Nice paper on how opensource, crowdsourcing will drive global energy analysis - @OpenEnergyInfo via @MLiebreich
Executive Summary
Informed energy decision making requires effective software, high-quality input data, and a suitably trained user community. Developing these resources can be expensive and time consuming. Even when data and tools are intended for public re-use they often come with technical, legal, economic and social barriers that make them difficult to adopt, adapt and combine for use in new contexts.
We focus on the promise of open, publically accessible software and data as well as crowdsourcing techniques to develop robust energy analysis tools that can deliver crucial, policy-relevant insight, particularly in developing countries, where planning resources are highly constrained – and the need to adapt these resources and methods to the local context is high. We survey existing research, which argues that these techniques can produce high-quality results, and also explore the potential role that linked, open data can play in both supporting the modelling process and in enhancing public engagement with energy issues.
Bloomberg CEO and President Dan Doctoroff is giving our kickoff keynote on an intriguing theme: “the virtues of being boring”.
“Boring can be good. Very good.” Why do we talk “boring”? Boring is a sign of mature industries, of stable technologies, but also of markets that keep growing. Boring means markets that aren’t political footballs. Boring means that the industry “no longer includes adjectives, explanations, or modifiers”.
That means - clean energy is just energy; smart grids are just grids; LEED-certified buildings are just buildings.It also means that clean energy companies become like other companies - just as software companies and web companies became companies.
Here’s to being boring!
One theme at the Summit is that its time is here.
David Crane CEO of capital-seeking NRG Energy, said one reason his company exited wind was to concentrate on rooftop solar. “People don’t like high voltage transmission lines,” he said. “Distributed solar doesn’t require transmission lines.”
“We’ve focused lately on distributed solar generation. I think we’ve been very creative in that space,” disclosed Jonathan Plowe, a managing director with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, a sizable capital aggregator for energy projects.
