The Clean Energy Marketplace: Opportunities and Challenges for Disruptive Innovatio

press release: Major changes are happening in energy markets. With the widespread adoption of renewables like wind and solar and transformative energy storage technologies and bio-based chemicals around the corner, the opportunity for market disruption in energy has never been higher.

These opportunities also create challenges for research institutions, private companies, policy makers, and regulators. Join the Wisconsin Energy Institute, the Wisconsin Conservative Energy Forum, and the American Conservation Coalition for an evening of discussion on these opportunities and challenges and a way forward to mark National Clean Energy Week.

Panel discussion – 4:30-5:45 pm; Reception and student poster session – 5:45-7:00 pm

Panelist Bios:

Andrew Held has ten years of operations and R&D experience at Cargill, an international provider of food, agricultural and risk management products and services, where he played instrumental roles on technical, engineering, and operations management teams scaling production processes for commercialization. His work has included the manufacture of organic acids and edible polyols by fermentation, lactic acid for polymers, and natural polyols for polyurethanes. Andrew specializes in the integration of biological and chemical processes and has worked extensively with natural feedstocks and biocatalytic conversion methods. He earned his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and an MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Gregory Nemet is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Nelson Institute's Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.  His research and teaching focus on improving analysis of the global energy system and, more generally, on understanding how to expand access to energy services while reducing environmental impacts. He teaches courses in energy systems analysis, governance of global energy problems, and international environmental policy.

Professor Nemet's research analyzes the process of technological change in energy and its interactions with public policy. These projects fall in two areas: (1) empirical analysis identifying the influences on past technological change and (2) modeling of the effects of policy instruments on future technological outcomes. The first includes assessment of public policy, research and development, learning by doing, and knowledge spillovers. An example of the second is work informing allocation between research and development and demand-side policy instruments to address climate change.

Rebecca Cameron Valcq was appointed to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin by Governor Tony Evers in January, 2019, and will serve as Chair until 2021. Valcq is an attorney who has spent much of her career focused on regulatory, compliance and energy law. Before joining the Wisconsin Commission, Valcq was a partner at Quarles & Brady in the Energy, Environment and Natural Resources group, where she specialized in regulatory and energy law. She was also a regulatory attorney representing Wisconsin's largest utility, We Energies, for 14 years, focused on policy and legislative interpretation, renewable energy contract negotiation, and case work. Valcq is a graduate of Marquette University Law school and Drake University.