Program

This is a one-day solar volunteer opportunity with GRID Alternatives and a great team-building and educational experience. Up to ten volunteers will be installing a PV solar system with non-profit GRID Alternatives for a low-income family in San Jose, California. Get up on the roof to help install the panels, be part of the ground crew, or a little of both. Tools, hardhats, and step-by-step guidance are provided by the very skilled GRID Alternatives staff.

Please fill out this form and we will send you confirmation details or place you on our wait list you if all spots are filled. The Build Day Volunteer Opportunity has space for 10 volunteers maximum.

The President of the University of California and former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security shares her vision for turning the state’s world-class university system into an exemplar of climate readiness, responsibility and resilience.

How can the Internet of Things and cloud computing drive a broad scale global transformation in resource use across multiple sectors simultaneously? And why will this lead to a reinvention of how we view and manage the planet’s limited resources?

Around the world — in North America, Europe, China and beyond — the largest economies are undergoing energy transformations, each with its own politics, technologies, challenges and opportunities. Here are the visions from two of the leading thinkers on our energy future.

Virtual Reality dates to the 1950s, but 2016 is its seminal moment. With the launch of consumer VR systems we are entering a new reality of how we experience and interface with our technology. It's not just entertainment: VR offers the potential to fundamentally change how we learn, interact, and recover through a variety of potential applications in academia, healthcare, advocacy and industry. This briefing will explore some possible ways VR can accelerate the sustainable economy.

A pitch competition that provides entrepreneurs in energy, buildings, transportation, supply chains, water, food, and cities the opportunity to present to the diverse VERGE community: executives from the world's largest companies, public officials from progressive cities, venture capitalists, and others.

Hawaii is building a state-of-the-art, 3D visual computing environment that lets users move through patterns of energy data in real time. The virtual reality tool supports the state’s course towards 100-percent renewable energy by turning massive streams of data into imagery for utility planners and engineers and other energy stakeholders. Taking advantage of declining costs and a global trend towards grid parity, Hawaii is pioneering this collaborative planning paradigm to minimize cost and risk while maximizing the overall efficiency of grid investments and resource options.

The world of clean and distributed energy solutions is leading to new partnerships and service models among energy producers, equipment providers and energy consumers. These partnerships can provide benefits beyond low-carbon and efficient energy systems, but also can produce productivity gains and other business benefits. 

An outspoken, often contrarian entrepreneur and a visionary cleantech investor explore such provocative questions as when residential solar might make economic sense in the U.S.; whether distributed solar and distributed storage are friends, foes or both; and whether Elon Musk’s vision for an electrified future is brilliant or diabolical.

In just a few short years, the circular economy has gone from a movement to a market. Here’s how large and legacy companies are approaching the transition.

A half-day, invitation-only interactive summit focusing on disruptive market shifts, evolving business models and new technologies needed to bring affordable, renewable power to market in a disparate policy and regulatory environment. Utilities, corporate energy executives, independent power producers, solution providers and government officials will participate in a facilitated discussion to identify opportunities and barriers for adapting to a shifting energy marketplace.

To learn more and request an invitation, please refer to this page.

Energy is one of the biggest operational expense line items for many businesses, but has received little attention from C-suite decision makers. Even as more enterprises make public commitments to energy reduction, many still delegate energy management to site-level managers with little insight into its impact on the broader business strategy. And while CEOs are making big demands of their teams to understand how these trends impact areas like talent acquisition, supply chain management, and R&D, few are connecting the dots back to energy. In this session, experts reveal research into emerging leading practices in energy and how to effectively engage the C-suite in energy strategy.

Growth in population and increased urbanization will require more and better lighting in the years ahead. Global population is expected to jump by almost 40% by 2050, and two-thirds will live in cities, where demand for lighting is greatest. Resource constraints and realities of climate change have increased demand for greater energy efficiency. Here’s how lighting and the Internet of Things are addressing this challenge.

One of the tech world’s iconic innovators shares some ground-breaking new solar energy, energy efficiency, and energy storage technologies, and with that, why clean technology remains a staggering opportunity today.

