By Dana Bykowski
February 6, 2006

Guy Warner, President & CEO of Pareto Energy Ltd, spoke to mayors at the Friday morning Plenary of the 74th annual Winter Meeting. Recognizing the benefits of partnering with the Conference of Mayors, Warner developed the concept of EIDs, which are very similar to Business Improvement Districts. Many high technology companies understand the peril of power outages and seek to locate new headquarters or relocate existing facilities to cities that can provide cleaner, ultra reliable power. The goal of EIDs is to bring together clusters of high technology businesses in cities and provide them with a new generation of power technologies designed for the digital age.

After visiting several cities throughout the country with the Conference of Mayors, it became apparent that a solution for more efficient and reliable energy systems is needed. Pareto Energy came to seek guidance from Dearborn Mayor Michael Guido. Guido then led Pareto to study the visionary work of Thomas Edison, the pioneer of the energy industry. Edison always envisioned that power generators should be installed in small, modular units near their point of use. He called this distributed generation. Edison knew that he could eventually solve the noise and pollution problems of distributed generators and he felt strongly that the system that emerged based on huge central power plants with a single point of failure and power conveyed over long distances with a fragile system of wires simply wouldn-t last.

Warner indicated that Edison was indeed correct. These systems have extraordinarily negative impacts on the environment. Furthermore, they too often expose overhead wires that are easily knocked down by natural or human damage. Edison was also correct in that noise and pollution problems of distributed generators could be solved and that today, a small ultra-clean micro-generator can be deployed and customized at the sight of their use, and at a much lower cost than the expansion of central power plants.

"Together with the Conference of Mayors, we have devised a program to cover all costs of designing distributed generation for your city and to privately finance its implementation," said Warner, citing several examples of how cities have recently suffered economic casualties from power outages and blackouts.

Warner explained the benefits of utilizing the EID concept to mayors. EIDs are designed to control and install power locally. First, they are specifically tailored to specific timing and usage, so that power is not wasted. Secondly, cities that invest in energy savings and micro-generators can mitigate commercial power costs. Third, cities can take optimal advantage of combined heat and power sources using micro grids. Fourth, cities can create electric reliability insurance that covers product loss and business interruption from power disruptions.

"Pareto and the Conference of Mayors will work together to assist your city in the design, private funding and implementation of highly reliable power infrastructure for economic development," said Warner.

For more information about EIDs or Pareto Energy, contact Kathryn Kretschmer-Weyland at the United State Conference of Mayors headquarters at 301-450-5251 or send e-mail to kweyland@usmayors.org.