Blog
May 08, 2012
I write. Often. Frequently. Arguably constantly. But out of all the things I’ve written, my latest project might be the biggest game changer (although “I’m a Climate Scientist” brought a new meaning to “nerdy white folks rapping”). You can’t advocate for something you don’t understand, which is why I enthusiastically agreed to write The Watt: An Energy 101 Primer with Focus the Nation. If young people don’t know how to talk about baseload, energy technologies, and transmission lines, they don’t stand a chance at generating feasible solutions. Ideas can never materialize if the physics doesn’t work or the numbers don’t add up.
For something that touches everything, energy is fairly intangible. You can’t see it, you don’t think about it, you just expect it. And when you do flick on the light switch, there’s no notice that says, “This came from coal,” or, “This came from hydro.” The lights just come on, and on your merry way you go. And utilities; who are these people that you pay each month? What exactly do they do? In the age of startups and entrepreneurship, I dare you to find me a college student whose heart is set on working for a utility. When I met with the FTN crew last year, we talked in depth about the challenge before us: Get young people really damn excited about something you can’t see, you don’t notice, and is full of flummoxing abbreviations like Bcfd, FERC, and MMBtu. Great assignment, eh?
But it actually has been. Challenging, yes, but it’s not everyday you get to write “electrical grid” and “age-appropriate beverage” in the same sentence. And it’s working (or at least we think it is). We won’t really know until 5 to 10 years from now, when we start noticing a wave of young professionals who are sincerely dedicated to sustainable energy. The innovator who’s designed a new battery; the CSR specialist who monitors facilities’ consumption; the young champion on the utility board. But in the meantime, we’re seeing students learn concepts they’ve never before seen (because very few college courses teach you how to read those EIA numbers).
So now it’s time to take it to the next level. Right now The Watt is available as a PDF or a really heavy, clunky, spiral-bound book. Nothing about this is sexy. If “energy literacy” is going to be competing with Snooki’s baby for the attention of the Millennial generation, The Watt’s going to need all the sexy it can get. We decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund an interactive e-version of The Watt. Guest video lectures, interactive infographics, scrolling timelines, all the right pieces to combat energy illiteracy.
The reception has been phenomenal. Our backers have been gracious with their finances and enthusiastic with their praise. (We’ve even had one backer suggest we make a movie of The Watt. I’m not quite ready for my screenwriting career, but we’ll put that idea in the queue.) We were the Kickstarter Staff Selection for the week. With 28 days to go, we’re looking for another $18,500. This is one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever worked on, and we know good things will come from the young people who pick up The Watt. Grab an “age-appropriate beverage” and take a minute to learn about the electrical grid; I promise it will be worth it.
Mar 21, 2012
How time flies when you’re talking about adding clean energy to the grid and tackling energy efficiency. It's hard to believe that nearly a half of a year has passed since I started working with our cohort of 2011-12 Forums-to-Action (F2A) teams. As everyone in our Oregon headquarters and our Focus teams across the country begin to transition from talking about roadblocks and solutions to clean energy issues in local communities to actually implementing solution-oriented projects, it’s amazing to think how far some teams have already come.
At the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, students are on the verge of securing funding for countless energy efficiency and clean energy projects for years to come. Students at the University of Utah are busy bringing an additional 25kW solar array to campus and the Mississippi State Focus team is preparing to launch an energy audit program on campus. In the far Northeastern part of the country, community members, staff, and students at Northern Maine Community College are exploring and expanding the potential for biomass energy. Things are looking well across the Focus the Nation landscape.
The state of clean energy leadership is clearly seen in Madison, Wisconsin. Just six months ago I was having my first meeting with the Focus Coordinators (FCs) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Now their team, Focus Wisconsin, is on the verge of proposing an innovative project that will push their community to become more energy efficient and serve as a model for future programs at other colleges and communities in their state and around the nation.
It hasn't just been the leadership among the Focus Wisconsin team that has propelled the project forward though. Focus Coordinators Joel Charles, a Master of Public Health student who has his feet planted in the Politico and Storyteller quadrant and Kristine Engel, an Innovator and Technician on the way to receiving a Mechanical Engineering degree, have prioritized collaboration between their campus and community at every stage of the F2A program.
Now other leaders on campus and off-campus have joined them to see how to best to address their primary roadblocks and solutions that were discussed at their clean energy forum, The Negawatt Summit: Catalyzing Energy Conservation In Our Community.
Along with leadership from the University of Wisconsin’s We Conserve program, local utility Madison Gas & Electric, and input from groups like the Madison Green Property Owners Apartment Association, Focus on Energy, and WISPIRG Energy Service Corps, clean energy collaboration and leadership in Madison are resulting in a program to incentivize energy efficiency programs in off-campus apartment complexes. The pieces are starting to be put together on how to bring together multi-family housing unit property owners who are willing to make certain green/energy efficient commitments with students who are looking for greener properties and willing to make certain commitments about behavior change.
Though there is a lot more planning, discussions, and program development to occur before a the project officially gets launched, so much has already happened since the F2A program was launched in Wisconsin last fall. As a Focus Coach watching all this happen from our Oregon headquarters, it’s rewarding and exciting to know that projects and collaborations like these are happening, not just in Wisconsin, but all across the country. It’s exciting to know that we’re only a half a year into this year’s F2A program cycle and our Focus teams will continue to develop and implement solution-oriented programs in the country. Even more exciting is the fact that in less than six months, we’ll have an entire new cohort of teams starting the program pushing clean energy solutions in their local communities. I know I’ll be watching carefully to see how Focus Wisconsin’s and other projects develops. I hope you will be too!
