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Three big ideas from the MIT Energy Conference

Data-driven energy, stop-and-go innovation, shifting supply and demand centers – and other takeaways from the Monitor's trip to the MIT Energy Conference 2015.

The Monitor's energy team crossed over a snowy Charles River to check out theÌýÌýthis past weekend. We met smart people, heard great talks, and got inspired. Here's their report, filed to subscribers of .

Three big ideas

1. The energy revolution will be digitized
   Energy is fundamentally physical, but the industry around it is rapidly dematerializing.ÌýÌýare turning the power grid intoÌýa "cyber-physical system," asÌýThomas Siebel, CEO ofÌýC3 Energy, put it. 4D seismic surveys and robotic drilling make oil exploration as much about information-technology as it is about mechanics or geology.Ìý. Dirk Smit, a chief scientist at Shell, said there are countries where the company quadrupled local computing power just to make sense of all the information it collects. He envisions a "Google Earth for subsurface data" to virtuallyÌýexplore the world beneath our feet. A prevailing theme at MITEC went something like this: We've got sensors. We need more of them. And we need them everywhere.
2. Innovation is incremental but ubiquitous
   Everyone is looking for the next big thing in energy –Ìýa silver-bulletÌýthat will bring power to the billion humans without it and alsoÌý. The unglamorous truth is that energy progress comes in fits and starts. Eventually, itÌýadds up to landmark advances. For example,Ìý. But equally important, asÌýSunEdison CEO Ahmad ChatilaÌýnoted, are incremental improvements all across the supply chain – how panels are financed, installed, rotated, and maintained.ÌýThat's not to say there won'tÌýbeÌý. But odds are the heavy lifting will come from small, obscureÌýtweaks that makeÌýtechnologies radically better over time.Ìý
3. Tomorrow's energy map looks nothing like today's
   "We think developing countries are interesting because they house most of humanity," said Rob Stoner, co-director of MIT's Tata Center for Technology and Design. Much is said ofÌý. But supply is shifting along similar lines, too. Eighty percent of new nuclear construction is in non-OECD nations, according to Alan Hanson, the director of MIT's International Nuclear Leadership Education Program.Ìý, India, and elsewhere are opening up to outside producers, andÌýlow oil prices could accelerate the trend.Ìý"Resource nationalism recedes when prices go down," notedÌýFrancisco Monaldi, visiting professor at Harvard'sÌýBelfer Center.

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Quotables

"One thing that we are probably in agreement with Greenpeace is that at the end of the day, probably most of our energy will come from the sun. That may take a few decades – it actually may take much more ...ÌýSo it's almost an empty statement. I think the real question becomes 'Well, how do you manage that? How do you do that in-between [work]?'"
–Ìý

"There are no 'disruptive' technologies. We must see these technologies as 'enabling' – not 'disruptive'."
–Ìý, on building a utility of the future

#Overheard

Ìýwritten by Monitor reporters David J. Unger and Jared Gilmour.