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Benjamin Holland,
Rocky Mountain Institute
The electric car could transform the way we think about transportation and energy. Vehicle electrifi...
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The electric car could transform the way we think about transportation and energy. Vehicle electrification is a disruptive technology that, if successful, may dramatically reduce U.S. dependence on oil, enable greater adoption of renewable energy, and shape how drivers think about personal mobility. However, there are many challenges ahead. Cities around the U.S. are currently developing electric vehicle-ready ecosystems, installing public charging infrastructure, and launching public outreach campaigns. Will their efforts be successful? This presentation will provide a national perspective on the current state of the vehicle electrification movement, while highlighting challenges and opportunities. The speaker will focus particularly on the roles that real time data and access to information could play in promoting an environmentally and financially advantageous alternative to the internal combustion engine.
Green Tech / Clean Energy Electric Vehicles, real time data, transportation
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Jason Sywak,
Participant Media
Technology has helped us become more efficient, more entertained, and more connected than ever befor...
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Technology has helped us become more efficient, more entertained, and more connected than ever before but it can also help us solve some of the world's most pressing crises. Experts in the field of water scarcity will explain how new technologies are emerging that offer potential solutions to communities that are literally dying from a lack of water.
Green Tech / Clean Energy environmental, green tech, social enterprise
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James Slezak,
Purpose
Electronic musician, turntablist and author DJ Spooky (Paul D. Miller) joins Ed Morris (Canary Proje...
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Electronic musician, turntablist and author DJ Spooky (Paul D. Miller) joins Ed Morris (Canary Project), James Slezak (Purpose.com) and Tara DePorte (Human Impacts Institute) in an interactive session to explore how social entrepreneurs, artists and creative technologists are combining forces to reinvent the movement to evolve beyond fossil fuels.
20 years after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the first global pledge to stop climate change, major polluters in the United States can still emit unlimited quantities of carbon into our atmosphere at no cost. Meanwhile, a well-funded machine works 24/7 to convince Americans there's nothing bad happening - so oil, gas and coal companies continue business as usual. Clearly the green movement needs to take it up a notch. So what is being done to apply cutting-edge social organizing technology, smart branding, product design and the creative arts to solve this problem? How can this bottom-up work support the national and global challenge? What else do we need to do?
Green Tech / Clean Energy energy, green, movements
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Sunil Paul,
Spring Ventures
Most people think new technologies like solar, biofuels, wind energy and electric vehicles are the a...
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Most people think new technologies like solar, biofuels, wind energy and electric vehicles are the answer to climate stability, oil security, and food supply.
But what if the most leveraged way to solve these problems was social media, internet, and mobile technologies? This is the provocative thesis of the "Cleanweb," which is the application of information technology to resource constraints.
I have been involved in cleantech as an investor since 2002 (Nanosolar, Solazyme, Zeachem) and was an internet pioneer starting in 1994 (America Online, Brightmail, Linkedin).
I will explain how companies like AirBnB, Zipcar, Skype, Sungevity, and others are already improving efficiency and reducing the need for fossil fuels, water, food, land, and other resources. I'll explore the scale required to impact climate and oil security and why traditional cleantech hasn't solve these problems yet.
I will also identify new opportunities to create major new cleanweb companies and opportunities for corporations to leverage cleanweb for their products and services.
Green Tech / Clean Energy clean energy, Climate Change, information technology
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Len Hause,
MashBrain
Consumer adoption of Smart Grid programs around the Country has been tepid at best and in some cases...
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Consumer adoption of Smart Grid programs around the Country has been tepid at best and in some cases, there has been organized push back. It is clear that the utility companies have failed to connect with a value proposition for their customers. One path to success could come from defining a user experience that is both compelling and simple to adopt. The history of the Internet has demonstrated that the more contextual structure we can apply to content, the more value we can extract for the end user. In most cases, electricity is provided via bulk pricing regardless of how it is generated, transmitted, or consumed. This is true in spite of major differences of costs and benefits on a real-time scale. This presentation will discuss the benefits and means of providing these contexts and how the SXSW community can contribute to solving this high value problem.