Feb 13, 2012
When I think of the relationship between Focus the Nation headquarters and our phenomenal on-the-ground students, I think of the scene from Fly Away North when a young Anna Paquin leads a group of orphaned geese on their first migratory flight. Anna, in the unique, lightweight aircraft made by her inventor father, guides the geese to use the skills nature gave them, and together they spread their wings over Canada. You might note a few minor differences. We do not have an aircraft, FTN students do not have feathers or beaks, and none of us are Canadian. Aside from that, it’s a perfect parallel!
We’ve spent the last six months working with amazing students across the country. They possess unmatched talents and potential, and are passionate to bring change to their community. But they’re looking for something new. Something that has never been done before, a new course to chart. That’s where FTN comes in, with our unique energy aircraft. It’s innovative, it’s something you’ve never seen before, and the curmudgeon neighbor next door doesn’t like this youngin with their new ways (but don’t worry, they come around in the end). The students have the skills, they just need the vehicle.
Every February the FTN staff puts on our flying goggles, jumps in the Clean Energy aircraft, and watches young people find their wings. And you can imagine how this feels. We’re nervous. We’re excited. We’re bubbling with joy watching what we know is the future of America’s energy leadership.
Last week the FTN crew piled in the ZipCar and headed up to Bellingham, Washington to attend Western Washington University’s Focus the Nation forum. The WWU team is in a unique position—the site of the would-be largest coal export terminal in the nation has been proposed in their community. Our organization typically focuses on the positive. We like solutions. We like to say “yes,” create collaboration and solve problems; rather than say “no” and create divisions. How do you say “yes,” when there is something that needs to hear a very loud “no” in their backyard? The WWU Focus Coordinators, Max McGrath-Horn and Max Scher, Focus Coach Sasha Tenzin, and staff partner organization Climate Solutions grappled with this since September, so we were excited to see the forum with our own eyes.
It’s not always easy to let people fly on their own. Sometimes we want to expand the cockpit and let everyone come along for the ride. But that isn’t sustainable. A future of sustainable energy requires sharing knowledge and helping new leaders blossom. The clean energy economy is not a one man show. (Which is why we love our Leadership Quadrant.) But sitting in the back of WWU’s auditorium last night, I saw two young people soar into leaders.
The students at WWU brought a new dimension to this year’s emphasis on “innovation”: How to approach community issues in a new, innovative way. Instead of saying “no,” the WWU team came with the attitude of,”instead, how about we…” Amazing things happen when people are given the resources, attention, and space to cultivate their natural talents. Energy Innovation + Innovative Change Making = Winning Solutions.
I still don’t have a lightweight aircraft invented by Jeff Daniels, but I’ll settle for leadership development as a vehicle to take us into the clean energy economy.
Oct 31, 2011
I'm normally a jeans and t-shirt gal, but this weekend I switched out my casual wear for business attire (portland-style of course!) and headed over to the 2011 Net Impact National Conference. Net Impact selected five Portland organizations to challenge conference participants with an obstacle that, if solved, could generate serious impact both locally and around the country. If you know Focus the Nation, then you know that we never back down from an opportunity to ask the tough questions. With some of the nation’s brightest MBA students in attendance, we proposed our question by consolidating a few themes that emerged from last year's Clean Energy Forums in Ohio and Oregon: “What are innovative, replicable financing models that can be used by tax-exempt institutions to implement small to mid-sized renewable energy projects?”
As FTN teams have started implementing solutions, many have struggled with funding for renewable energy solutions. Community energy projects often utilize tax credits and incentives, but for students working through their colleges and universities, tax credits aren't applicable (non-profit institutions like hospitals, colleges, public institutions are tax-exempt and cannot access the tax credits used by residents and businesses). Furthermore, the financial incentives that are available for renewable energy are being cut in many states, and a wavering political climate shows little promise of federal policy changes. But that doesn't mean that campuses and their surrounding neighborhoods can't collaborate on projects. Community-based financial models, applicable regardless of policies and tax structures are needed to successfully normalize and integrate renewable energy.
The Net Impact attendees put their thinking caps on and generated some of the coolest ideas we’ve seen. Are universities a good fit to house a community’s energy needs? How can renewable energy projects be used to span the campus-community divide? What will it take to create a buzz and excitement about energy efficiency and renewable energy projects? Can we generate funds for a project by selling solar beer and burgers? What if we created an “Energy GPA?" Is installing energy efficiency upgrades the future of work study jobs? We'll be taking these ideas about how to finance and implement community energy and generating a toolkit for students across the country to use as they work on these projects. Locally-generated solutions. Nation-wide changes.
At the conference we met students bursting with innovative ideas about how to make positive change through business. We are honored to have been a part of such a great event. Stay tuned for more pictures and updates from the 2011 Net Impact Conference, but in the mean time, check out this awesome video from Sustainable Business Oregon.
What do you think? How can the resources at a campus and its surrounding community collaborate to implement renewable energy?
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