330 N Orchard St, Madison, WI 53706

Nearly two billion people in the world today face the challenges of energy poverty, with little to no access to electricity, gas, or oil. The energy to carry out daily tasks often comes from low-quality sources such as dung and wood and requires hours to gather.

Hear from Tom Eggert, about “Development at the Base of the Pyramid,” a discussion about the roles and challenges today’s businesses face in expanding energy infrastructure and markets in underdeveloped regions of the world. Tom Eggert is founder and director of the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council, a consortium that assists Wisconsin businesses in their movement towards sustainability and increased social responsibility. Tom Eggert is also a Senior Lecturer in the Wisconsin School of Business, engaging students in courses on corporate social and environmental responsibility and systems change.

*Due to illness, Dr. Douglas Barnes, formerly a senior energy consultant with the World Bank, will not be able to join us at this event.

Also hear from a panel of students currently carrying out projects aimed to address the challenges of energy access and quality. Featured projects include ‘Microformer,’ a group that has developed a small-scale transformer design, and EWB (Engineers Without Borders) projects in Rwanda and El Salvador.

Refreshments will be served at 6:30pm

Sponsored by: Energy Hub (eHub) & WAGE (Center for World Affairs and Global Economy)

]]> http://www.uwehub.org/power-to-the-people-exploring-the-challenges-of-energy-poverty/feed/ 0 http://www.uwehub.org/ehub-tours-exelons-byron-nuclear-generating-station/ http://www.uwehub.org/ehub-tours-exelons-byron-nuclear-generating-station/#comments Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:43:17 +0000 admin http://www.uwehub.org/?p=2452 By: Nathan Pinney, Energy Hub Co-Chair

Energy Hub visited Exelon’s Byron Nuclear Generating Station on April 20, 2012.    We were hosted by Communications Manager Paul Dempsey and were given a short overview and history of the plant by Byron Site Vice President Tim Tulon.  After a nice lunch provided by Exelon, we were escorted through plant security (an experience in itself) and guided through the parts of the plant, including the plant control room, the steam turbine deck, and various safety and redundancy features.  For security and safety reasons, we were not permitted to enter the reactor containment buildings.

The twin Westinghouse Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) at Byron Generating Station create thermal energy via nuclear fission that is converted into 2,336 Megawatts of electricity at full output.  This is enough energy to provide electricity for approximately 2 million homes.  The facility at Byron has been in operation since 1985 and employs about 850 full time employees.

A major concern for the plant managers at Byron is the issue of long-term spent fuel storage.  Currently, the depleted nuclear fuel from the Byron reactors is stored onsite in the fuel cooling pool or in dry storage casks onsite.  When depleted fuel is pulled from the reactor core, it is placed in the cooling pool until it’s radioactivity has decreased to the degree that it can be placed in an air-cooled cement cask, stored outdoors on a special pad built for this purpose.   Due to the failure to establish a national long-term fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain, long-term nuclear fuel storage or recycling in the United States faces an uncertain future.  Depleted fuel rods will be continue to be stored onsite at nuclear power plants until an alternative solution is realized.

Another issue that the plant managers were quick to address was the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daichi plant that started on March 11, 2011, a consequence of the Magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami that occurred on that date.  Exelon’s plant managers and reactor operators stressed the emphasis that they place on studying the Fukushima event and learning from this tragedy in order to identify new safety and redundancy procedures for their facilities.

Questions about Exelon and the Byron Nuclear Generating Station should be directed to Byron Communications Manager Paul Dempsey: paul.dempsey AT exeloncorp.com

Join Maggie Koerth-Baker, science journalist and science editor at BoingBoing.net to learn more about the electricity system on which we rely, but often don’t fully understand. Explore how our electricity infrastructure evolved, how it determines what we can and can’t do to solve our energy challenges, and what we can learn about the future of energy by studying its past.

Find more event details at: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~bgibson/maggie.html

Event contact:  Bryan Gibson, pauperjojo+mkb@gmail.com

Richard O’Neill, Chief Economic Advisor for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will present “New Approaches to Transforming Wind, Rain and Fire into Electricity —  Making a Smarter, Cleaner, Efficient Grid,” His talk will explore what power system markets will look like when new technologies, such as vehicle charging infrastructure, “smart metering,” and sources of renewable energy are incorporated.

