IITMAANA Northern California Chapter

Economic Viability and Sustainability of Clean/Renewable Energy

The sold out Clean Tech Event was attended by ~180 professionals from the bay area. The event started on time with delicious food from Udupi. Event Champions came in at 5:30 and worked on the registration setup, event sponsor (Applied Material) support and focused on other event management items. After the one hour networking session, Bharat aka Bata introduced the Andrew Chung who presented the keynote address. This was followed by a short intro by each of the panelists. Dr. Koomey increased attendee participation by announcing two prizes for the best audience questions. The Q&A session was interesting with thought provoking and relevant issues that were answered from economic, technology and policy perspectives. The audience was in glued to the seats past 9 pm when the event had to be closed since we ran over time.

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Agenda

Panel discussion

Economic Viability and Sustainability of Clean/Renewable Energy

With ever increasing energy demand, the topic of clean/renewable energy has been on and off for the past few decades. But it was not until few years ago did the clean technologies get the attention of the investors and 'CleanTech' has been in the limelight ever since. While innumerous cleantech start ups are making the headlines, some of the major corporations are also going 'green'. Will the green technologies be 'evergreen' or is it a big bubble in the making?

The panel will focus primarily on the economics of clean/renewable energy. What are the drivers for this latest push? What is the economics behind this? Is clean energy here to stay? Are the current business models economically viable now and sustainable in the future? What are the current opportunities in this area? These will be some of the questions discussed by the panelists.

Moderator

Andrew Chung, Principal, Light Speed Ventures

Andrew joined Lightspeed in 2006 and focuses on investments in cleantech, Internet, digital media and software. He has over eight years of investing, consulting and operating experience. Andrew helped initiate Lightspeed's investment program in cleantech and currently observes the boards of Coaltek, Exclara, Friends for Sale and Stion.

Andrew has been an invited cleantech and Internet panelist at a number of industry events, including TiEcon, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Growth Forum, the World Affairs Council Summit, the Social Gaming Summit, Stanford Energy Crossroads, and the Berkeley Energy Resource Collaborative. He co-chairs the Cleantech Advisory Board for The Indus Entrepreneurs Group (TiE), is a member of the organizing committee for the California Cleantech Open, is helping to launch cleantech programs for the California Israel Chamber of Commerce and Asian America MultiTechnology Association, and was a selection committee member for the Cleantech Venture Forum.

Panelists

1. Dr. Om Nalamasu, Vice President and Deputy CTO, Applied Materials Inc.

Dr. Omkaram (Om) Nalamasu is the Deputy CTO at Applied Materials. Dr. Nalamasu leads Applied’s research and innovation efforts through the funding/incubation of long term R&D/product development activities, spearheads investments into global academia and consortia, and guides Applied Ventures’ investments into start-ups. Prior to this, he was the Vice President of Research and NYSTAR Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering as well as Chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Professor Nalamasu was the director of the Center for Integrated Electronics, and founding director and PI of Center for Future Energy Systems, a center funded with $20 MM of state, industry and federal dollars to help NY state meet 25% of its energy needs from renewable resources by year 2012. Professor Nalamasu conceived and founded CCNI (Center for Computational Nanotechnology Innovations), a $100 MM program established in partnership with NY state, and IBM to establish world’s fastest university based supercomputing center at RPI. Prior to RPI, Dr. Nalamasu was the chief technical officer of the New Jersey Nanotechnology Consortium, a public/private nonprofit enterprise he co-founded to foster nanotechnology partnerships across academia, industry, and government using Bell Labs’ $400 M device fabrication facilities in Murray Hill, NJ.

Dr. Nalamasu received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

2. Swami Venkataraman, Director of Utilities and Infrastructure Ratings Group, Standard and Poor's

Swami joined S&P's Indian affiliate CRISIL in 1997 and has worked in the New York, San Francisco and London offices. He has analytical background in a wide-range of credits including corporate industrials, financial institutions and infrastructure projects in India and investor-owned utilities, independent power producers, project finance transactions, energy marketers and Public-Private Partnerships in the US and UK.

Swami is leading Standard & Poor's efforts with respect to the risks and opportunities arising from Climate Change and carbon markets. He is also a part of the Standard & Poor's energy trading and marketing focus team, evolving liquidity, capital adequacy and risk management criteria for energy marketers and working with the Committee of Chief Risk Officers (CCRO).

Swami is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a member of the CFA Society of San Francisco. He holds a B.Tech in Electronics & Communications Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, and an MBA in Finance and Information Systems from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta.

3. Dr. Jonathan G. Koomey, Project Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) & Consulting Professor, Stanford University

For more than eleven years, Dr. Koomey led LBNL's End-Use Forecasting group, which analyzes markets for efficient products and technologies for improving the energy and environmental aspects of those products. The group develops recommendations for policymakers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy on ways to promote energy efficiency and prevent pollution. Koomey is also a Research Affiliate of the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley and serves on the Editorial Board of the journal Contemporary Economic Policy.

Dr. Koomey holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley, and a B.A. in History of Science from Harvard University. He is the author or coauthor of eight books and more than one hundred and fifty articles and reports on energy efficiency and supply-side power technologies, energy economics, energy policy, environmental externalities, and global climate change. He has also published extensively on critical thinking skills. He was an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow for 2004 - that program trains environmental scientists and policy analysts to communicate effectively with the media and the public. In January 2005, he was named an AT&T Industrial Ecology Fellow. Dr. Koomey's latest solo book is Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving <http://www.analyticspress.com>, now out in its second edition (April 2008). For more biographical details and a complete publications list, visit <http://www.koomey.com>.

4. Nick Cravalho, Director of Business Development, Innovalight

Mr. Cravalho brings a rich history of commercializing innovative technologies to Innovalight.

Most recently, as a Product Manager at the thin-film solar start-up Miasole, Mr. Cravalho was responsible for product strategy, solar market analysis and product cost. Prior to Miasole, he worked in the Business Development group at Kiva Systems, a warehouse automation company. Mr. Cravalho spent the first seven years of his career at Applied Materials where he managed engineering and commercialization teams in the design, development and commercial launch of automated material handling equipment.

Mr. Cravalho received his Masters in Management and Engineering from the Sloan School of Business and the School of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

5. Mona Yew, Principal, Emerging Clean Technology Policy, PG&E

Mona Yew is a principal in Emerging Clean Technology Policy at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), where she focuses on identifying, evaluating and supporting emerging technologies that would expand on the renewable and clean energy resources available to California. Mona has been with PG&E for 16 years, where she held various positions in engineering, marketing and sales, and energy efficiency program policy, planning and implementation, as well as process improvement and risk management. Most recently, Mona contributed to PG&E's participation in the Economic and Technology Advancement and Advisory Committee (ETAAC) of the California Air Resources Board, including the development of the ETAAC Final Report, Technologies and Polices to Consider for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions in California. Mona holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering.