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VERGE 18 Program

VERGE Energy Program

VERGE Circular Program

VERGE Transport Program

VERGE Circular Program

VERGE Energy Program

VERGE Transport Program

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VERGE Energy

Tuesday, October 16th, 2018

8:30am to 12:15pm

AI and Blockchain for Good: Moving from Ideas to Application

Tutorial

This tutorial is now full. Space may become available, so please plan to arrive early on Tuesday, October 16, to join a queue for available seats.

A hands-on, deep dive discovery session — including corporates, startups, thought leaders and experts — exploring artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain-enabled applications to create more sustainable solutions for our planet.

Power Markets and Innovation 101: How They Work and What's Next

Tutorial

This tutorial is now full. Space may become available, so please plan to arrive early on Tuesday, October 16, to join a queue for available seats.

This four-hour course will explain the fundamentals of how power markets work, the changes that have taken place in the past decade, and the revolutionary change that is about to occur. We will cover:

1. The fundamentals of how power is generated and dispatched
2. Who does what in the new world (utilities, regulators, entrepreneurs, and interactive consumers)
3. Factors driving technological change and the critical role of information technology
4. The key technologies - including wind, solar, storage, and other distributed energy resources
5. Emerging winners and losers
6. Business models, and global trends, including carbon, financial trends and national economic development policies
7. Regulatory models and experiences worth examining (including New York, California, Texas, Australia, China, and Germany
8. Implications for the future and potential outcomes
9. The challenge for planners and investors, and options for creating potential no-regrets strategies in an increasingly volatile market

Creating a Smart City in the Real World

Tutorial

This tutorial is now full. Space may become available, so please plan to arrive early on Tuesday, October 16, to join a queue for available seats.

How can data contribute to the creation of a resilient, vibrant, safe and equitable community? Our experts will discuss how sensors are instrumenting cities around the world — collecting valuable insights about traffic, air quality and more. And they'll offer lessons learned from recent smart city deployments.

Wednesday, October 17th, 2018

8:00am to 12:15pm

Microgrid Summit

Summit

The Microgrid Summit is a half-day, invitation-only working session convening 100 key stakeholders to focus on how to accelerate the deployment of clean, grid-connected microgrids.

Refer to our Microgrid Summit page for more information and to request an invitation.

8:30am to 9:30am

Next-Gen Infrastructure: The Transition to a Distributed, Digital World

Breakout

A wave of automation driven by commercial drones, artificial intelligence and the internet of things is sweeping across power plants, water districts and the power grid. This discussion will examine how digital technologies are reshaping the electric grid and water distribution systems, and how that makeover could affect cost, reliability and sustainability.

Scaling the 100% Renewables Movement

Breakout

What will it take to help more midsize and small companies, communities and cities source clean power? This session will consider multiple emerging approaches, including new forms of virtual power purchasing arrangements and deal options that risk-averse organizations can seriously consider. We’ll also explore how forward-thinking companies are using their bargaining influence and procurement muscle to help their business partners, suppliers and customers make the switch and make an impact.

9:45am to 10:45am

The Circular City

Breakout

The concept of the circular economy offers a framework through which city governments and policymakers, urban planners and designers, businesses and individuals can rethink urban systems — and begin to close the loop on the flow of materials. As cities embark on the transition towards a circular economy, information and digital technology will play a crucial role in helping them address these challenges. Data forms part of the “connective tissue” linking urban systems together — from the movement of traffic, to the health of buildings, to how citizens can produce and consume energy. This session will explore the role of data in transforming urban life and building long-term prosperity, resource sufficiency, economic viability and well-being in a circular city.

Promising Aggregation Approaches for Renewables Procurement

Breakout

What will it take to involve more companies in clean power purchase agreements? This workshop will explore emerging project aggregation models — scenarios in which multiple organizations collaborate and pool their financial resources to help get a new solar array or wind farm off the ground.

Energy Storage Technologies: How To Pick the Right Solution

Breakout

This session will evaluate potential energy storage applications, and what technologies make the most sense — technically and financially — for those solutions. The perspectives include a global technology company, a multi-national telecommunications company, a large investor-owned utility and a renewable and energy storage developer. The solutions that will be considered as part of this discussion: lithium ion, flow, thermal options and fuel cells as well as how and when to pair energy storage with renewable energy.

Lessons from Ground Zero: Energy Recovery and Resilience

Breakout

How we can modernize the power grid in a timely, equitable and affordable manner to get ahead of the next round of natural disasters. This session will provide perspectives from a utility regulator, a Naval Facilities leader, a city infrastructure expert and a utility leader.

