Renewable energy is on its way to the mainstream. How will it get there?
Originally broadcast November 5, 2008, 1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific
Scale,
advances in technology, and the rising cost of fossil fuels mean wind
turbines and solar panels are no longer novelties. But getting the most
out of renewable energy technology involves more than new installations. In this
Webinar, we examine the challenges and opportunities associated with
integrating peak-load, distributed power sources in our
base-load-expectant society with an electrical infrastructure built for
centralized generation. We discuss a range of technologies, including wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, biofuels, ocean wave, and others.
Here what our panelists had to say:
Panelists:
Scott Sklar
Scott
Sklar is President of The Stella Group, a strategic marketing and
policy firm for clean distributed energy users and companies. He is
Chair of the Steering
Committee of the Sustainable Energy Coalition and serves on the
non-profit
Boards of Directors of the Sustainable Buildings Industry Council, the
Business
Council for Sustainable Energy, and the Renewable Energy Policy
Project. For 15 years, Sklar served as the Executive Director of both
the Solar Energy Industries Association and the National BioEnergy
Industries Association. He assists governments, federal agencies, and
international
organizations regarding R&D and program funding criteria, industry
outreach, and procurement.
Tom Raftery
Tom Raftery is an industry anlayst specializing in green
energy and sustainability for the firm RedMonk. He is co-founder and director
of Cork Internet eXchange, a hyper energy-efficient data center based in
Cork, Ireland.
Raftery has served as an advisor to Synergy Module, an energy aggregator
utilizing energy demand for grid stabilization, as well as co-founder and
director or Zenith Solutions Ltd., and now works as a Social Media Consultant.
Raftery holds a PhD in Plant Science and blogs at Greenmonk.net.
Henry Gentenaar
Henry
Gentenaar is a marketing-communications executive and a founder and managing
partner of Reluminati LLC, a renewable energy venture marketing firm in
Washington, DC.
Since 2002 he has worked exclusively in the areas of renewable energy and
environmental sustainability with organizations that include the American
Council on Renewable Energy, SunEdison, and the U. S. Department of Energy,
where he has been a
communications counselor to the Office of Technology Advancement and Outreach
and the Solar, Buildings, Hydrogen, Vehicle Technology and Biomass programs.