VX2018 convened smart city leaders Brian Swett (Arup), Amanda Daflos (City of LA), Miguel Santana (LA County Fair Association), LA Controller Ron Galperin, Michael Kelly (LA Coalition), and Rick Cole (Santa Monica) to discuss strategies for using data and building public-private partnerships.
Varun Sivaram speaks to VX News about the need for more continuous funding of low-carbon energy innovation to ensure that the cleanest possible products “unlock” incumbent technologies and proliferate.
At the recently officially opened La Kretz Innovation Center (the home of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator), leaders from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) co-hosted a valuable roundtable discussion event focusing on how state policies are driving technological innovation in California.
In November, United States Vice President Joe Biden took part in a roundtable discussion at Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator’s newly opened LA Kretz Innovation Campus in Downtown LA’s Arts District. Biden spoke alongside Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and LACI CEO Fred Walti. The state-of-the-art facility, owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, supports and grows companies from the very beginning stages. Biden toured the campus, as well as hearing from investors and entrepreneurs launching companies within the incubator. Given the timing of the event, Biden also comments on global events and the need for optimism in the face of terror attacks.
Steve Westly, former California State Controller and Chief Financial Officer, delivered remarks at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI)’s GloSho’15 conference, drawing on his long experience in energy innovation to focus on the remarkable progress of renewable energy technology and commercialization. Here, VX News presents an edited transcript of his address. Westly comments on trends in the sustainability and cleantech markets, such as the dropping costs of renewables and the surge of Internet of Things technologies, offering his perspective on the forces driving these trends and how companies across industries can take advantage of them. Having traced the trajectory of technological and financial innovations aimed at sustainability, he concludes by divulging his predictions for the cleantech market’s future—a future, he argues, centered in California.
Formerly Consul General of Canada in Los Angeles, David Fransen has frequently joined VerdeXchange to discuss the commercialization of clean technology and to consider the close trade relationships between California and Canadian provinces. Now, Fransen returns to VX News as chair of the annual Waterloo Innovation Summit in Ontario, which occurred in September. Fransen recaps the summit and outlines Ontario’s rapidly growing innovation ecosystem.
Chai Energy, Inc. is a Los Angeles-based startup reimagining the "Internet of Things" space. Chai CEO Cole Hershkowitz spoke with VX News about the company's remarkable growth since he sat on a VerdeXchange 2015 plenary panel in January. He highlights Chai's focus on data interpretation, noting that the company begins by looking at the problems people encounter with their devices in the home. Helping resolve those issues, Hershkowitz explains, results in reduced energy consumption and savings for customers.
The founder of ABL Inc. and the VerdeXchange conference is essentially the Kevin Bacon, or the Lois Weisberg, of the green world. Here he discusses LA's growing public transit system and what's impressed him about the sustainability world.
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As renewable energy becomes the base upon which society operates, how will utilities manage unbalanced production and overproduction? Advances in communications technology, or the Industrial Internet, promise to channel energy to where it is most demanded via sensors and automatic communication between machines. Efficiently connecting supply and demand will grow with the increased ubiquity of our M2M devices and their potential for sensing energy needs across a myriad of platforms. VerdeXchange News reprints the following with the permission of ThomasNet News.
Bruce Katz, Vice President at the Brookings Institution, co-authored The Metropolitan Revolution. VerdeXchange News has printed a piece adapted from this book below, which originally appeared online as part of LinkedIn’s Influencer’s series. Mr. Katz discusses how innovation districts—clusters of anchor institutions and innovative firms, along with related companies, mixed use housing, office, and retail—are taking the place of traditional corporate campuses, and what impact this will have on cities moving forward.