Innovation in Practice: Building a Circular Economy in Construction

Breakout

Learn from experts turning ideas into action as they discuss successfully integrating circular strategies to optimize waste stream management, product manufacturing, and industry engagement to reduce the carbon impact of construction. Explore approaches that promise to herald new innovations in the built environment — helping to prevent the "outsourcing of pollution" by reinventing the market for typically carbon-intensive products and processes in the building industry.

11:15am to 12:15pm

Turning Electric Vehicles into Grid Resources

Breakout

What are the policy, regulatory and business model implications of connecting millions of EVs to the power grid? This session will explore the challenges and opportunities from the perspective of utilities, regulators, technology providers and EV infrastructure providers.

Bringing Offshore Wind Down to Earth

Breakout

Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that the global offshore wind market will grow sixfold by 2030. This discussion will cover what corporate buyers should really know about purchasing electricity from offshore farms including the financial, technological, environmental and social benefits/challenges.

The Path to Holistic Energy Management

Breakout

This session will present the findings of a new GreenBiz Research project examining how companies with a global footprint set energy efficiency and clean power goals, demonstrate the value of those approaches, and use data to implement comprehensive energy management strategies. We will hear from panelists across health care, real estate and technology companies with recommendations on how to approach energy projects holistically across a range of internal and external stakeholders.

Best Practices: Employee, Customer EV Engagement

Breakout

One of the biggest drivers of new electric vehicle ownership is an employer's installation of a workplace charging station. Retailers, offices and fueling centers are taking part in the EV transition in important ways. Discover how and where the opportunities lie.

Will Blockchain Technologies Disrupt Energy Markets?

Breakout

Large companies, utilities and startups have invested significant funding and resources to investigate ways blockchain technologies could disrupt traditional energy distribution models and services. This session will explore real-world blockchain deployments across regulated and non-regulated markets focused on applications including transactive energy, supply traceability and other use cases.

12:30pm to 1:15pm

Guru Lunch: Innovative Solutions to Accelerate Grid-Scale Renewables Integration

Lunch

As increased renewable energy is integrated into the grid, there is increasing importance in the use of energy storage, demand response, efficient market design and advanced control technologies. Join Tim Allen, Senior Director, Energy Storage & Business Development at Sempra Renewables, in an exploration of the solutions enabling more seamless and cost-effective renewables integration and the grid investments that are necessary to increase clean energy sources while maintaining reliable and affordable power.

About VERGE Guru Lunches: Join like minded attendees for interactive moderated lunch discussions around a particular topic. Each table discussion will be led by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants.

Guru Lunch: How Do We Make Saving Electrons Sexy?

Lunch

You already know that one of the best ways your organization can reduce its impact on the environment is to reduce your energy use — via energy efficiency and renewables. The good news is, consumers, customers, employees and others expect the companies they buy from or work for to do right by the planet — and they expect you to use clean energy as a major piece of that effort. The bad news is, packaging up a sexy, compelling story about energy consumption reduction is hard. So what's the best way to tell that story? This Guru Lunch will be facilitated by Suzanne Shelton, President and CEO of Shelton Group, the nation's leading marketing and communications focused exclusively in energy and the environment.

Guru Lunch: Now We’re Cooking With(out) Gas

Lunch

Evidence is increasingly pointing to dramatically reducing or eliminating fossil fuel combustion in order to meet carbon targets and improve health outcomes. While the utility-scale shift to decarbonizing electricity is well underway, natural gas use is still predominant for heating and cooking. There are many examples of all-electric buildings, but this shift counters years of consumer outreach to go away from electrical resistance heating (powered by a dirty grid). Ben Galuza is an expert on high performance building design with Integral Group. He recently designed a ZNE all-electric medical office building for $1M less than the conventional design budget. This roundtable will discuss decarbonization and all-electric buildings, particularly in the context of high performance building design.

Guru Lunch: Really!?!? Electric Trucks? - An Insider's, Unbiased View

Lunch

This table discussion will be led by Rick Mihelic, Director Future Technologies Studies for the North American Council for Freight Efficiency — who works to scale technologies for efficiency and is now guiding future change in electric and automated trucks. There are many arguments for and against electric trucks, some very loud and persuasive, but the success of these innovative trucks will occur under the scrutiny of the marketplace who is charged with delivering our goods every day. The benefits and challenges of adoption are broad and difficult to monetize. Rick will facilitate a pragmatic discussion on commercial battery electric trucks.

Guru Lunch: PropTech 2020 — Exploring the Most Promising Commercial Building Technologies

Lunch

Join Billy Grayson, Executive Director, Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance at The Urban Land Institute (ULI) for a discussion of emerging technologies that leading real estate companies are piloting TODAY that will likely be rolled out across portfolios soon. We will discuss some of the most promising near-term technologies in smart buildings, on-site energy production and storage, and advanced building materials.

