Peter Fusaro: Education breeds market liquidity

Source: Exec Digital Canada

Date :6/16/2008 5:21:05 AM

Peter Fusaro, the Chairman of Global Change Associates, is a recognized “thought leader” on energy and environmental markets and bestselling author of What Went Wrong at Enron. Exec catches up with this man on the move

Written by John O’ Hanlon

It isn’t often I get to interview a thought-leader, but it’s hard to think of another way to describe Peter Fusaro. He does have companies of his own, and he sits on the boards of no fewer than seven clean-tech start-ups, because he is happy to guide green entrepreneurs. However he is no kind of corporate man or wealth creator - not that he doesn’t understand these people’s language.

As a founder of the Energy Hedge Fund Center and creator of the annual Wall Street Green Trading Summit, he is the person that the corporate finance people, energy companies and investment banks come to when they want to learn how carbon trading works. Even the government does. On June 12, Peter will be addressing staff from both Houses of Congress on ‘cap and trade’, “because they need to understand what this means. I do all my government work for free so there is no conflict of interest. I am not any kind of lobbyist – it is just the right thing to do. I am also an advisor to other foreign governments.”

Earth Day awakening

Fusaro says his personal awakening to the centrality of energy policy coincided with the birth of the modern environmental movement on April 22 1970. “I was at Earth Day with my Solar Power T-shirt, and aiming to make the world a better place. As for many other people, that was the great teach-in that raised my awareness.”

He continued his education, specializing in international relations and political science. Then in 1975, after graduate school, he joined the public service with the Federal Energy Administration (now the Department of Energy). “My boss said, ‘We are going to have gasoline shortages: go work with EPA (the US Environmental Protection Agency) on taking the lead out of gasoline.’ That is how it all got started!”

“I don’t know whether it is a blessing or a curse, but my entire career has been in energy and environment, and I have been involved at an early stage all these things, so lead phase-down turned into LNG safety and environmental impact in 1978. I am a New Yorker; I worked with New York City on the first demand side management, now called demand response and energy efficiency programs. Then I worked at the World Trade Center and port authority facilities in the early 90s, and worked with Toyota on the Prius in 1997-98.”

He takes a scattergun approach when talking about his experience, because he is interested in the issues and career progression has clearly not been important. The only really long term item on his CV is his association with Global Change Associates - consulting firm or think tank, however you’d like to describe it - that he founded in 1991 and now chairs. GCA’s focus is on “recognizing opportunities in both sustainable energy and environmental projects for hedge funds, venture capital in clean technology, family office, investment banks and selected energy companies.” It was the first company to publish energy industry reports on Enron in 2001, energy e-commerce in 1999 and on energy hedge funds in 2004.

Click here to read the full interview with Peter Fusaro