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The Center for Science, Technology, and Society is pleased to have hosted a one-day conference - Power to the People: Renewable Energy for Underserved Communities - held at Santa Clara University on April 22nd, 2010.
The environmental benefits of clean and renewable energy technologies are widely touted, yet many communities worldwide currently have little access to them. Innovation is required on several fronts for vulnerable and underserved communities to fully benefit. The history of the cell phone shows that affordability and wide adoption are realized as new technologies co-evolve with innovative business models and adaptive regulatory environments. Will the renewable energy industry follow a similar path?
Power to the People brought together social benefit entrepreneurs, investors, policy innovators, energy technologists, and community organizations to examine innovations in technology, business models, and public policy required to deliver cost-effective renewable energy solutions to the underserved both domestically and in the developing world. Interactive discussions focused on:
- Emerging technologies, business models, and finance>
- Empowering user communities locally and globally
- Utility versus community-scale solutions
- Regulatory conditions that incentivize services for the underserved
Conference Features
- Welcome and Clean Tech Initiative launch, in partnership with the School of Engineering, Godfrey Mungal
- Opening Keynote, Paul Holland
- Session 1: Renewable Innovations for Base of Pyramid Communities
- Session 2: Renewable Innovations for Bay Area Communities
- Moderator: Al Hammond, SCU Law School and Director of Public Policy, CSTS
- Ben Tarbell, Director of Product Development, SolarCity
- Kurt Yeager, Executive Director, Galvin Electricity Initiative
- Mary Biasotti, Regional Director, Grid Alternatives
- Closing Keynote
- Networking Reception sponsored by the Santa Clara University Career Center
SCU, 2010
Download Preet Anand's PowerPoint Presentation
Preet Anand is a Senior Engineering Physics major at Santa Clara University. Too curious, he has actually been in each of the three schools at SCU (Business, Engineering, and Arts and Sciences). He was one of the core leaders one of the 2009 Solar Decathlon project. Specifically, he led the water management team, as well as doing work on the market viability and communications teams. His goal has been to prove that sustainability does not mean sacrifice.
He is extremely interested in the intersection of technology, resources, and human behavior. Preet was also a founder of the Santa Clara Entrepreneurship Organization.
Download Mary Biasotti's PowerPoint Presentation
Mary Biasotti is the Bay Area Regional Director for GRID Alternatives, a growing nonprofit that installs solar electric systems for low-income homeowners with volunteers and job trainees. Mary has a Bioresource Science degree from UC Berkeley and over two decades of experience in organizational and program management, especially in economic development and community outreach. Her passion is to enable low-income people to overcome socio-economic barriers by helping to combine their talents and vision with outside resources. Mary was honored in 1997 by the San Francisco Foundation with the Daniel E. Koshland Civic Unity Award for her work in the low-income community.
Download Mathias Craig's PowerPoint Presentation
Mathias Craig started blueEnergy as a nonprofit corporation in late 2003. He provides the organization with administrative, programmatic, and fundraising leadership. Mathias has over seven years of involvement in wind energy and has had significant experience living throughout Latin America. He has spent a considerable amount of time in Nicaragua and has strong ties to the peoples of the Caribbean Coast. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mathias is fluent in English, French, and Spanish.
Download Ella Delio's PowerPoint Presentation
Ella Delio is the Acting Director of the New Ventures initiative at the World Resources Institute, which supports the growth of innovative small and medium enterprises that advance environmental and social solutions. Prior to joining WRI, Ella led the Springboard program at the Center for Women and Enterprise in Boston, the leading women business development agency in the US. Springboard is a program that helps facilitate investments into high-growth women-led businesses. Ella started her career at Procter & Gamble in the Philippines where she managed their Healthcare business and led special projects in the Food and Beverages business. She was also President of one of the Philippines' largest hauling companies. It was here where she saw the important role of enterprise in development and decided to focus her career on helping entrepreneurs to expand their businesses. Since joining WRI in 2007, she has done work and research on clean energy in India. Ella received her MBA and MPA degrees from the Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School. She received the Don K. Price Award for academic excellence and public service leadership from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Download Federico Grati's PowerPoint Presentation
Dott. Ing. Grati is the manager of the Agricultural division of Agroils S.r.l. and charter member from 2006. Federico holds a degree in Environmental engineering and a Master degree in Natural Resources Management in the University of Florence (2005). He has been working as researcher at the faculty of Agronomy in Florence with oilseed production and biofuel chain optimization and as Project Manager for an NGO based in Florence with projects in Africa before joining Agroils. He is responsible in Agroils for design, implementation and management of agricultural supply chains based on Jatropha Curcas and other tropical oilseeds, especially in Arid areas and Sub-Saharan regions of Africa. With a strong background in project management, he offers support in human resources organization and coordination, project management and agricultural and civil design. He is responsible for Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal and involved into the management in Algeria, Mozambique.