Enjoy this opportunity to have a conversation with Mr. Nagel and other students about our global energy outlook.

 Lunch will be served

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

11:00am-12:00pm

Wisconsin Idea Room, Union South

Video was filmed and edited by Karen Rybold Chin of On The Earth Productions.  Energy Hub thanks you for your great work, Karen!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012 @ 7:00pm-8:00pm

1152 Mechanical Engineering

Hear from Professors Greg Nemet and Craig Benson about their work at UW on energy and sustainability, and have a chance to engage in casual discussion.

Pizza will be served!

Students of all majors, graduate and undergraduate, are welcome.

Professor Greg Nemet’s research seeks to understand the process of energy technology innovation and the role of public policy in fostering innovation. His work analyzes the interaction of environmental, social, economic, and technical dimensions of the global energy system. Greg Nemet is an assistant professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Nelson Institute.

Professor Craig Benson is Professor of Geological Engineering and Civil & Environmental Engineering, with particular expertise in geoenvironmental engineering. His work in geoenvironmental engineering evaluates the sustainability of geological and civil engineering systems, the recycling of industrial byproducts for construction applications, and the design and assessment of municipal, hazardous, and radioactive waste containment systems. Professor Benson is also UW-Madison’s first Director of Sustainability Research and Education.

You’ll also have an opportunity to hear about some of the great eHub events planned for the semester.

Please pass this message on to anyone who may be interested in attending. Students of all majors, graduate and undergraduate, are welcome.

image © Copyright Simon Johnston and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence

February 14, 2011, 6:00pm
Varsity Hall in Union South,
1308 West Dayton Street, Madison WI

Agenda:

5:30 PM – Doors open for registration
6:00-7:30 PM – Debate and Q&A session
7:30-8:30 PM – Discussion and networking

This event is free and open to the public.

Event Description: Does the flattening oil production in the past decade pose a serious risk that supplies of transportation fuel could fall short of demand and prices sharply increase as the world economy recovers and developing countries’ growth accelerates? “Peak Oil” is the phrase for the concern by some experts that oil production in all its forms will soon begin a permanent decline, a development that would have profound implications for our domestic economy, national security, and even world peace. Already the world is experiencing record oil prices—and market experts see much higher prices lurking on the near horizon. The severe oil shocks in 1973 and 1979 provide a preview of potential difficulties, which make this a threat too serious to ignore.

Other respected experts see hope for adequate oil production if measures are taken to turn loose new technologies for exploitation of previously inaccessible tight deposits and to open new production in under-developed areas.

Experts on both sides favor urgent measures to meet the challenges implicit in these view points, but the underlying realities have remained too complicated—or disturbing—for action in the political arena or even for serious debate. Madison now has the opportunity to participate in such a debate.

Debate Participants:

Dr. Tadeusz Patzek is Chair of the Department of Petroleum Geology at the University of Texas and is a board member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO-USA). Dr. Patzek is an authority on the world’s oil fields and the potential of technology to break through “mother nature’s limits” on fields’ ultimate production. While spending a lifetime facilitating petroleum production, he is pessimistic about the prospects for further major increases in world oil production.  Consequently, he favors urgent measures to restructure our economy and society to reduce our need for oil. Recently, Patzek served on the national commission to study the oil disaster in the Gulf. He authored a book (Drilling Down: the Gulf Oil Debacle and Our Energy Dilemma) discussing the disaster’s technical causes and the broader risks of ever more complex oil production.Quote from Dr. Patzek for the World Oil Supply Debate: “Our civilization is not about energy, but about power or energy expenditure per unit time.  In contrast, our social discourse is framed in terms of energy.  Within this framing the essential differences between accumulations of fossil fuels and uranium or thorium, and flows of solar energy (light, wind, tides, biomass) disappear.  This misunderstanding is at the core of the heated but generally uniformed discussion we have in our country about what would it take to wean ourselves from fossil fuels.  In the meantime, fossil fuels work ever harder in a modern society, and the weaning process will be extremely difficult.  In the U.S., we haven’t even started a broad, serious conversation about how to proceed to cut our use of power by half for starters.” – Dr. Tadeusz Patzek

