Event One Wrap-up

Market Makers: Developing and Deploying Energy Efficiency Technology in NYC, the first of two panels exploring the emergence and growth of New York City's clean tech industry, opened with Sallan Foundation Executive Director Nancy Anderson. She was encouraged that the international stage provided by Climate Week NYºC 2011 could "connect the movers and shakers in climate change" to advance useful knowledge for greener cities. After noting that advocates of a green economy are often on the defensive today, Anderson went on to pose a question that set the tone for the panel: are government bets on growing the green economy and green jobs a lost cause or are they creating ecological multiplier effects with game-changing growth potential?

David Biello, Energy and Environment Editor at Scientific American and moderator for the evening, took up Anderson's challenge and noted that since Americans have been talking about green tech and jobs since the 70s, it may seem like little has happened. In contrast, he anticipated that the Market Makers panelists would be able to "light" the way to energy efficient future through their current case studies and endeavors.

As the Demand Response Section Manager at Con Edison, Colin Smart understands that efficiency is the keystone to creating a more efficient energy system. After showing a electricity load demand curve for New York City and explaining that the highs and lows can be graphed in the shape of a triangle he showed that a steady demand would look something like a rectangle. "My goal," Smart stated, "Is to turn triangles into rectangles."

Since Con Edison transmits and distributes electricity but is out of the generation business, the company's main strategies to combat costly peaks in the load demand come from partnerships and innovations with large customers. A huge summer time drain on the grid is the "coincidental demand" of air conditioning, 6.1 million units currently run in the city and a projected one million additional units will tax the grid in the next five years. Working with ThinkEco, Smart devised a program that paid participants to allow Con Edison to turn off their air conditioning for an hour, thereby reducing system-stressing peak load demand. This short-term shut down resulted in thousands of dollars in savings for not only those in the program, but also for all Con Ed ratepayers who would not have to pay for future construction to provide extra capacity used only on steamy summer days.

Smart emphasized that his goal is not to create a smart grid, the magic bullet proselytized by many, but to create a smarter grid, one that has individual meters but also room for innovation to adapt the grid to new challenges and opportunities.

Mei Shibata, co-Founder of ThinkEco, blazed a different but related path to creating energy efficiency. With a focus on reducing plug load demands ThinkEco, incubated at NYC-ACRE, created the Modlet, a scalable energy management system for homes and offices that plugs directly into existing outlets. The company sought to provide a user experience similar to existing routines, thus the ability to monitor and control the Modlet from the computer or smartphone was a logical choice. Shibata observed that the process of filing patents, building prototypes, funding and testing is very time-consuming and it can help explain why the marketing of innovative technology is so difficult. It took society sixty years to adapt to the electricity, twenty years to adapt to televisions, and ten years to adapt to cell phones. Shibata hopes the Modern Outlet — the Modlet's full name — which is set to debut in 6–9 months, will hit the right chord of customer demand for energy efficiency solutions while not overwhelming consumers with too much change before they are ready for it.

Allen Freifeld, Senior Vice President & Director of Regulatory Affairs at Viridity Energy, described his company as a curtailment service provider, offering a demand response service to customers who wish to create a revenue stream by altering their energy use. Freifeld noted that "sophisticated buildings turned passive consumers into regular and predictable consumers", which is an asset for gird operators since the grid must be "instantaneous in load and production." He noted that if you can pay a consumer 10 cents/mW to not use electricity rather than 11 cents/mW to a generator to supply that power, you not only encourage less energy use but also depress prices for all consumers by lowering the overall cost of energy. Paying people to choose to not consume rather than to produce is a totally new way to think about energy efficiency, Freifeld stated, and it can be counterintuitive at first sight. He used the example of the Drexel University campus as a case study illustrating how the ability to see the electricity price change in five or ten minute increments has allowed facility managers to curtail usage at high price times, resulting in significant savings. Freifeld underlined that "Viridity is an energy network on the cusp of a paradigm shift". By using dynamic pricing similar to the Drexel campus, curtailment programs we add a stream of economic value to the market that previously did not exist. It is this added value that creates opportunities to increase efficiency and reduce environmental impacts.

Write-in and live audience questions ranged from broad, socially focused ideas about why more isn't being done to innovate in the energy efficiency space to questions engaging more topical science issues like how cheap natural gas might affect the demand for energy efficiency. Panelists also discussed how behavior modification can benefit energy efficient technology and which underweighted technologies the audience should keep its eye on such as energy storage systems, metering and communications.

Market Makers: Developing and Deploying Energy Efficiency Technology in NYC would not have been possible without event co-planner, Micah Kotch, Director of Operations, NYC ACRE and co-sponsor, the New York Academy of Sciences and the support of Brett Van Landingham and the Green Sciences Working Group.