Green Tech / Clean Energy energy, green tech, smart grid
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Christina Agapakis,
University of California, Los Angeles
Synthetic biology aims to re-engineer living cells to sustainably produce fuels, medicines, and mate...
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Synthetic biology aims to re-engineer living cells to sustainably produce fuels, medicines, and materials. With the promise of a new industrial revolution on the horizon, understanding the language of biotechnology will be more crucial than ever. This panel features a new generation of leaders in biotechnology from industry, academia, art and design discussing the future of biology.
Green Tech / Clean Energy biology, design, science
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Michael Dungan,
BeeDance, LLC
Effective storytelling is at the center of all transformation strategies. As society continues to ac...
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Effective storytelling is at the center of all transformation strategies. As society continues to access and rely upon the web for social, economic and environmental information and activity it becomes clear that the need to manage rapid growth and innovation in a transparent manner is essential. Learn how effective social media techniques are being utilized in the Great Lakes region to create authentic change in the manufacturing and professional services sector. From a complete rewriting of the norms and behaviors of the interior design industry to the development of an online marketplace that mimics honeybee behavior, Michael Dungan presents the case for social media as an agent of change. A behind the scenes look at a world changing technology that efficiently converts waste polymers to energy and the role social media plays in its commercialization will be presented as part of this informative and inspiring presentation.
Green Tech / Clean Energy biomimicry, storytelling, sustainability
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Ramez Naam,
Unbridled Speculation
The sun strikes the earth with as much energy in 14 and a half seconds as all of human society consu...
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The sun strikes the earth with as much energy in 14 and a half seconds as all of human society consumes in a day. In 88 minutes it provides as much energy as humanity uses, from all sources, in a year. Our world is home to a thousand times more water than humans tap into, mineral deposits that stagger our needs, and enough arable land to grow food for tens of billions.
Yet climate change, peak oil, peak water, and global poverty and hunger are real. In the midst of abundance we face crisis of scarcity.
How do we reconcile these facts? How do we create a path forward that taps into our world's natural abundance in a sustainable way, rather than slipping into a downward spiral of scarcity?
Ramez Naam, author of More Than Human, demonstrates that knowledge is the ultimate human resource, and that properly directed innovation can tap into our world's vast resources while at the same time reducing the negative impact we have on the environment.
With the right incentives and right choices, we can increase the wealth, health, and wellbeing of everyone on Earth, and do so in a way that preserves our world for generations to come.
Green Tech / Clean Energy abundance, Environment, greentech
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Chad Farrell,
RecycleMatch
Organizations are spending time and money to become more sustainable but they are not leveraging new...
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Organizations are spending time and money to become more sustainable but they are not leveraging new software and web technologies to maximize their positive environmental impact. This panel will discuss three ways technology is making waste a resource. Topics discussed will include the use of new technologies to manage waste and resources like other parts of the organization are managed. Enabling technologies for more transparency and reporting to help to solve environmental problems and create a more efficient eco-system. We will also discuss how knowledge sharing and collaboration across the enterprise and even competitors can create new and innovative solutions to environmental problems.
Green Tech / Clean Energy Environment, greentech, sustainability
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Steven Goldman,
Alliance to Save Energy
Reducing home or business energy consumption is one of the most direct ways to reduce one's impact o...
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Reducing home or business energy consumption is one of the most direct ways to reduce one's impact on the environment and save money on utility bills. The greenest consumers in the U.S. already get how easy it is to use less energy, but their neighbors down the block, who get conflicting information through the news or work two jobs to make ends meet, don't have time to seek out that information themselves or don't get why it matters. Speakers from Carrotmob, RecycleBank, and utilities in North Carolina and Texas will discuss the variety of behavioral strategies, campaigns and technologies - including rewards programs, buycotts and in-home energy displays - their organizations are using to help commercial and residential consumers bring down their energy bills, and to help utilities service more customers without making billion-dollar investments in additional electricity generation capacity. This conversation will drill down into how strong user experience design, multiple feedback channels, social-based reinforcement and incentives all play a role in changing long-term behavior around energy use and generating persistent savings for customers.
Green Tech / Clean Energy Efficiency, energy, Rewards
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Sheila O'Neill,
Tendril
Green is allegedly the new black. If that’s true, why does it seem so many people are confounded ...
