Diana Rodriguez could still hear the silence.
In the wake of Hurricane Ida, Entergy New Orleans' new CEO surveys the damage. But it was the calm that amazed her most.
In less than 90 days on the job, Rodriguez faced a fatality, a tornado, a tornado and a public relations storm that erupted around the company's new power plant.
Rodriguez clearly understood that her responsibility to lead the company into a more resilient and cleaner future would not come without costs.
“It's expensive and demanding a lot Rodriguez said during the keynote at the POWERGEN International 2024 conference in New Orleans:
Rodriguez's role requires her to think about the future. The New Orleans City Council's order to submit a resiliency plan in response to Hurricane Ida has reinforced this imperative.
But seeing the future can be daunting. Especially without a roadmap.
Brian David Johnson, the applied futurist and professor who led the POWERGEN keynote, pushed attendees to embrace the power of “dumb ideas” when planning for the future.
He said that an idea is only “stupid” until someone realizes its genius. This exercise also launches innovative collaboration that will be crucial as the energy industry evolves in the coming decades.
Johnson himself went through this process as an in-house futurist at IBM, where he was tasked with forecasting consumer behaviors for chip investments that would take 10 to 15 years to materialize.
“You're going to see your team, and yourself, doing some crazy things,” Johnson said. “You have really important things to solve, and this is a way to move forward and start solving them, and come up with some of those things that people haven't thought about before.”
Large companies, such as Microsoft, depend on the energy industry to develop and incubate The next big thingThis is largely due to ambitious climate and clean energy goals.
Todd Noe, director of nuclear technologies engineering at Microsoft, told the keynote audience at POWERGEN International that nuclear power will play a pivotal role in the company's zero-carbon efforts. Small modular reactors (SMR), hydrogen, and long-duration energy storage technologies could also be crucial, he added.
“Our vision is that we are seeking a carbon-neutral network, not just for Microsoft, but for our customers around the world,” Noe said. “We don't see any carbon-neutral technology that will exist the Answer.”
Part of this puzzle, especially in the future, is carbon capture and storage.
Expanding carbon capture operations for aging coal fleets will be “critical” to meeting international climate commitments, said Brad Crabtree, assistant secretary of energy for the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.
“Demonstrating American leadership here at home, expanding technology, reducing costs, and building industry confidence can have a global impact,” Crabtree said.
