Duke Student Entrepreneurs Solve Energy Challenges

Posted on May 24, 2013 by edgenotes

Dan Chow (pictured) and his teammates pitched their Refrackt business plan in the Duke Start-Up Challenge, Apr. 11, 2013

by Dan Chow, MEM/MBA ’15

Dan Chow is a Duke graduate student pursuing dual Master’s degrees in Environmental Management and Business Administration. In this column, Dan shares his experiences pursuing environment-related entrepreneurial ventures at Duke.

Ideation

I first became interested in energy entrepreneurship while working on a geothermal-based start-up as an undergraduate at Middlebury College. When I arrived at Duke to pursue my graduate studies, I first attempted to repackage the idea of using old oil and gas infrastructure for geothermal power, and recruited a team to participate in the Program for Entrepreneurs (P4E) at The Fuqua School of Business. While that idea fell through after several conversations, I was still keen to gain additional entrepreneurial experience.

Through a serendipitous meeting, I teamed up with Judy Winglee, a PhD student at the Pratt School of Engineering, Mark Panny (MEM-WRM), and Victor Smith (MEM-EE) to compete in the Duke Start-Up Challenge (DSC), a Duke-wide competition for new business ideas across a broad spectrum of industries. Our proposed venture, Refrackt, built on Judy’s research to tackle water consumption and wastewater production in the hydraulic fracturing industry. Continue reading →

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Crossing the Climate Line

Posted on May 22, 2013 by edgenotes

This op-ed first appeared in the Raleigh News & Observer on May 21, 2013.

by Daniel Vermeer

Earlier this month, a remote monitoring system in Hawaii recorded the first time in human history that the daily average for carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere hit over 400 parts per million.

Crossing the 400 ppm line is not inherently meaningful, other than reminding us that we are on a path to a place we don’t want to go. But it can be an opportunity to step back and reflect on the virtues of a stable climate and the stake we all have in that stability. Continue reading →

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Assessing the Microgrid Market: Fuqua students get “out of the building”

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Katie Kross

by:  Nancy Fechnay, MEM/MBA ’14; Aaron Gress MBA ’14; Lisa Huber, MEM/MBA ’14, and Mark McDonald, MBA ’14

There is no substitute for the real world as a learning laboratory. For the second consecutive year, Duke’s Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment (EDGE) partnered with ’05 Fuqua alumnus Paul Straub of Claremont Creek Ventures (CCV) to provide Fuqua students with a unique mentored study opportunity to work in the cleantech venture industry.  The focus of the project was to investigate the microgrid market, and to propose a growth strategy for one of Claremont Creek’s startup portfolio companies.  This company, called Blue Pillar, offers an IT solution to help clients manage their critical distributed energy assets.  The Fuqua team of Nancy Fechnay, Mark McDonald, Lisa Huber, and Aaron Gress assessed Blue Pillar’s current offering and provided recommendations on other industry verticals where their product may meet an urgent customer need.

Straub, employing Steve Blank’s Lean Launchpad mantra, encouraged the team to “get out of the building” to test its hypothesis about attractive industry verticals.  The team took his advice by traveling to CCV’s headquarters to meet with the venture firm’s partners, and then connecting with Blue Pillar’s entrepreneurs, current clients, and industry experts.  These experiences were instrumental in understanding CCV’s vision, comprehending Blue Pillar’s value proposition, gathering and assessing client feedback, and ultimately providing a rigorous recommendation for Blue Pillar. Continue reading →

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Katie Kross returns to Duke as EDGE Managing Director

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Katie Kross

EDGE is pleased to welcome the return of Katie Kross as Managing Director.

Katie has spent the last year and a half away from Duke, helping to launch a regional nonprofit organization, the North Carolina Sustainability Center.  She returned to EDGE this week, and will work in partnership with Executive Director Dan Vermeer to lead the development and execution of center strategy, manage relationships with EDGE’s advisory board and key stakeholders, implement programs, and oversee the Center’s operations.

