Williams executives shared the stage with world energy leaders at CERAWeek in Houston, describing our vision for a clean energy future while helping meet growing global energy needs.
President and CEO Alan Armstrong, who spoke on the panel “Building Energy Infrastructure,” told attendees that natural gas is critical to both growth in renewables and providing energy security in the United States and abroad.
“It’s really hard to come up with something that is more powerful than natural gas at solving some of the world’s problems today,” he said. “And in particular here in the U.S., which is a trusted source of supply for a lot of the allies that are going to be looking for that.”
Armstrong also noted increased difficulty in permitting projects because of the many requirements of state and federal regulators and agencies.
The canceled Northeast Supply Enhancement Project to bring natural gas into New York would have provided an alternative to costly heating oil, and at full capacity would have reduced emissions equal to taking all passenger vehicles out of Manhattan and the Bronx.
“It would have saved all of the consumers in that market $2,500 a year on their utility bill and it still couldn’t get permitted,” he said.
CERAWeek was also an opportunity to share Williams’ clean energy focus, said Chad Zamarin, Senior Vice President for Corporate Strategic Development, also a speaker at the event.
“It’s been a great opportunity to get back in person with many of our customers, peers and other stakeholders that play an important part of the energy industry,” he said. “Sharing our story and strategy has been a really positive experience.”
Members of our New Energy Ventures team participated in CERAWeek Innovation Agora, which served as the center of technology and innovation programming at the event.
“It’s exciting to bring together a global audience to talk about the future of energy and what role we play and our focus on decarbonization,” said Brian Hlavinka, vice president, New Energy Ventures.
Angela John, director of innovation for our NEV team, spoke during a session about responsibly sourced gas.
“I was pleased to present about our right here, right now opportunity that we have with the next generation of responsibly sourced gas and what Williams is doing to lower our emissions,” she said. “I loved getting to talk to thought leaders about what we are going to do to get to net zero going forward.”
Williams was the first North American midstream company to set aggressive and actionable climate targets. We are leveraging our natural gas-focused strategy and technology that is available today to focus on immediate opportunities to reduce emissions, scale renewables and build a clean energy economy — while looking forward and anticipating future innovations and technologies.