people were pleasantly surprised by the election's outcome. They clearly seek someone who's going to set a different political tone than what we've been used to for the past several decades.

The President said all kinds of good things, positive things about energy, during the campaign. He clearly is a supporter of fossil fuel: coal, oil, and natural gas. That is of great interest to many people.

But I think at the end of the day we're going to see that the new president is an "all of the above" energy guy. I don't recall him being negative toward renewables during the campaign. I think we're going to see an "all of the above" type of administration.

PUF's Steve Mitnick: You've had contact with some of the key people that might be in the administration, like the USEA Man of the Year, Rex Tillerson. You know several more of these key people. Could you talk about what they're thinking, as far as advancing the energy agenda in the new administration?

Barry Worthington: I think that Rex Tillerson was a somewhat surprising, but certainly very positive choice as a nominee for Secretary of State. Rex was a recipient in April 2016 of our United States Energy Award, which is an annual award that we've given for more than twenty-five years.

He was a recipient because of his broad support for developing a greater understanding of energy, both domestically and globally, and his support for the U.S. Energy Association and the World Energy Council. We are very proud that he received our award in 2016.

He clearly has as good an understanding of global energy issues as anybody in the world. No question about it. Exxon Mobil has been active in over fifty countries. He's personally been engaged in negotiating many of those operations. He was involved with us in 2002, when we organized the U.S.-Russia Commercial Energy Summit in Houston.

He's clearly going to have a focus on energy as a part of our international engagement. I think you can expect him to bring a very rational, businesslike approach to managing the State Department.

There are really three attributes that a Secretary of State has to have.

One, he has to manage a very large bureaucracy that's spread all around the world. Rex clearly has experience in doing that from his role as CEO of Exxon Mobil. He is also a diplomat. As Secretary of State, he would be America's number one diplomat.

The Secretary of State has to be able to implement the president's international strategy. Rex Tillerson spent forty years of his life implementing strategy. That's what he did at every level within the Exxon Mobil organization. He's only a little bit of a surprising pick, because he hasn't been in government.

PUF's Steve Mitnick: There must be some voices that you hear in the World Energy Council. Probably dependent on the region, these voices are very strong on certain issues. Their top priority is preventing climate change.

And there are whole constituencies of "keep it in the ground" anti-fossil advocates. Here in the U.S. we have the anti-pipeline folks, whether it's natural gas or oil. Have you heard some of those voices?

Barry Worthington: I think there are certainly individuals who are opposed to fossil energy development. They likely cringed when President Trump won the election. I'm sure they were further outraged when they saw Rex Tillerson nominated for Secretary of State.

They're probably outraged that the former Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has been nominated for Secretary of Energy.

I think we're entering a new era where America takes advantage of its resource abundance.

We've been living in a world of scarcity. In 1985, we all believed that we only had a thirty-year supply of natural gas. Everyone was unanimous in that belief, which would have meant it would be gone by now.

Our policies, and our mental attitude as a country, have not completely shifted to the notion that we're in an era, and will be in an era, of resource abundance, instead of resource scarcity, for a very long time to come.

I think that the new administration recognizes this and that it can help the economy overall. We can dramatically further reduce our reliance on imported oil.

To the degree that we can dramatically reduce our oil imports, we're going to be able to utilize our domestic natural gas. We're exporting natural gas now. When you look at whatever kind of geopolitical issue abounds, one solution is domestic fossil fuel production, and exporting that to other countries.

Whether it be crude oil, refined oil products, natural gas, or coal, we have a variety of opportunities for the United States to prosper because of our fossil energy development. We would be foolish to not take advantage of that.

I think that's one of the new dimensions you're going to see in this new administration, whether you are concerned about jobs, trade, national debt, or balance of trade payments. There are a variety of issues that are addressed by domestic resource development and exporting.

PUF's Steve Mitnick:USEA already is very active internationally. You talked about the USEA role in the World Energy Council. You have a group that's working in many countries, especially developing countries, to improve their energy situation. Is there a good opportunity for USEA in this new era to do more?