John Hofmeister founded and heads Citizens for Affordable Energy, a public policy education non-profit promoting U.S. energy security solutions. He was President of Houston-based Shell Oil Company from 2005-2008, previously serving as Group Human Resource Director of the Shell Group based in The Netherlands. Hofmeister serves as the Chairman of the National Urban League, and he is a member of the U.S. Energy Security Council and the Department of Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technical Advisory Committee.  He also serves on the boards of the National Energy Security Council, the Foreign Policy Association, the Gas Technology Institute, and the University of Houston Energy Advisory Board. Hofmeister is the author of Why We Hate the Oil Companies: Straight Talk from an Energy Insider.Quote from Mr. Hofmeister for the World Oil Supply Debate: “The U.S. is headed for an unprecedented energy abyss within the next five years, including blackouts, brownouts and gasoline lines because it has failed to address its energy needs in the 21st Century over the past four decades.  ‘Political time’ priorities continue to overwhelm ‘energy time’ priorities given the partisan perversity of both major parties, at the expense of the American people and our economic, energy and environmental future.” – John Hofmeister

… Debate Moderator:

Moderator: Dr. Alan Carroll has accepted the challenge of guiding the conversation through the factors governing future fuel supply to clearly identify the basis for differing production forecasts and policy recommendations. He will assure that our discussion is both substantively focused and fair to all participants. Carroll is a Professor of Geoscience at UW-Madison, specializing in petroleum geology. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, he serves on the Advisory Board for the Center for Oil Shale Technology and Research, and he is a member of the Technical Advisory Board for the American Shale Oil Company. Carroll is a member of UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute Energy and Policy Program and UW’s Energy Institute. He has contributed to carbon sequestration studies for Wisconsin and Minnesota, and his most recent book, Biofuels: A Passenger’s Guide to Energy from the Earth, will be published in 2012

Union South Location:

View Larger Map

Parking:
Union South underground lot (paid, very limited spaces available)
Lot 20 (paid, limited)
Lot 17 (free after 4:30 PM) – recommended
Campus Parking Map

Event Cosponsors:

Madison Committee on Foreign Relations

Madison Peak Oil Group

Energy Hub

Wisconsin Union Directorate
Society and Politics Committee

UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
Energy Analysis and Policy Certificate program

UW-Madison Energy Institute

UW-Madison Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy

Global Entrepreneurship Week, November 14-19, 2011, offers 6 days of networking, collaborative idea exchanges, entrepreneurial advice, and celebration of entrepreneurs. Events include:

Innovate N’ Caffeinate Kick-Off

Monday, November 14th, 1pm–4pm in the Entrepreneurs’ Resource Clinic at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.

Entrepreneurial Deli

Tuesday, November 15th, 6pm–8pm in the Entrepreneurs’ Resource Clinic at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery

Wiscontrepreneur Whiteboard Challenge

Wednesday, November 16th, 6:30pm–9pm in the Entrepreneurs’ Resource Clinic at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.

Gilson Bootstrapping Series: The Business Model Canvas

Thursday, November 17th, 5pm–7pm in the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery Town Center.

Environmental Innovation Past & Future

Friday, November 18th, 9am–11am at the Wisconsin Historical Museum on the Capitol Square.

Pre-register, limit 50.  Register online.

Startup Accelerator “Unconference”

Saturday, November 19th, 9am–4pm at the Entrepreneurs’ Resource Clinic at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.

For more information, visit the UW-Madison Office of Corporate Relations website.

The 2011 eHub conference, held on Friday, November 4, 2011 brought together individuals from across the UW campus and energy industry to explore, discuss, and exchange ideas about solutions to energy challenges and opportunities to improve our electricity grid.

Thank you to everyone who attended. We hope you found the event engaging and educational.

Conference presentations are now available

A big thank you goes out to everyone who made this event possible, including our sponsors, listed here, and our advisors at the Wisconsin Public Utility Institute and Energy Institute.

• Madison Gas & Electric Co.
• Exelon Corporation
• Wisconsin Experience Grant
• Xcel Energy
• American Transmission Company
• Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative
• Wisconsin Public Service Corp/Integrys
• Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center
• Wisconsin State Energy Office
• Organic Valley Family of Farms
• UW-Madison Office of Sustainability
• UW-Madison Business, Environment and Social Responsibility Program
• UW-Madison Department of Engineering Physics
• UW-Madison College of Letters and Science