Marquette Sustainability 2.0 Conference Keynote Announcement (October 24, 2023)

We are excited to announce our keynote for the 2023 Sustainability 2.0 Conference, scheduled for October 24, 2023, at the Alumni Memorial Union at Marquette University. With the pending SEC Climate Disclosure Rule, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, 70% of companies intend to comply with the new rule, but questions remain not only on the timing and future of the regulation, but also on the ability of companies, organizations and governments to meet targets sufficient toward addressing the climate crisis. 

As one of the SEC’s chief advisors and architects of the new rule, Kristina Wyatt, now the Chief Sustainability Officer for Persefoni, a leading climate disclosure and carbon management solution, she continues to provide leadership to industry on the issue of decarbonization.

Kristina Wyatt, Chief Sustainability Officer

Persefoni

We are excited to welcome Kristina along with other thought leaders and experts from across industry for the fourth annual event, the Midwest’s largest conference on sustainable finance and business. Last year we hosted investment firms representing $3.2 trillion in assets under management and companies with a market cap of nearly $500 billion. See link to the conference website: https://www.marquette.edu/business/companies/sustainability.php

Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) Could Save US Utilities $15-$35 Billion in Capacity Investment Over 10 Years (Brattle Group)

 A new study prepared for Google by energy analysts from The Brattle Group explores the cost and ability to serve critical resource adequacy needs from an emerging resource: virtual power plants (VPPs). These distributed energy resource (DER) portfolios – which can include technologies such as rooftop solar, smart thermostats, smart water heaters, electric vehicles, and distributed batteries – are actively controlled by utilities and energy service providers to benefit consumers, the power system, and the environment.

Real Reliability: The Value of Virtual Power provides an introduction to VPPs and models their value and performance versus conventional resource adequacy options. It compares the net cost of providing 400 MW of resource adequacy from three resource types: a natural gas peaker, a transmission-connected utility-scale battery, and a VPP composed of residential demand flexibility technologies. The study also identifies key near-term activities for enabling the deployment of VPPs, which currently are adopted well below their market potential.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/virtual-power-plants-vpps-could-save-us-utilities-1535-billion-in-capacity-investment-over-10-years-301813589.html