Speaker Bios

David Biello
Scientific American

David Biello is the award-winning associate editor for environment and energy. He joined Scientific American in November 2005 and has written on subjects ranging from astronomy to zoology for both the web site and magazine. He has been reporting on the environment and energy since 1999. He is the host of both the 60-Second Earth podcast and PBS's Beyond the Light Switch, a contributor to the Instant Egghead video series, and author of a children's book on bullet trains.

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Mei Shibata
ThinkEco

Mei Shibata leads the business side of ThinkEco, where her broad experience has helped to shape the modlet system into a hip, user-friendly product. Most recently she was Managing Director of Strategy and Strategic Planning at communications agency Euro RSCG Life, where she helped numerous brand teams commercialize their products and lead them through lifecycle management. Shibata also has broad corporate experience, including her worldwide marketing role at Pfizer and equity research work at Citigroup. Shibata received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA (physics) and MS (medical engineering, HST) from Harvard University.

ThinkEco, founded in 2008 by concerned entrepreneurs, is a NYC-based company that strives to make it easy to save money on electric bills by saving energy. Incubated at NYC-ACRE, the company invented the modlet, a plug-in device that eliminates wasteful energy use by automatically turning off power to home appliances when they are not in use. After launching the modlet for business customers, ThinkEco introduced it to residential customers this year.

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Colin Smart
Con Edison

Colin Smart is Con Edison's Section Manager–Demand Response. In this role he is responsible for the development of demand response programs supporting one of the most complex electric distribution systems in the world. During his nearly five years with Con Edison, Smart's work has involved complex projects ranging from Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) to Mandatory Hourly Pricing (MHP) to benchmarking Con Edison's financial management processes.

Prior to joining Con Edison, Smart spent over a decade managing consulting teams and working with Fortune 500 companies in regard to a range of energy and telecommunications matters in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. He focused particularly on issues relevant to the transition stages of energy market deregulation. Prior to his involvement in the utility industry, he spent several years involved in technology management in the travel industry in Australia.

Colin holds a Masters in Business and Technology (MBT) and a Graduate Diploma in Environmental Management from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is also an Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) Certified Energy Manager (CEM).

Smart was the founding Vice President of the New York City chapter of the US Association for Energy Economics and has acted as a guest lecturer for the NYU-Poly CleanTech Execs program.

Con Edison, with over one million customers in New York City and Westchester and a mandate to foster energy efficiency, this metropolitan electric utility is focusing on ways to promote and practice the intelligent use of energy, including demand response. In many ways, the New York metropolitan area has a head start but today it must do even better and ConEd has joined in the movement to "go green" with programs for both its residential and business customers.

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Allen Freifeld
Viridity Energy

Allen Freifeld joined Viridity as Senior Vice President, External Affairs in June 2009, after twenty five years of regulatory and industry experience, including five years as a member of the Maryland Public Service Commission from 2004 through 2009. During his tenure on the Commission Mr. Freifeld led the effort to enhance the participation of energy efficiency and distributed resources in regional markets.

He served as Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Mid Atlantic Distributed Resources Initiative and was also a founder of the Organization of PJM States, Inc., a group of fourteen State Public Utility Commissions working toward regional solutions for electric grid issues. Prior to his appointment to the Commission Mr. Freifeld served on the Staff of the Commission for over twenty years both as a Hearing Examiner and as Chief Staff Counsel. Mr. Freifeld also served as chief regulatory counsel for MCI Telecommunications in the mid-Atlantic region during the period following enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Mr. Freifeld is a graduate of SUNY Binghamton, with a degree in Economics, and the University of Maryland School of Law.

Viridity Energy The two-way digital information exchange between utilities and their customers opens up opportunities for large energy consumers including businesses, institutions, governments, and universities. Viridity, head-quartered in Philadelphia, provides an information exchange for real estate portfolios through use of a software platform for the smart grid that allows property owners to participate in wholesale power markets to maximize their assets. In this way customers can optimize their energy investments and convert them into a revenue stream through virtual power generation.

Presentations for Downlaod

Colin Smart (Demand Response Section Manager, Con Edison)
Electric System Economics PDF Download [ 6.4 MB ]

Mei Shibata, ( co-Founder, ThinkEco )
Introduction to ThinkEco PDF Download [ 1.3 MB ]

Allen Freifeld (Sr. VP & Director of Regulatory Affairs, Viridity Energy)
Dynamic Load Control and the Smart Grid in New York City PDF Download [ 4.2 MB ]

An Official Event of Climate Week NYºC 2011

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