Barry Worthington: I think we can do more, and with an administration that understands how critical energy is. Our members travel on a voluntary basis to developing countries to help those countries better organize and manage their energy industry.

Whether it's a private company, or a government-owned corporation, we've been in probably sixty countries now, helping them reorganize how they do business and showing best practices that we use in every single facet of energy industry operations.

There's a lot of focus on electric power, because that's where some of the greatest needs are. You have African countries where eighty-five percent of the population doesn't have access to electricity.

Energy is the bedrock of economic and social development all around the world. Always has been. Our members volunteer their expertise to help people in a developing country learn how to manage their energy systems better. The success stories are just unparalleled.

PUF's Steve Mitnick: Could you tell us one or two success stories, exciting ones, about the difference that USEA made in country X or Y?

Barry Worthington: We started twenty-five years ago working with the former communist utilities in Eastern Europe. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, those were the first four countries whose utilities we had partnerships with.

The partnerships expanded very dramatically throughout the rest of Eastern Europe, through the Soviet Republic after the Soviet Union collapsed, and all around Asia, South Asia, Africa, and so forth.

CEZ, the utility in the Czech Republic, was a utility partner with Houston Lighting and Power, which is now CenterPoint. Here's one of the remarkable things that HL&P contributed as part of that partnership. Their treasurer took the chief financial officer of CEZ and introduced him personally to all of his Wall Street contacts. That was a jumpstart for CEZ's financial relationship.

CEZ was the first Eastern European, former communist electric utility, to get a bond rating. Now they're regarded as one of the best operating electric utilities in Germany, not only managing their business in the Czech Republic, but also their assets in other countries. They are actually lending their expertise now to other countries in Eastern Europe.

In Ukraine, Pennsylvania Power and Light was the utility partner. It embarked on building a safety program for the Ukrainian utility, Kievenergo. PP&L helped develop a safety manual and implement a safety program. Because of that partnership, fatalities dropped from fifteen per year to only one in the first year of the partnership.

You can look at India, where different utilities have stabilized their transmission and distribution systems and reduced outages dramatically. One of the big problems in India was that its distribution systems were unreliable. When the power would go off, these little businesses would fire up a fuel oil or kerosene generator, which was just pushing junk air out, and local pollution was killing people.

By improving the performance of the transmission and distribution systems, they dramatically reduced outages. Consequently, they dramatically reduced the need for these small businesses to be powered by small generators that are producing unbelievable pollution.

In Africa you have countries that are improving their operation. They're able to extend the distribution circuits and bring more and more people onto the grid. Villages are getting electricity for the very first time.

It completely changes their lifestyle, particularly for women. In African villages, it is very common for women to walk miles, collecting animal dung and little scraps of firewood to burn to cook dinner, to cook their food.

When they get electricity for the first time they're able to use electricity for cooking. It reduces the indoor air pollution in their homes. It improves their children's lives. Their children can read by electric light instead of by candlelight, which also improves their health.

When individual villages become electrified, crime goes down, theft goes down, and rape goes down. It literally transforms people's entire lifestyle. Our members are helping improve these people's lives on a voluntary basis. It's quite remarkable.

PUF's Steve Mitnick: How do you do it? You're one person, as far as I can tell, and yet you have your organizations working in many countries. You're relating to all these other energy associations and organizations and, as you described, you have to work a lot with our industry. What's your typical day like?

Barry Worthington: We've been doing it now for twenty-five years. We have a terrific staff of twenty-five people. They travel extensively.

It's normal for our staff to hit one hundred thousand miles plus in a given year. For the past ten years at least, I've traveled over two hundred thousand miles a year.

The key thing becomes building the trust of the energy organizations in the developing countries that we're working in. They quickly come to understand that we're not there to sell them anything.

We're only there to share our best practices and help them understand what applies in their context and what doesn't. We do that in conjunction with the U.S. Agency for International Development and their staff in the missions in the developing countries. There's involvement by the U.S. Embassy.

The United States has essentially a strategic plan on a country-by-country basis based on their stage of development. Our members, as volunteers, help the countries assess where they are and what their needs are. I can give you a very simple but good example.

Look at countries that are being electrified for the first time, or even that are wishing to just modernize their systems. In many cases, even when electricity has been available, they haven't metered it.

If the customer pays anything, and in some cases they really hardly pay anything at all, it's not based on consumption. It's based on some other attribute. It might be the size of their home. It might be some random variable.

So when a country decides that they're going to meter all of their customers, our volunteers can help them realize what type of technology is most economical and best adopted to their circumstances.

For example, if you are in a country that is capacity-short and your regulatory structure is such that you have time-of-use rates, you may want a kind of smart meter that can calculate consumption at various times. It can provide the incentives for using electricity on an off-peak basis.

In some countries, particularly those that are being electrified for the first time, you may want to go with a metering arrangement where you utilize a pre-paid card.

In many countries, you buy a smart card and you plug it into the meter socket and it debits your card as you are using electricity. That means that you, the customer, ultimately control how much you are spending on electricity.

When the card runs down, you don't have any more electricity until you recharge the card. Customers who have never used electricity before have no idea what consumption is, how much they are going to use, and how they can interpret that relative to how much they can afford to pay. Something as simple as the type of meter that you use has variances in different applications and different circumstances.

The American electric utility volunteer can help the person in the developing country come to the right conclusion as to what kind of metering is going to be most effective under their circumstances.

PUF's Steve Mitnick: You have a remarkable job. All I know is you are from a Pennsylvania small city or town and now you are logging two hundred thousand miles a year. You are having a big impact on millions of lives internationally, working with our industry. How did you get here?

Barry Worthington: When I graduated from Penn State we had witnessed the coldest winter in the history of Pennsylvania. I had three job offers - Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and Houston. My choice was purely based on the weather. The Houston job was the lowest paying of the three, but I went to Houston, worked at the University of Houston and began graduate school. Then after about a year and a half, I was hired by Houston Lighting and Power to work in their Energy Efficiency Department.

I organized their Residential Conservation Service, which grew out of a federal requirement that electric utilities had to provide home energy audits or home energy inspections for their customers. Back in that day, Houston Lighting and Power became the first electric utility to do as many as twenty thousand home energy audits in a year.

We put a very successful program into place. Houston was growing phenomenally. There was a lot of growth in power demand. The company was building nuclear plants and coal plants and lignite plants.

It was very valuable to begin implementing efficiency programs that were effectively reducing peak demand. All of those activities started with a home energy audit.

I was there for some time and then the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation, headquartered outside of Detroit, hired me.

I was there for about a year and a half. My predecessor at the U.S. Energy Association was retiring. The Washington area is much closer to my family, and my wife's family, and we were just married and starting a family. So I applied for the job and was hired, and have been here twenty-eight years.

PUF's Steve Mitnick:It's that time of year to make resolutions. Maybe you feel USEA is doing exactly what you want it to be doing; it sounds like it's doing a lot of tremendous things. Do you have any resolutions for this next year? Ambitions to extend or expand in any areas?

Barry Worthington: This year, we're all going to witness a dramatic change in how our federal government operates. Whether it's a Republican administration or a Democratic administration, USEA has found a way to serve the interests of the United States. We are very excited that we're able to help the Trump administration implement international energy cooperation strategies.

We work very closely with the Department of Energy. We've been very helpful to them. Sometimes as a non-profit, non-governmental organization, USEA can get things accomplished more quickly and simply, and less expensively, than the bureaucracy can. We look forward to working with our new Secretary of State. We look forward to working with our new Secretary of Energy.

Things will certainly be different, and the need for international energy cooperation is going to increase. That cooperation could increase our exports under a new administration. The whole business sphere benefits by relationships that we can build through the World Energy Council and relationships we build directly on a bilateral basis with our colleagues around the world.