Baker Institute conference to focus on technology use in ‘green economy’

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

Matt Rogers, senior adviser for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act at the U.S. Department of Energy, will be the featured speaker at a Jan. 26 conference at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Rogers will speak on the government’s efforts to use funding from the stimulus bill to develop new energy technologies. Energy Secretary Steven Chu told Congress Jan. 21 that more appropriations are needed for energy R&D.

	MATT ROGERS

The daylong conference, titled “Energy Technology R&D and Intellectual Property in the New Green Economy,” will bring together industry and government leaders to discuss how best to leverage the lessons, skills and business paradigms from the IT and dot-com boom to the new green economy. Among the subjects for panel discussions are “Patent Pools in Energy R&D” and “Impact of Disruptive Technologies in Energy.”

Change and innovation are unfolding rapidly in the energy sector. An influx of new entrepreneurial players are entering the marketplace with capital, novel investment and business models, and regulatory experiences that differ from those of the traditional oil and gas industry. The so-called clean-technology marketplace was initially the domain of small startup firms, but major industry players are beginning to enter it, including large venture capital firms, wealthy oil-rich Middle East governments, IT giants and major oil companies.

As the clean-tech sector grows, opportunities are emerging to apply lessons and best practices from the development of IT infrastructure and software to various aspects of the clean-tech world. These include managing large infrastructure projects, monitoring networks, load balancing electrical usage, distributing energy and improving efficiencies across the energy sector.

The Jan. 26 event will begin at 10 a.m. in Baker Hall’s Kelly International Conference Facility.

The event agenda is available at http://www.bakerinstitute.org/events/energy-technology-r-d-and-intellectual-property-in-the-new-201cgreen201d-economy.

Rice faculty, staff and students who want to attend must RSVP by e-mail (bipprsvp@rice.edu), by fax (713-348-5993) or on the Web at http://www.bakerinstitute.org/events/energy-technology-r-d-and-intellectual-property-in-the-new-201cgreen201d-economy.