Mitchell Center hosts talk about leveraging ‘clean energy triangle’ to fight climate change Oct. 18
The Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine will host a talk about the need to work across technology, policy and finance to fight climate change from 3–4 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 18.
A rapid shift to low-carbon energy in the power, transportation, industry and building sectors is needed to tackle climate change, says Dan Reicher, senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Making that transition rapid and cost-effective will require coordinated work at all three points of what Reicher calls the “clean energy triangle”— technology, policy and finance. The success of this effort will depend on aggressive policymaking at all levels of government — international, national, state and local — and unprecedented amounts of private and public capital, from early-stage research development and venture investing to late-stage project and infrastructure finance.
Reicher has served as U.S. assistant secretary of energy, Google’s director of climate and energy initiatives, co-founder of the nation’s first renewable energy project investment fund and founding executive director of Stanford University’s Center on Energy Policy and Finance. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Energy and Environmental Systems, as well as co-chair for the board of the American Council on Renewable Energy.
He recently brokered a major agreement between the U.S. hydropower industry and the environmental community on a new approach to the more than 90,000 dams across the nation, a coordinated and better-funded approach known as the “Three Rs”: rehabilitate some for safety; retrofit some for power and remove some for conservation.
All of the Mitchell Center’s Sustainability Talks are free and will be offered both remotely via Zoom and in-person at 107 Norman Smith Hall on the UMaine campus in Orono. Registration is required to attend remotely via Zoom; to register and receive connection information, see the event webpage.
Updates for this event will be posted to the event webpage. To request a reasonable accommodation, contact Ruth Hallsworth, 207.581.3196; hallsworth@maine.edu.