At the BPA/NEEA sponsored conference in Portland this past week I jotted down a few quotes that inspire entrepreneurs like me working in this regulatory, resource planning and utility program energy efficiency space. These are from utility or utility-type folks, who have been in the industry for 30+ years each. I didn’t ask their permissions to quote them here, so I’ll leave attributions out in case I butcher a word or two:
We need to expand our current practice to include new methods [for acquiring energy efficiency].
You get stiff in what you do, you lose.
What has worked for the past 30 years will not work for the next 30.
There are no bad drivers of energy efficiency.
We need more: knowledge, data, transparency.
We will engage with anything to help our customers, without getting in front of our customers.
And my favorite from the conference:
Never be adverse to being on the bleeding edge.
I hope the industry is as open to new ideas as they say they are. Daily I am faced with concerns rooted in the fact that what Seinergy is proposing is new and unproven. “Newness” can be a barrier, but I also think it is required in order to make step-changes in our 30 year old industry.
