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If you or your organization are interested in sponsoring this year's conference, please contact us today!

CUB Policy Conference

The CUB Policy Center, in partnership with the University of Oregon School of Law, is pleased to announce its third annual policy conference, The Flexibility Challenge. This conference will investigate the challenges facing the modern utility in the Pacific Northwest, and concentrate on ways to successfully integrate renewables, energy efficiency, demand response, and other key technologies into the flexibility utility. The program is specifically designed to educate utility analysts, policy analysts, attorneys, industry professionals, stakeholders, and others. This event will take place on October 25, 2013, at the University of Oregon’s White Stag Block in Old Town Portland. The program will proceed as follows:

8:30-9am: Breakfast Keynote Speaker (TBA)
9-9:30am: Presentation 1: The Flexibility Challenge: Integrating Variable Resources – Bob Jenks, Executive Director, Citizens’ Utility Board of Oregon

This presentation will provide the framework for the day: how can we use energy efficiency and renewable energy together to create a cleaner energy mix for greater long-term benefits?

9:30-9:45am: Break
9:45-11am: Opening Panel - The Northwest’s Flexible Future
- This panel will bring together key energy efficiency and renewable industry leaders for a candid discussion. Bob Jenks will join three others to dive deeper into the issues raised in the opening presentation.
11-11:30am: Break
11:30am-12pm: Lunch Keynote Speaker (TBA)
12-12:45pm: Networking Lunch
12:45-2:15pm: Afternoon Breakout Session 1 (Choice of one)

Topic 1: Flexibility and Industrial/Agricultural Consumers: Tools for the Future Utility

Two of the key sectors to adopt cutting edge demand response, energy storage, and other programs are the region's industrial and agricultural leaders. What are the traditional and innovative ways in which this sector can work with efficiency, renewables, and other resources to provide flexibility? What are the barriers to adopting such programs? What needs to happen for industrial and agriculture customers to take full advantage of energy efficiency resources?

Topic 2: Flexible Resources: Wind Generation, Demand Response, and Energy Storage

A key challenge in the Pacific Northwest is balancing our various generation resources and developing tools to integrate nighttime wind generation. What programs currently exist, and what programs are being piloted? What are the benefits and challenges of these resource types?

2:15-2:45pm: Break
2:45-4:15pm: Afternoon Breakout Session 2 (Choice of one)

Topic 3: Flexibility and Distributed Generation: Localized Resources and the Future Utility

As more and more resources come online that are diffusely (rather than centrally) located, how can we effectively and proactively integrate them into our system? What needs to happen to take full advantage of local, distributed generation?

Topic 4: Flexibility Through Markets: Imbalance Markets and the Future Utility

As Pacific Northwest utilities consider joining imbalance markets like the one established in California, we ask: what are the benefits to doing so? What are the barriers? How can an imbalance market enhance the flexibility needed by the modern utility and better enable the use of efficiency and renewable resources?

4:15-4:30pm: Break
4:30-5:30pm: Closing Panel – Answering the Flexibility Challenge: Thirty Years from Now
- This panel will explore what might be “normal” in 30 years and suggest the immediate changes we need in the short term to make that 30-year vision possible.
5:30pm: Reception