Download Paul Holland's PowerPoint Presentation
In addition to coordinating the CleanTech practice at Foundation Capital, Paul's primary focus is on helping early-stage start-ups go from zero to $100M in revenue. He helped take public two venture-funded software start-ups, Kana Communications (KANA), and Pure Software (RATL). Paul currently serves on the board of directors for Bella Pictures, CalStar Products, Chegg, Coverity, Ketera, Serious Materials, and TuVox; and previously for Talking Blocks (acquired by Hewlett-Packard) and RouteScience (acquired by Avaya).
Prior to joining Foundation Capital, was senior vice president of worldwide sales at Kana Communications, a leading supplier of Enterprise Relationship Management solutions to strategic e-businesses. Paul went on to build a team of over 350 people that secured more than 900 customers worldwide, helping Kana become one of the top ten IPOs of 1999. Before Kana, Paul was a vice president and general manager for another highly successful start-up, Pure Software, helping raise their market value from $2 million to over $1 billion in his five-year tenure there. He began his professional career at SRI International (formerly the Stanford Research Institute).
Paul enjoys spending time with his wife Linda Yates, and their three daughters, Kylie, Devon, and Piper. In his spare time he enjoys golf, volleyball, poker, traveling (he has visited over 50 countries to date), and is building a LEED Platinum home in Portola Valley. Paul has been guest lecturer on entrepreneurship at Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business, Harvard Business School, James Madison University, and the Stanford Graduate School of Engineering. He is an active advisor and supporter of Project BUILD in East Palo Alto, the Bing School at Stanford and Sustainable Silicon Valley.
Paul received an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley; an MA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia; and a BS from James Madison University.
Download Manoj Sinha's PowerPoint Presentation
A native of Bihar, India, Manoj brings previous experience with Intel as a microprocessor designer leading teams of 15 designers. Holds 10 U.S. patents (5 granted, 5 pending). BS, IIT Varanasi, Electrical Engineering, MS UMass Amherst. MBA, Darden ’09. (Genovese Fellow)
Download Ben Tarbell's PowerPoint Presentation
Ben Tarbell is responsible for SolarCity's new product development and deployment. His goal is to bring innovative ideas and products to the solar energy industry that will help to make solar energy more reliable, cost effective and accessible. Prior to joining SolarCity, Ben was responsible for product development at Miasolé, a thin-film solar cell start-up in Silicon Valley. Ben has also led the sustainable product design offering at IDEO in Palo Alto, and worked at the clean tech venture capital firm Nth Power in San Francisco. Ben has a BS in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, an MS in mechanical engineering design from Stanford University, and an MBA from Stanford University. Ben's commitment to the clean energy field extends to his volunteer work with organizations like GRID Alternatives, that installs solar systems for low-income families.
Download Kurt Yeager's PowerPoint Presentation
Kurt E. Yeager joined the Galvin Electricity Initiative, an effort to perfect the electric power system, shortly after it was launched by former Motorola chief Bob Galvin in 2005. As its leader, Yeager works with electricity experts, innovators and entrepreneurs to design and build Perfect Power System models of a smart, efficient electric power system that cannot fail the consumer. He also leads the Initiative in driving the electricity policy changes necessary for system transformation at the state and federal levels.
Yeager previously served as the president and chief executive officer of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), retiring in 2004 after 30 years with the organization. Under his leadership, EPRI evolved from a nonprofit industry think tank to a family of companies that undertake both proprietary and collaborative research and development for the electric power industry in the United States and 40 other countries. During that time he also guided an industry-wide collaborative effort to address challenges and plan for the future of electric power. “The Electricity Technology Roadmap” and the “Electricity Sector Framework of the Future” have since become the foundation of utility industry progress.
Before joining EPRI, Yeager was director of energy research and development planning for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research. Prior to working for EPA he was the associate head of the environmental systems department at MITRE Corporation.
Yeager served seven years, active duty in the U.S. Air Force and is a distinguished graduate of the Air Force Nuclear Research Officer’s Program. He received a bachelor’s degree from Kenyon College and completed post-graduate studies in chemistry and physics at Ohio State and the University of California, Davis. He has also completed post-graduate management programs at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces and the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Finance.
Yeager is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and its Industry Advisory Board, and a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development. He has served on the executive board of the National Coal Council and the boards of the U.S. Energy Association, and the National Coalition for Advanced Manufacturing (NACFAM) as well as several National Academy of Engineering committees and the Energy Research Advisory Board to the Secretary of Energy. He currently serves on the board of APX Corporation. Yeager was named the 2003 Technology Policy Leader for Energy by Scientific American. He has authored more than 200 technical publications on energy and environmental topics, including Perfect Power: How the Microgrid Revolution Will Unleash Cleaner, Greener and More Abundant Energy, which he co-authored with Bob Galvin. Yeager chairs the World Energy Council Study on energy and climate change.
Preet Anand
Mary Biasotti
Mathias Craig
Ella Delio
Federico Grati
Paul Holland
Manoj Sinha
Ben Tarbell
