Executives, academics and other experts on clean energy came together on Saturday to discuss business' role in helping the environment during the third annual Tufts Energy Conference.
Students and professionals from the Boston area attended the day-long event, which was sponsored and organized by Tufts' Energy Security Initiative (ESI), and focused on the role that clean energy startup companies currently have in the energy industry.
ESI Co-Director Daniel Enking, a sophomore, hailed the event as a "huge success."
The conference consisted of three panels focusing on technology, policy and finance, as well as two keynote speakers and networking sessions.
When the day began in Braker Hall Saturday morning, more professionals were present than students. Throughout the day, however, the number of students, both from Tufts and from other Boston-area schools, increased steadily.
Enking said that nearly 200 people attended the conference and that organizers were ecstatic about the conference's success. Still, he said that the event did not attract as many students who are uninvolved in the energy industry as organizers had hoped, explaining that the abundance of other events on campus this weekend as well as the nature of the energy conference likely impacted student involvement.
"Since it was very business-focused [and] Tufts isn't a huge business school ... We didn't cater as much to students who are interested in ... international issues," Enking said.
In the future, the conference will focus more on such Tufts-friendly issues in an attempt to draw more students, according to Enking.
William Moomaw, a professor of international environmental policy and director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, gave opening remarks in which he addressed the need for energy security and discussed changes occurring within the energy industry.
"Energy security means economic security," he said, also citing diplomatic consequences, rising prices of fossil fuels and climate change as areas that could potentially be affected by changes in world energy use.
Steve Connors, director of the Analysis Group for Regional Energy Alternatives at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lab for Energy and the Environment, followed Moomaw with the first keynote address. He discussed "the spatial and temporal dynamics of how we use energy."
"Every market's a niche market ... all energy is local," he said, speaking about new technologies and their practicalities in different markets. He also talked about misconceptions in the media about clean energy, as well as the practicalities and challenges of increasing reliance on wind power to supply energy needs.
The first panel of the conference featured executives from clean energy startup companies, including several founded in the past few years. Speakers focused mainly on the business aspects of their companies, as well as on the environmental benefits of their products.
"We help our customers save money by making their process more efficient," said Mitch Tyson, chief executive officer of Advanced Electron Beams, a company that works with electron beams to make industrial energy more efficient.
Tim Healy, founder and chief executive officer of EnerNOC, spoke during the panel about demand response in the energy market. EnerNOC, which went public in May 2007, curtails electricity "at a moment's notice" and promotes self-generated energy at commercial and industrial facilities, according to Healy.
He explained that his company asks, "What if we could send the right signal to the demand side to those who are using electricity" to reduce use during peak times?
"Demand response is something that's one of the most attractive resources for meeting market demand," he said.
After a break to participate in a networking session, the conference resumed with a second panel. It concentrated on policy factors involved with clean energy startups. One of the speakers on that panel, Vice President of Transmission at UPC Wind Michael Jacobs, presented an unorthodox view on carbon taxation, according to Enking.
Jacobs "didn't think that putting a price on carbon is a good way to go about leveling the playing field between fossil fuels and renewable energy," Enking said, "which is interesting, because that's a pretty widely accepted idea."
Nick D'Arbeloff, executive director of the New England Clean Energy Council, delivered the second keynote speech after a networking lunch. The afternoon's events were held in Cabot.
"Nick D'Arbeloff's keynote in the afternoon was very inspiring," Enking said. He said that D'Arbeloff spoke about "climate change, energy security ... peak oil and how coal and natural gas are getting more expensive, and their supplies are running out."
The third panel focused on finance aspects of clean energy startups.
Organizers hope to capitalize on this year's conference's success and aim to keep the event growing in the future.
Enking said the New England area afforded Tufts students a great opportunity to get involved.
"We had a few people who were definitely looking to hire interns for the summer," Enking said. "There were a lot of professionals networking with each other as well ... The clean-energy industry's really thriving here."