Katie has 12 years of experience in academic administration and management.  Besides her previous tenure at Duke, she has also served as the executive director of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, and has consulted at business schools including Kellogg, MIT-Sloan, and Yale School of Management.  She holds an MBA from UNC and a BA from Davidson College.

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Three Stages in Corporate Sustainability Strategy

Posted on February 12, 2013 by edgenotes

by Daniel Chow, MEM Class of 2014

At Duke, students are taught why companies across all industries are pursuing sustainability, what barriers exist for different businesses, and what tools are necessary for organizations to achieve their goals. Kristina Ronneberg (MEM ’14) explained a useful framework that she learned in Professor Dan Vermeer’s Sustainable Business Strategy class, which focuses on three key aspects: Expansion, Translation, and Embedding.

Expansion, Translation, and Embedding

“First, you need for a company to think about how it fits into the greater system, what its impacts are as a whole. That is the expansion piece, or looking outwards. Next, you need to identify where you can reduce the environmental and social impacts, whether that is through changing your supply chain or reducing your inputs. Once you identify actionable items, you often have to translate them into a value proposition that your audience understands. This might mean cost savings if you are talking to a manufacturing plant manager or employee recruitment and retention for human resources. Lastly, you need to embed sustainable thinking and practices into the organization. There needs to be a push for a coherent structure that aligns the corporate values with the goal of minimizing environmental and social impacts. That might be through training, incentives, or any number of other initiatives.”

While this framework provides helpful guidance for how businesses can integrate sustainability into their practices, each company’s strategy must be tailored to their individual needs and motivations. Continue reading →

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Why companies should value water

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Dan Vermeer

by Dan Vermeer, Executive Director of EDGE

If water is so valuable, then why is it so cheap?

Economists have long been fascinated by the water paradox – clean, abundant water keeps us healthy, provides our food, sustains our ecosystems, and keeps our businesses operating.  Yet we have routinely undervalued water, and have been willing to pay much higher prices for non-essentials such as diamonds.  This paradox has informed our approach to water until recently.  Water was abundant and cheap, and since it is a small fraction of most companies’ overall costs, it has lurked at the bottom of their priority list.

A Changing Market

The water situation is changing fast.  Global demand for water is outstripping available supply, and this will accelerate in coming decades.  A much-cited 2010 report by McKinsey estimated that the global gap between water demand and supply could reach 50 percent by 2030.   In contrast to many other critical resources, water is non-substitutable, and we are generally limited to using the 1% of the planet’s water that is fresh and accessible.

This global water shortfall translates into countless local water conflicts between uses and users.  In many parts of the world, lack of water is often the most important constraint on increasing food, extracting resources, expanding energy supplies, and growing industrial output.

For example, in Chile water demands from copper mines are draining local aquifers, making it impossible for farmers and vineyard owners to grow their crops.   In China, rapidly growing cities in the northeast provinces are competing with agriculture and mining interests for dwindling supplies.

In India and the U.S., regional over-extraction is depleting groundwater reserves.  While each of these issues may appear local and situational, the global threat to economic growth and well-being is increasingly clear. Continue reading →

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Making Sustainable Development Work in the Brazilian Amazon

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Dan Vermeer

by Dan Vermeer, Executive Director of EDGE

The Amazon Forest is one of the planet’s true marvels – this vast territory is home to 1 in 10 of all the world’s known species.  It is also under incredible pressure, as the forest’s natural resources – including timber, oil and gas, gold, copper, tin, nickel, bauxite, manganese, iron ore, gold, and hydropower – are increasingly valuable inputs to the global economy.  Billions of dollars are flowing into the region to extract these resources, with dramatic environmental and social consequences.

