CUB Conference Preview: Accelerating Local Clean Transitions
Posted on September 17, 2019 by Janice Thompson
Tags, Conference & Events
We are less than two months away from the 2019 CUB Policy Conference, Clean Energy Communities / Reliable Systems, which will be held on Friday, November 8 at the Downtown Portland Hilton! Now in its ninth year, the CUB Policy Conference is designed to educate energy and utility policy analysts, attorneys, advocates, regulators, and others working in and around the energy industry. It is characterized by a combination of expert keynote speakers and dynamic panel discussions, with a strong focus on networking and audience participation. As plans are taking shape for the six panel discussions that will take place throughout the day, I am pleased to preview of one of these breakout panels: Accelerating Local Clean Transitions.
Across Oregon there are a growing number of municipalities adopting climate action plans and resolutions intended to move their communities further faster toward decarbonization. Their level of detail and extent and timing of goals may vary, but local actions are of great interest to a growing number of Oregonians and their city and county elected leaders. One of our panelists, Angus Duncan, with the Oregon Global Warming Commission, will emphasize the decarbonization goals required to address climate change and the interplay between state and local goals, timelines, and reliability needs.
From a local perspective, what are the particular decarbonization opportunities? One opportunity pertains to how utilities serving a community’s service area produce the energy used in that city or county. Alan Hickenbottom is a leading advocate for one tool to address the production of energy used in a community: community choice aggregation. Rebecca Smith, a senior policy analyst at the Oregon Department of Energy, brings knowledge about green tariff programs and other options that might be adaptable for community level actions.
A second opportunity is transportation: Oregon’s transportation sector releases more greenhouse gas emissions than any other sector in the state, and that trend is increasing instead of decreasing. Sara Wright, Transportation Manager for the Oregon Environmental Council, will discuss opportunities to accelerate the decarbonization of local transportation by speeding up the electrification of public transit and private vehicles. Land use planning and investment in non-vehicle transportation options also offer rich potential for community-level decarbonization.
Our fifth panelist, Tim Lynch with Multnomah County’s Sustainability Office, provides an on-the-ground perspective on decarbonization opportunities within county buildings and operations, as well as ideas to enhance climate change actions community-wide. Multnomah County particularly values achieving community benefits, ranging from environmental justice to job training.
We look forward to an exciting and informative discussion, and hope you are able to attend and participate with audience questions for this team of experts as they explore a variety of local decarbonization scenarios and strategies. Learn more about these and other panelists, and register for the conference, at oregoncub.org/cubcon19! Register by our Early Bird deadline: Friday, October 11 for best pricing. For those traveling from outside of Portland, CUB has a discounted block of rooms at the Duniway Hotel, across the street from the Hilton, available to conference attendees on a first-come, first-served basis. (Visit our Travel page for details.)
This is the third in our series of breakout panel preview blogs; check out previous installments on “Empowering Customers in New Utility Partnerships” and working “Toward a More Resilient Energy Future”, and stay turned to our Materials page for updates on these and other supplemental 2019 CUB Conference reading materials.
CUB is grateful to our generous sponsors for making this event possible, in particular our “Polar Bear” sponsors NW Natural, Pacific Power, Portland General Electric, and our media sponsor, Energy NewsData’s Clearing Up. Follow CUB conference news by signing up for our email list, and on Twitter at #CUBCon19.
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09/17/19 | 0 Comments | CUB Conference Preview: Accelerating Local Clean Transitions