ST. LOUIS – Over the past two days, the Missouri Energy Initiative (MEI) helmed the Midwest Energy Policy Conference in St. Louis.
The annual conference, which is in its 10th year, offers attendees a chance to listen to speakers and network with professionals in the energy industry. This year, the conference focused on both local and macroscopic examinations of the industry with a theme of resilience.
Josh Campbell, the executive director of MEI, said that the exchange of ideas between people within the industry and staff members of regulatory agencies like the Public Service Commission embodied the idea behind the conference.
“It is meant to bring in diverse voices, differing voices on key issues that Missouri and the Midwest are facing,” Campbell said. “We specifically try to bring in speakers and audience members who will be able to discuss openly with each other as well as with the presenters.”
Most of the local policy examinations took place Tuesday afternoon where speakers and panel discussions on such topics as performance-based rate making, power purchase agreements, and integrating the grid. Campbell says they also partnered with the Missouri University of Science and Technology and the Laufer Energy Symposium to highlight some of the specifics behind future energy technologies, including reclamation of greywater (lightly used water from sinks, laundry machines, and the like) as a source of fuel.
“We wanted to bring more of a technical angle to the conference because the technical details really do impact the final decisions not only on how policy is made but really how it’s implemented,” he said.
Wednesday morning’s portion of the conference featured relatively big-name guests and large-scale ideas. Prof. Michael Webber, a clean energy advocate, discussed the relationship between energy and water consumption, and Alex Epstein who discussed his views on energy poverty and the moral case for fossil fuel usage.
Some of those speakers, Campbell admits, can have strongly differing views, but he emphasized that the conference served an important role in helping Missouri and other surrounding states with energy policy. He said that with aging physical infrastructure and regulatory structures, that the energy industry faces hurdles, but that discussion which led to action could go a long way to finding solutions for those problems.
“People in the energy world don’t have a problem talking,” Campbell said. “The problem is doing and finding the solution. MEI has identified those areas and then bring people in to educate people like the PSC staff, the regulated community, and their customers.”
MEI is an energy nonprofit made up of both public sector entities and private sector businesses.
Pictured above: Prof. Michael Webber discusses long-term sustainability ideas from his book “Thirst for Power: Energy, Water and Human Survival” at the Midwest Energy Policy Conference in St. Louis Wednesday.
