By Elyse Hottel

I awoke the first morning of the conference sans suitcase, which was lucky enough to hitch a ride to the Aspen, CO airport via United’s baggage service, while I was forced to negotiate a ride with two other stranded passengers met at the Denver airport. However, one could hardly complain in a place surrounded by snow-capped mountains and the bluest sky imaginable, setting out to hear titans of industry, well, my industry – the environment, speak on everything from global warming to energy efficiency.

The three-day conference, sponsored by the Aspen Institute and National Geographic, laid out the “Energy Challenge” on day one, “Energy Transitions” on day two, and a “New Energy World” on day three. I arrived just in time on day two to hear the new NOAA administrator, Jane Lubchenco, speak on her vision for the agency. As it was only her sixth day on the job, the moderator joked that she had already spent one third of her career at NOAA with us.

From there, I went to “Taking the Carbon Out of Energy: A Range of Choices” to find Professor Robert Socolow, co-director of The Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University speaking on his “wedge stabilization” theory – a paper I had quoted for my carbon tax versus cap and trade economics paper last semester. With him were Sally Benson of Stanford University, Christopher Flavin of Worldwatch Institute and Keith Trent of Duke Energy. After a brief presentation and introductions, the session was opened to the audience and I posed the question, after identifying myself as a Columbia graduate student working with the Alliance for Renewable Energy,

“Do you see a role for renewable energy payments in the future of the industry?” Chris Flavin responded very affirmatively while Keith Trent emphasized that for Duke Energy, it is a balancing act between price, reliability and clean technology. Trent pointed out that it is more expensive; however, he also stated that he thinks there is room to make it work. Can we hold you to that? To round out the day, I attended a lively debate titled, “The New Oil: Energy Demand and Water” where participants argued the merits of thinking of water as a commodity to be bought and sold.

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