Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2010 > March > 15 > Entry
SXSW panel: Can the Creative Class Revolutionize the Energy Business?
Time: 11 a.m. Monday
Speakers:Mark Kapner (Austin Energy), Richard Donnelly (GRIDbot), Joel Greenberg (Tech2Energy), Greg Kallenberg (filmmaker, “Haynesville: The Relentless Hunt for Energy Future”)
The gist: As institutions all over the world embrace the idea of cleaner and more efficient energy, there are great opportunities for creative minds in engineering, art and design to deliver ideas that can reinvent or modify how we generate and consume power. The greatest room for innovation will like come in the area of consumer devices and programs to reduce energy usage, along with marketing campaigns to encourage average citizens all over the world to embrace cleaner energy usage. Those efforts can lead to Austin’s gradual move to renewable energy, currently at 12 percent of the portfolio and mandated to increase to 30 percent in the next 10 years.
Quotes: From Donnelly: “It’s only when middle America thinks it’s cool to adopt better practices that we’ll achieve real change and results, so it’s up to the creative class to help make that happen.”
From Kallenberg: “We’re all (activists and energy interests) finally listening to each other sitting at the table trying to figure this out, and all of you can sit at the table, too. You (creatives) need to stick with it because people are listening all over the world.”
Kallenberg again: “Energy companies are looking for solutions to big problems and so creative people are really needed more than ever. The big guys are looking for ideas because finally we all seem to agree on the need for a clean energy future.”
Takeaways: A refreshingly open back and forth on how dire the future could be if our energy creation and utilization processes aren’t transformed. That need creates lots of opportunities for adventurous thinkers willing to look into the energy sector.
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