POLITICS, APPEARANCES AND THINKING GREEN

摘要

The push to "green" energy is good for automation vendors everywhere, but U.S. government rhetoric may put companies on this side of the Atlantic at a competitive disadvantage. Some months ago, in a conversation over lunch at a press event in Europe, Jim Nyquist, the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) president of Emerson Process Management, one of the leading North American process automation vendors, said current concerns about climate change and global warming would have little or no impact on public opinion or policy in the U.S. Not many weeks later, ABB, one of Europe's leading process automation vendors, focused much of its North American user conference on how its technologies could contribute to mitigating global warming, Metaphorically rubbing his hands in anticipation, Dinesh Paliwal, its then-president of North American operations, summed up the company's stance with the claim that on climate change, "We are in the sweet spot."