The poorest 20% of our neighbors pay the most for electricity - 10% of total household income. Community solar will transform access to affordable clean energy for low income households if we deploy equitable project finance models that scale with the market instead of depending on subsidies. Learn about emerging project development and finance models that are empowering urban and rural communities.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has changed the way we connect and interact with the world, from wellness and health monitoring to smart utility meters, integrated logistics, and self-driving cars. What is the potential impact beyond “things” — on our workforce, our communities and the way in which we work? Hewlett Packard Labs has been asking these questions. Learn how they are harnessing IoT innovations to drive solutions that work for both people and the planet. 

Increasingly, renewable energy technologies are moving from standalone solutions to integrated systems that align companies energy, finance, operation and resilience objectives. As the number of clean-energy solutions grows, so do the opportunities to create a portfolio of approaches — including both onsite and offsite wind and solar systems. In this conversation, a leading independent power producer and one of its largest customers discuss the secrets of their success.

Technologies that connect and automate our daily lives can bring mobility and convenience, but they can also drive up energy use and emissions. The head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy will share his vision for how we can break down market and organizational barriers to ensure that connected and automated cars, infrastructure, and technology solutions deliver on their promised benefits while playing a critical role in building a low-carbon economy. He will challenge stakeholders from every sector to invest in the cross-sector research, partnerships and policy choices needed to tap into connected and automated technology to accelerate a energy revolution that’s been underway for nearly a decade.

What's the future of work? While engaging some of the world's smartest people in fields as diverse as robotics, AI, the on-demand economy, and the economics of labor, Silicon Valley's leading intellectual describes the key drivers of some of today’s most successful startups and about what technology like driverless cars, Siri, Google Now, Microsoft Cortana, and IBM Watson teach us about the future; specifically, how he's starting to see their connections and how this will catalyze positive action across all industries.

A 20+ year sustainability executive talks about the intersection of technology and sustainability in the context of social innovation and the opportunities that microgrids provide to accelerate corporates and community resilience. 

In the new, resilient city, the role of technology is everywhere,  from traffic sensors and smart lighting systems to apps providing access to city services to the broad populace. What does it take to deploy technology and harness data in a way that enhances city services and serves all residents, all while saving money?

A story about the inception of a new grand strategy for the U.S., born at the Pentagon, that embeds sustainability as a strategic national imperative and as the underpinning for an economic revival in America — one that can make us economically stronger, more secure and resilient and improve our standing in the world.

The inspiring data-driven story of how a sleepy residential community transformed itself into an innovation ecosystem.

It’s not just about “doing it yourself,” or about how things get made. The maker movement is about revolutionizing how we reimagine things, prototype them and distribute them to the world. Here's what it means to the manufacturing, tech and retail sectors.

A conversation between two veteran cleantech leaders about the role of investment, technology breakthroughs, and commercial scale up in driving innovation to mitigate climate change.

A pitch competition that provides entrepreneurs in energy, buildings, transportation, supply chains, water, food, and cities the opportunity to present to the diverse VERGE community: executives from the world's largest companies, public officials from progressive cities, venture capitalists, and others.

The former CEO of NRG Energy, now a clean-energy investor, and the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy discuss how clean and distributed energy systems in the developing world engenders national security, regional resilience and sustainable development.

Sometimes all it takes is someone to believe in your vision and solution. That was true for Ategeka, and now he's created a platform to help entrepreneurs around the world.

Climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing, air pollution. We’re up against huge threats. But history and the trends of technology show that we can turn the corner. As clean energy and clean transportation plunge in price, as biotechnology revolutionizes our understanding of the natural world, and as the developing world reaches the demographic transition, a world of greater prosperity with less impact on the planet becomes possible. Make no mistake: The state of the environment will get worse before it gets better. But we can innovate our way past this crisis, and into a future far better than humanity has ever seen.

Change has become the only constant for business. As an old economic order unravels and a new one emerges, Project Breakthrough, a new joint venture between Volans and the UN Global Compact, is exploring how the transformation necessary to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals will come not from linear, incremental improvements, but from radical, exponential disruptions. Here are the business models, technologies and mindsets at the vanguard of this new opportunity space.