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Green is allegedly the new black. If that’s true, why does it seem so many people are confounded by their own energy use? (Who among us can say with any certainty how many kWh our flat screen TVs use? And what is a kWh anyway?). Do we not care? Is saving energy too inconvenient? Is ignorance bliss? Or maybe we just don’t know what to do—beyond turning off the lights or using a power strip.
This session will look at real world examples of how ordinary people are doing simple things for extraordinary energy results. It will examine how well designed technology interfaces are empowering consumers, moving them from passive users to home energy management evangelists. It will take a close look at how behavioral science principles that have been around since WWII and used in weight loss and smoking cessation are now successfully being used to help people decrease their home energy use. Most importantly, it will demonstrate that meaningful, sustained home energy management—if done using the right design principles and approach—doesn’t require a lot of time, effort or knowledge.
Green Tech / Clean Energy Busy and Lazy, Energy Design, Green is the new black
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Steven Collier,
Milsoft Utility Solutions
America's electric power grid hasn't changed much since the days of Thomas Edison and George Westing...
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America's electric power grid hasn't changed much since the days of Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Everything else has. Imminent local and global challenges from climate change to global competition make today’s approaches to planning, operating and managing the electric grid obsolete. Only the best combination of electronics, telecommunications and information technologies will ensure that consumers receive acceptable reliability, economy, sustainability, safety and customer service. The public Internet is the obvious only foundation for the new Smart Grid, but most electric utilities have yet to understand or embrace this. For this reason it’s likely that non-utility entities will have a central role in advancing the Smart Grid. Learn why a Smart Grid is essential for our future, what it’s key components are, and why electric utilities have such a hard time moving it forward. See how the Smart Grid will have to be an “e-grid” . . . or maybe the iGrid? . . . and maybe largely independent of today's incumbent electric utilities.
Green Tech / Clean Energy ElectricUtilities, energy, SmartGrid
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Chris Boyd,
Midas Green Technologies, LLC
Prepare for an in-depth technical examination of an emerging,
sustainable way for cutting data cente...
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Prepare for an in-depth technical examination of an emerging,
sustainable way for cutting data center cooling costs by 90% and
overall data center energy usage in half, and how it addresses the
growing demand for cloud computing and the rising costs of power.
The presentation will contextualize two colliding trends:
1 - Mobile apps, web apps, RESTful APIs, and the overall trend of
recentralization of data all point to huge growth in cloud applications.
The client side can run anywhere - a traditional application on a PC, a
smartphone, or even a huge pile of script in a web browser - but the
backend needs to live somewhere that's highly connected, always on the
Internet, always ready to answer calls from client (aka customer)
applications.
2 - We're facing ever-growing (possibly steeply) costs for power, while
servers are getting bigger, faster, and more power hungry all the time.
Server workloads are also demanding more RAM and more CPU cores, and
thus more power.
Green Tech / Clean Energy Green Clouds, hosting, Submerged Servers
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Christina Chang,
Atomic PR
As a former founder of an online gambling company, One Block Off the Grid’s CEO, Dave Llorens, kno...
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As a former founder of an online gambling company, One Block Off the Grid’s CEO, Dave Llorens, knows a thing or two about how annoying the green mantra can be. It’s all about the environment. Mother Earth needs your help. True, true, but there are much more practical approaches to righting planetary wrongs than appealing to people’s limited sense of environmental consciousness. One of the biggest barriers to adoption in any industry is education – in solar, for example, most people have no idea where to begin to look for information (Google… don’t get us started). One Block Off the Grid has solved this dilemma by using the full toolkit of startup kung-fu – visually-oriented and conceptual website, interactive elements like calculators and maps, an active and highly-awesome blog, infographics that frequently appear in publications like Fast Company. In this session, Dave and Shannon will talk about how a focusing on the almighty dollar and beating the snoozing big companies has shot One Block Off the Grid to a place in the sun (ahem). Lessons can be applied to any stodgy industry (and there are plenty) – so bring a notepad, but don’t even think about stealing our infographic ideas.
Green Tech / Clean Energy marketing, Niche, sustainability
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