By GREGORY ZELLER //
And now back to our regularly scheduled low-carbon economy, already in progress.
Four years since last gathering in person – and 14 months since a post-pandemic virtual conference reenergized old connections – Stony Brook University’s highest-wattage clean-energy conference is powering up again.
The Advanced Energy Conference, a program of SBU’s Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center, has been held sporadically since 2007: annually through 2014 (except for 2012, when it was canceled by Superstorm Sandy), biannually between 2014 and 2018, preempted in 2019 and 2020 by COVID.
In June 2021, a three-day online conference restarted the mission – and now comes AEC 2022, featuring what Stony Brook University Associate Director of Industry Outreach and Special Programs Kathleen Ferrell calls “the strongest program that the energy center has put together in our conference history.”
Doreen Harris: Let’s talk.
“It’s exciting to have this level of people come together,” Ferrell said. “People really want to network after three years of siloed discussion.
“We’re going to have a conversation that needs to be had, with provocative questions, ambitious goals and, most importantly, new visions,” she added. “That’s what we’re all about.”
Scheduled for Sept. 7-9 at the Marriott Marquis in New York City, the event – coordinated by the AERTC with help from Brookhaven National Laboratory, Rutgers University, UCLA and other nationwide institutions – is slated to begin Day One (Wednesday) with a series of pre-conference workshops. Thursday and Friday are packed with high-profile keynote speeches, expert breakout sessions and other cutting-edge presentations on wind and solar power, energy transmission and storage and related issued.
Big names expected to electrify the proceedings include New York State Energy Research and Development Authority President and CEO Doreen Harris, Long Island Power Authority Chief Executive Officer Tom Falcone, U.S. Department of Energy Senior Program Advisor Maria Vargas and regional energy icon Robert Catell, chairman of the AERTC and the National Offshore Wind Research & Development Consortium.
Other scheduled contributors include distinguished SUNY professor and internationally renowned chemist/energy-storage pioneer Esther Takeuchi, New York City Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala and a deep bench of corporate leaders and top researchers.
With that level of talent on the three-day card, the conference – which counts NYSERDA, National Grid, PSEG Long Island, Farmingdale State College and Florida-based, sustainability-focused NextEra Energy Resources among its sponsors – is well-positioned to “drive dialogue and discussions about where we are now, where we want to be and how we’re going to get there,” according to David Hamilton, director of programs for Stony Brook University Economic Development.
“The breakout sessions on Thursday and Friday feature real experts answering key questions about different technologies across different industries,” Hamilton told Innovate Long Island. “Everything is driven by a question – every session, every breakout discussion – and the critical answers we need to chart this future.”
Registration is still open for next month’s conference, but organizers are already pumped about gathering so many clean-gen pioneers – “leading experts from academia, research, industry and policy-making,” according to Hamilton – in a room full of ambitious big-thinkers.
“We’re very excited about getting everybody back together,” Hamilton said. “It’s been a long time coming, to get everybody talking in one place again.
“We’re eager to lead this dialogue,” he added. “And it’s so important to continue the critical discussions of getting from where we are to where we need to be in the most efficient and expedited ways possible.”