I recently returned from a trip to Belém,  the capital of the Brazilian state of Pará, and the gateway to the Amazon Forest.  After several intense days of meetings with government, private sector, and NGO actors, I am deeply impressed with both the challenge and the imperative to sustainably develop the Amazon region.  I also return with a profound sense of excitement about the role that Duke could play in supporting this effort. Continue reading →

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Learning Energy Basics

Posted on September 7, 2012 by edgenotes

by Josh Seidenfeld, MEM/MBA Class of 2015

Last week, EDGE co-sponsored one of the year’s most popular Duke student-organized events: Energy Industry Fundamentals. This two-day seminar featured sessions by Duke faculty and alumni playing leading roles in the today’s energy transformation.  The audience included students from business, environment, engineering, and public policy all eager to learn more about how they might fit into the energy industry.  Launched in 2010 with 45 students, the EIF this year attracted over 230 students, with strong attendance across the entire event.

Eric Toone, a professor at the Department of Chemistry and deputy director of technology for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) gave one of the most entertaining and engaging talks. From his work at ARPA-E, Dr. Toone tracks the most exciting energy developments of our day, from harvesting useful sugars from macroalgae biomass to redesigning tanks to allow natural gas to penetrate more as a transportation fuel. Dr. Toone displays a remarkable ability to distill complex information into compelling stories ­– check out the #EIF2012 hashtag for a few of his unforgettable one-liners. Continue reading →

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Food vs. Fuel: State of the Debate

Posted on August 30, 2012 by edgenotes

by Carol Healy, MEM/MBA Class of 2014 and Dan Vermeer, Executive Director of EDGE

Food security is back in the news.  According to estimates, this summer’s drought is the second most costly natural disaster in US history, after Hurricane Katrina – including serious impacts on our country’s agricultural system.  Agriculture feeds us, but increasingly it also provides our fuel.  This post will explore the growing connections between our food and fuel, and the consequences of linking these critical systems.

The story begins in 2008 when the “Global Food Crisis” sparked a heated debate about the role of biofuel production in global food price increases and volatility. As food prices plummeted the following year and the Great Recession took media precedence, this debate appeared to go dormant in American media streams.  However, the historic food price peak in 2011 combined with the recognition that price and volatility will increase in the near future may have put the debate back on the map.

Drivers of Food Prices

There is little doubt that converting agriculture land from food to biofuel production inadvertently increases global food prices. But the argument has always been by how much as biofuel production is one of many factors that drive food prices. Historically, weather has been the leading cause in spikes of commodities prices but now, volatility is increasingly driven by the unstable food supply and demand equation. A growing global population that is expected to require 50% more food by 2030 and the rising wealth and affluence of roughly 3 billion people that are moving up the food chain are significantly increasing demand.  Factors associated with climate change (changing weather patterns, increased frequency in weather shocks, etc.), water resource constraints, soil erosion and degradation and volatility of oil prices put heavy constraints on supply. Consequently, volatility keeps food prices high as farmers are unsure how to price products. Continue reading →

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The New Convergence: Smart Grid, Efficiency, and Renewables

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Dan Vermeer

by Josh Seidenfeld, MEM/MBA Class of 2015 and Dan Vermeer, Executive Director of EDGE

For all the strident debates about energy in American politics (e.g. fracking, drilling on public lands, government incentives, etc.), no one disagrees that innovation will be critical in creating a better energy future.  And North Carolina and Duke are well-positioned to play an important role in building our 21st century infrastructure.

In its new report “The Networked Energy Web,” the Center For American Progress describes a rapidly evolving network-based model of electricity production, distribution and use. This new model is characterized by distributed generation, grid integration of renewable energy sources, and smart grid applications such as demand response. The report details the potential benefits and dangers of this new electrical system and proposes policy mechanisms to stimulate its growth and stem its potential negative effects.

This networked, intelligent model thrives on multidirectional data flows and supplants the Edison-era electric grid’s linear model, which utilized the bare minimum of communication needed to facilitate reliable power generation, transmission and use. Such an outgrowth from an old, eminently reliable, linear system to a brave new network mirrors previous decades’ transformations in telecom, and the authors use lessons from the internet revolution and the evolution from wired to wireless telecom to inform their outlook and recommendations. Continue reading →

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