Guru Lunch: Mastering Breakthrough Facilitation

Lunch

Are you an active facilitator committed to mastering your craft to drive greatest impact towards our needed clean energy future? Breakthrough stakeholder engagement cannot happen without breakthrough facilitation. This will be a collaborative discussion — with a seasoned expert in workshop facilitating and collaborative engagement — on best practices for facilitating the future we need today.

Guru Lunch: Industries in Transition — Cross-Learnings in the Energy and Mobility Sectors

Lunch

What lessons can the growth of renewable energy teach people working in or interested in the new mobility space? Where are there similarities, and where are there differences? Is it possible that despite a later start, mobility will transition to a sustainable future faster than the electricity sector does?

Guru Lunch: How to Build Clean Energy Policy Coalitions

Lunch

An exploratory discussion led by Sam Jammal, Senior Manager, Governor Relations at BYD North America — one of the world's largest EV makers — about how companies, advocates and individuals can work together to support clean energy before federal, state and local government — focusing on how to build coalitions and identify the different voices to share this message.

Guru Lunch: Scaling Clean Tech Faster Through Buyer-Supplier-Investor Collaborations

Lunch

Innovation is central to sustainable business and it is urgently needed to address the most pressing challenges in energy, transport, and circular economy. But are we fully leveraging the power of collaboration between buyers, suppliers, and investors to ensure solutions address business needs as well as sustainability goals and that technologies are positioned to scale? Nate Springer from BSR leads two buyer-supplier transport clean tech collaborations, Future of Fuels and Clean Cargo Working Group, and he designed the Sustainable Fuel Buyers’ Principles for vehicle fleets as well as supported the team that launched the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance with BSR, WWF, RMI, and WRI.

Guru Lunch: Can Buildings Solve the 'Duck Curve?'

Lunch

In commercial-scale electricity generation, the 'duck curve' is a graph of power production over the course of a day that shows the timing imbalance between peak demand and renewable energy production. In many energy markets the peak demand occurs after sunset, when solar power is no longer available. As renewable electricity becomes more and more plentiful at midday, what strategies could to be considered next to solve the daily generation/consumption mismatch, and what are the next challenges coming after we solve the duck curve problem? Join David Kaneda, Principal and Thought Leader at Integral Group, in this substantive, solutions-oriented lunch discussion.

Guru Lunch: Using Climate Data to Improve Health Equity

Lunch

Climate change is making the places we live somehow simultaneously wetter and drier, as well as hotter, dirtier, and fire-ier(?). The health impacts of these changes are broad and potentially severe. Still, climate change presents the greatest opportunity to radically improve the health of people, communities, and the economy. Join us in this lunch discussion to imagine the potential for emerging business opportunities to improve human health and help us uncover synergies between building resilience and growing your business.

Guru Lunch: Stacking Benefits — Innovation in Solar and Agriculture

Lunch

Learn about the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s InSPIRE study into low-impact solar development and pollinator-friendly solar from two leaders involved in the work. Meet previous VERGE presenter Rob Davis of the Center for Pollinators in Energy at Fresh Energy and Organic Valley’s Stanley Minnick and discuss the NREL study’s results to date and opportunities for new partners.

Guru Lunch: AI for Utilities — The Emergence of the Neural Grid

Lunch

This discussion will focus on how utilities must adapt to the concept of a "neural grid" — where real-time analytics, distributed generation and artificial intelligence (AI) combine to deliver the next generation power grid. Join Noah Goldstein, Director, Energy at Navigant, to talk about how the reality of the neural grid could diverge from the concept, what is accelerating its arrival, and what is going to slow down adoption of the neural grid.

Guru Lunch: Beyond the Low-Hanging Fruit — Maximizing Energy Efficiency in Buildings

Lunch

Corporate energy and sustainability managers are faced with the continued challenge of meeting reduction and optimization targets, but often are limited by the availability of information to identify opportunities or create long-term strategic plans. While the digital revolution presents significant opportunities for access to more information, infrastructure and resources are not always in place to support this transformation. Ari Kobb, Director, Energy & Sustainability Solutions at Siemens Building Technologies, will address the different types of energy data that is typically available, and how leaders can leverage this information to make informed decisions.

Thursday, October 18th, 2018

8:30am to 9:30am

Understanding International Energy Markets

Breakout

Clean power investments and projects are surging in China, largely due to aggressive policymaking and ongoing price decreases. This session will look globally to Asia, Europe and beyond to help corporate buyers understand the complexities of global renewables markets.

