Presented with Rocky Mountain Institute.
The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) will lead a discussion of their multi-year project, Reinventing Fire, offering a detailed analysis of and roadmap for navigating the United States’ economy through the end of the fossil-fuel era. The project is the fruit of work by dozens of scientists, engineers, architects, economists, business experts, and other practitioners at RMI – an independent, nonprofit think-and-do tank that drives the efficient and restorative use of resources by transforming design, busting barriers, and spreading innovation.
Speaker: Robert Hutchinson
Robert “Hutch” Hutchinson is the Managing Director for Research and Collaboration at Rocky Mountain Institute. He works across all RMI programmatic areas, with a special emphasis on the built environment and transportation.
Prior to RMI, Mr. Hutchinson founded Pronghorn Ventures, a “clean-tech” venture fund centered in Colorado’s Front Range. Previously, he spent almost 20 years with the Boston Consulting Group, holding leadership roles in the energy, industrial, and high-tech practices. Mr. Hutchinson spent about half of his BCG career overseas, especially in Latin America and Australasia, and helped establish several of BCG’s offices and practices.
Before working at BCG, Mr. Hutchinson was a research engineer and program manager at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, focusing on energy conservation and renewable technology development.
Speaker: James Newcomb
James Newcomb is a program director at RMI, where he leads the Institute’s electricity practice. He is a writer, consultant, and scenario thinker with 25 years’ experience in managing cutting-edge research and advisory organizations. Previously, he served as Group Manager for markets, policy and impacts analysis at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He was the founding president and CEO of E Source, a leading provider of information on energy technology and services to electric and gas utilities and corporate energy managers. M.A., Energy and Resources, University of California, Berkeley; B.A., Economics,Harvard University.
About the Energy Innovation Series:
Transitioning to a sustainable low-carbon energy system poses one of the great challenges of the 21st century. The Energy Innovation Series brings leaders from government, law, finance, industry, and academia to discuss key aspects of this challenge and some of the innovative approaches and solutions being fashioned across a range of sectors. During academic year 2012-13, the series will focus on the changing energy mix in the United States and abroad, the implications of shale gas on the electric power sector, financing for energy innovation, the changing utility business model, and pathways to scale for renewable energy.
The series is co-sponsored by the University of Colorado Law School, the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), and the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship. All lectures are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.