Since Boston was recently named one of America's "greenest" cities by Popular Science magazine, I'd like to use this great and vibrant city as an example of the changes that are possible if we commit to pursuing them.

Boston is an important location for UTC. About 15 percent of our shareholdings are right here, second only to New York, and our history dates back a century and a half. Our earliest installation here was an Otis elevator in 1856, and other early systems include the Boston Subway in 1914 and the John Hancock Building in 1922.

New England is our home, but we're balanced in our industries, products and, importantly, geographies. Today 62 percent of our revenues come from outside the United States. Two-thirds of our 225,600 employees are international and we have a presence in approximately 180 countries worldwide.

Our products are diverse, but the common denominator of every single thing we do is to convert energy to useful work, whether elevators or air conditioning or aerospace.

So we're highly alert to the energy and conservation agenda. And one of the most important things we’ve learned is that we can do more with less -- and indeed much more with much less. All it takes is learning to use energy that we’re now just throwing away.

Consider that as much as 91 percent of the energy coming out of the ground is lost or wasted before it becomes useful work depending on the end use. Half of the energy in central station power plants, for example, goes up the stack as waste heat. But what if we put generation on-site where the power is needed while capturing and using the waste heat there as well? We do this routinely at UTC, and the energy conversion efficiencies go from percentages in the low 30s for central station plants to more than 75 percent for generation and heat capture locally.

We also waste energy by not recapturing it from vehicles and other accelerated objects when they brake and stop. One example of a solution - we built Otis elevators that recapture the energy on descent that was expended on ascent, thereby requiring 75 percent less electric energy than comparable equipment did a decade ago. Today’s re-generative elevator operating in a commercial high-rise building can lift a million pounds a day for an energy cost of a mere $1 an hour.

The third glaring example of energy waste comes from heat dissipation. Take the simple case of heating water for washing or bathing. Between 16 and 18 percent of all the energy consumed by buildings, whether residential or commercial, is used to make hot water. We still do this much as we did thousands of years ago over the campfire. But if we employ the kind of heat transfer processes used in modern air conditioners, we can cut that energy expenditure by 75 percent, which means about 12-13 percent less overall energy consumption in buildings.

The point of all three examples is that energy conservation in significant amounts is feasible today and reflects the laws of physics. And not only feasible but with attractive financial returns.

Now let’s look at what happens when you apply today’s know-how on a massive scale to an energy-intensive city like Boston.

Boston’s 600,000 inhabitants, 80,000 residential and commercial buildings, and about 350,000 cars consume 26 terawatt hours of total energy annually. That represents the output of about 4 large power plants. It turns out that a surprising 70 percent of this total – the equivalent of 3 power plants – is used by buildings. Transportation accounts for virtually all the rest.

Inside the 70 percent total for buildings, about 52 percentage points are for commercial buildings and the rest for residential. Usage by function breaks down to heating (33 percentage points), lighting (13 percentage points), hot water (11 percentage points), equipment and appliances (9 percentage points), and air conditioning (4 percentage points).

So how can Boston move toward even greater sustainability? Start by installing automatic setbacks on heating / cooling / lighting systems for residential and office space, so that energy is shut off when the buildings are not occupied. That alone would save about 5 percent of the current total energy load for Boston, eliminating the need for almost a quarter of a power plant.

Using heat transfer to make hot water, as I mentioned earlier, would save the energy equivalent of about two-thirds of a power plant. Re-generative elevators also would be helpful, although their total energy load isn't enough to make the power plant savings meaningful. But if we could extend the same approach to cars, which hybrids already do by capturing braking energy while recharging the battery, we would save the equivalent of at least another quarter of a plant.

Moving central station electric generation to small on-site units in buildings would enable capture and use of the heat there for space cooling and heating and hot water production. Potential savings: another half a power plant.

Together these examples equal one and a half plants out of Boston's 4 total, or a little over 30%. Granted, the savings won’t come cheaply with retrofits versus new construction. But it’s what a “greenfield” city would look like. And lots of the gains can be made with attractive returns, even on a retrofit basis.

I also want to take this opportunity to mention fuel cell-powered buses. We build them, drawing on our experience since the 1960s in building all the fuel cell power plants for the American space program. Why do we have hydrogen powered fuel cells in space? Because the by-products (and there are only three) are water, heat, and electricity. Astronauts drink the water and the heat and electricity power the Shuttle. The same is true for a fuel cell-powered bus although the water here ends up vented harmlessly to the atmosphere.

Although there are about 1,000 diesel powered buses in Boston, they collectively require less than 1 percent of the city's energy. Fuel cell buses are about twice as energy efficient as diesel, but since the total energy consumed is minimal, so is the savings potential. But diesel buses emit oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, plus generate noise unpleasant to all of us. By contrast, fuel cell buses have no emissions, no smell, no noise beyond conversational speech. So the quality of life benefits tremendously from fuel cell buses, even if the energy savings isn’t huge.

In addition to these efforts in our products and operations, we also partner with other leading companies to affect global change. With Lafarge, we're leading the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Energy Efficiency in Buildings (EEB) project, to determine how buildings can be designed and constructed so that they use no energy from external power grids, are carbon neutral, and can be built and operated at fair market values.

The three-year project is intended to develop a roadmap for transforming market structures and practices throughout the building industry. The project supports the construction of buildings that consume zero net energy – buildings that generate at least as much energy as they expend – around the world. Zero net energy buildings will also reduce demand by design and are considered highly efficient.

The project’s first report found that, on average, building and property professionals overestimate the additional cost of green buildings by more than 300 percent and underestimate by 50 percent buildings’ contribution to global GHG emissions.

The project is currently working on its second publication, to be released in early 2009, which will focus on examining the barriers to zero net energy buildings and assessing the potential for technology, financial mechanisms, and holistic approaches, supported by appropriate policies, to close gaps in the building industry and promote sustainable building practices.

In closing could I remind us that the changes proposed here are based on fundamental physics and nothing more. The fact that 91% of total energy is wasted rather than becoming useful work sizes the opportunity. It’s up to us to seize it.