The Business Value of Pairing Onsite Renewables with Energy Storage

Breakout

This session will provide insights into how companies can make the business case for integrating onsite renewables with energy storage. This discussion will cover the latest technical and policy considerations, best practices in pairing energy storage with renewables and offer perspectives from major retailers, car manufacturers and other industry leaders.

Pathways to Accelerating Decarbonization

Breakout

Which are more effective: ambitious strategies that prioritize a carbon-free future vs. those that create low-carbon transition paths? Some policymakers promote a 100 percent renewable vision while others believe there needs to be a better bridge to the future, one that embraces low-carbon options such as nuclear power, natural gas and hydrogen. Perspectives from utilities, cities and the corporate world.

Building the Workplace of the Future

Breakout

How do interior design choices, better-informed site selections and automation technologies lead to healthy, happier and more productive workers? Some constructive ideas for constructing a more sustainable work environment — for workers and employers alike.

1:30pm to 2:30pm

The (Building) Revolution Will Be Decarbonized

Breakout

Amidst unprecedented innovations in distributed energy resources, electric vehicles, and battery storage, the buildings industry has become stagnant, and stuck in the realm of one-off net-zero energy buildings, when we should be designing net-zero, resilient communities, and utility resources. If we are to achieve environmentally resilient, socially equitable cities and communities, the building industry needs to be more proactive, disruptive, and truly integrated into the energy revolution in terms of managing loads and load shapes, shifting to electricity, connecting load to regional renewables, and working with utilities to develop rate structures that spur investment. In doing so, buildings become the conduit to capture vehicle energy, facilitate shared resources (EVs and AVs), and prioritize the integration of storage.

This session will be an interactive discussion of the partnerships and collaboration needed between the developers, architects, utilities, DER innovators, technology companies, and community leaders and an exploration of the opportunities and challenges to integrating all of these stakeholders during design and construction, highlighting the tools and information flow that is needed by each party. Participants will gain insight into the challenges and obstacles within the building industry and how to better leverage current innovations and new partnerships so that buildings can truly support a decarbonized society.

Building the Microgrid of the Future with Next-Gen Technologies

Breakout

Recent technology advancements have paved the path for clean, resilient microgrids across a range of applications. This session will explore distributed energy resources deployments including fuel cell, energy storage and renewable technologies that are being integrated to create microgrids for entire corporate campuses or portions of cities. Our panelists will discuss the economic, reliability and sustainability benefits of embracing these technologies as well as the challenges in the accelerating growth of microgrids. This session will tie into the half-day, invitation-only Microgrid Summit being hosted at the VERGE conference.

Financing the Clean Economy for All

Breakout

Our experts will discuss ways to promote various financing tools across clean energy and transportation initiatives. Specifically, we'll review challenges and opportunities in providing funding to urban, rural and international communities and discuss ways to engage communities directly via market-based, utility-led and government-based options.

With or Without U(tilities)

Breakout

More utilities are investing substantially in renewable energy, in large part because their commercial and residential customers want them to do so. This session will examine how large energy users are changing how they use energy and how they engage utilities — from programs that allow them to directly purchase renewables to partnership models such as green tariffs, community solar initiatives and more. Building on the outstanding stories featured in the new book, Sustainable Electricity II: A Conversation on Tradeoffs (Fox & Scott. October 2018. Springer Press), the speakers will discuss the realities of collaborating between electric utilities and large customers to adapt energy programs.

The Second Life of EV Batteries: Reuse & Recycling

Breakout

The first wave of electric vehicle batteries are just beginning to reach the end of their useful life on the roads, and are now being tested out to store energy for buildings and the power grid. Automakers, utilities, energy storage service providers and battery manufacturers are trying to figure out how to develop a supply chain and system that enables affordable reuse and recycling of electric vehicle batteries at scale. What are the challenges and opportunities for this circular economy of energy storage?

3:00pm to 4:00pm

Community-Based Clean Energy: An Oakland Case Study

Breakout

This case study will evaluate the Oakland Clean Energy Initiative which will use local clean energy solutions to replace a 40-year old fossil fuel generating station in Oakland with up to 45MW of energy storage, energy efficiency and electric-system upgrades. The project will ensure transmission grid reliability in Oakland when the current power plant is retired. This session will provide perspectives from PG&E, East Bay Community Energy, environmental justice leaders and nearby customers about the objectives, challenges and timing of the project.

What's the Future of Renewable Thermal?

Breakout

The market for renewable thermal projects including biomass, landfill gas and solar thermal systems is less mature than the ecosystem that has emerged to advance corporate use of renewable electricity. How can companies scale their use of renewable thermal solutions? And what's the role of natural gas, liquid natural gas and other thermal options in pursuing a clean energy future?