I say this without an ounce of snark.

This Saturday I had the pleasure of participating in ChangeCamp Edmonton, an unconference that focused on creating positive change in your local community. Over 150 people showed up.

This was my first time participating in an unconference, something we’ve written about before in Unlimited. My little idea was to lead discussions on, and raise awareness about, some pet energy policy issues of mine. Specifically, decentralized energy generation, feed-in tariffs, energy conservation game theory and the smart grid.

Here are some quick explanations of those terms.

+ Decentralized energy generation is the generation of electricity by many small, varied sources. Examples of the technology used would be solar panels on urban roofs, small scale wind operations in rural areas and Stirling engines that heat your home and generate electricity as a byproduct.

+ Feed-in tariffs are incentives that encourage the adoption of renewable energy through government energy policy. Essentially the utility companies pay above market rates for electricity generated in a renewable fashion. Germany has had a feed-in tariff program since 2000 and Ontario strengthened theirs in September of this year. For more info head to the Wikipedia page, which is well curated.

+ A smart grid will use internet connectivity and digital technology to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability. It’s not the easiest thing to make into a soundbite so here’s a longer explanation.

+ Energy conservation game theory is applying game theory, a mathematical model that operates under the assumption that each person’s behavior impacts the well-being of all other participants in the game, to energy conservation.

Alberta Oil, also produced by Venture Publishing, has a great article on decentralized energy generation here. Enmax CEO Gary Holden lays out why the way we generate and manage electricity has to change.

The current electricity mainstay – the “thermal utility,” relying on coal-fired megaplants at sites dictated by mine locations – cannot make the grade for the next generation of power supplies, Holden maintains. As an engineer whose career has included running coal-burning stations for TransAlta Corp., he describes the thermal utility as a 1950s creation that cannot adapt to the new era of efficiency and carbon emissions control no matter how hard it tries.

The big ideas that can arise from these upcoming changes are immense. Cleantech is one of the hottest things in the venture capital world right now. Third quarter venture capital investment in cleantech rose to $1.59 billion across 134 companies—up 10 per cent from the $1.2 billion during the second quarter according to cleantech.com.

I could go and on as this is a subject that I’m extremely passionate, but I’ll tell you what I told everyone who participated in the discussions I led. Learn more, do the research and follow me on twitter @DuncanKinney and @DuncanAtVenture as I tweet about cleantech news on a regular basis.

You can also find the notes on the discussions I led here and here.

So, what’s your big idea?

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 6:45 am and is filed under Daily Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.