During the fall of 2011 the United Nations Climate Change conference in Durban, South Africa found support from participating member nations, to draft a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, set to expire in 2012. This new, legally binding agreement will be fully developed by 2015 and will come into effect in 2020. It not only has the aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and therefore prevent a rise in global temperatures by 2ºC, but will also work to establish funding and technology initiatives, in order to help the world’s poorest nations cope with climate change. However, despite this progress towards a global regulatory framework that according to the OECD will keep energy consumption levels relatively stable within OECD countries over the next three decades, non-OECD consumption levels will rise by 60%. On average by 2040, global consumption of energy will be 30% greater than what it is today. The question then becomes how can such a demand be met when the majority of the world’s energy comes from the burning of coal and petroleum while, at the same time, respecting and participating in important global climate regulation? This panel will ask: how can global energy supply needs be met within the coming decades since current energy sources are understood as both polluting and finite? Second, alongside governmental pressures, what role do the markets have in pricing oil and other fossil fuels so that alternative energy sources can become viable? Finally, what new technologies or energy sources can be made available that are both clean and scalable?
Bio
Robert Cavnar
Robert L. Cavnar is a 30 plus year industry veteran with deep experience in operations and management of both public and private energy companies. As CEO, Mr. Cavnar is responsible for Luca Technologies’ vision, strategy, growth initiatives and clean energy policy.
Prior to joining Luca, Mr. Cavnar served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Milagro Exploration, a large, privately held oil and gas exploration firm based in Houston, Texas with operations along the Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi Gulf Coast and offshore Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Cavnar began his career working on drilling rigs and in pipeline operations, spending 10 years in the field managing multiple rig drilling programs, as well as construction of gas processing facilities. He is certified by the USGS/MMS inwell control and blowout prevention.
Mr. Cavnar is author of Disaster on the Horizon: High Stakes, High Risks, and the Story Behind the Deepwater Well Blowout. He holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Southern Methodist University, a Bachelor of Science degree from Eastern Michigan University, and completed the Program for Management Development at the Harvard Business School.
Dr. Graciela Chichilnisky
Dr. Graciela Chichilnisky has worked extensively in the United Nations Kyoto Protocol process, creating and designing the carbon market that has become international law in 2005, www.chichilnisky.com. Working closely for several years with negotiators of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the organization in charge of deciding world policy with respect to global warming, Dr. Chichilnisky acted as a US lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received the 2007 Nobel Prize for their work in this area. In 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was signed by 163 nations, Dr. Chichilnisky authored the Protocol language that led to the creation of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme now trading $200 Bn per year, and other carbon markets that is mandatory in four continents including the state of California in the U.S.
Dr. Chichilnisky was founder and CEO of two successful technology companies in the financial telecommunications area, based on the IP she created and patented, which she sold in Japan and in the US. She is currently the co-founder and CEO of Global Thermostat www.globalthermostat.com a company that has developed and is commercializing a unique technology for the direct capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and other sources. In addition to her extensive management experience, she is an active scientist and acts as a special adviser to several UN organizations and heads of state. Her pioneering work uses innovative market mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions, conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services.
She is the author of the formal theory of Sustainable Development and the creator of the concept of Basic Needs that is the cornerstone of sustainable development. The author of fifteen books and some 250 scientific articles published in the preeminent academic journals covering economics, finance and mathematics, Dr. Chichilnisky is a frequent keynote speaker in academia, public events and the media and speaks extensively on finance, mathematics, globalization and the global environment.
She is a tenured professor of Economics and in Mathematical Statistics and a University Senator at Columbia University in New York, the Director of the Columbia's Consortium for Risk Management www.columbiariskmanagement.net and a Distinguished Guest Professor at the Normal University of Beijing and Nankai University in China. Dr Chichilnisky has no college degree. She studied at MIT and UC Berkeley and holds two Ph.D. degrees in pure Mathematics and in Economics respectively, and taught at Harvard, Essex and Stanford Universities. She was born in Argentina and has two children, a US citizen and lives in New York City.
Christine Eibs-Singer
Christine Eibs Singer is the co-founder and former CEO of E+Co, a pioneer in the energy access sector, leading its growth from a start-up in 1994 to an international leader in developing country energy access finance. During Christine's tenure, E+Co empowered more than 190 local enterprises that would supply clean and affordable energy to 8 million people. She spearheaded collaborations with multilateral organizations and negotiated alliances with major corporations, all with the goal of creating a foundation for enterprises that increase clean energy access in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Christine is a member of the UN Secretary General's High Level Group on Sustainable Energy for All, integrating ground-level realities into the energy access action agenda. Christine is engaged in the establishment of a Global LPG Partnership that will accelerate the transition from traditional fuels now used by more than 2 billion people in the world, to cleaner liquid petroleum gas, resulting in significant health, environment and economic benefits. Christine is a founding member of the "Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs," serving on its executive committee and also serves on the Board of SELCO-India.
Christine spent 10 years at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, concentrating on the development of public-private partnerships. She is an Honors graduate of Douglass College and the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University. In 2007, Christine received the Woman of Inspiration Award from Fairleigh Dickinson University; in 2011 she was awarded the Keystone Leadership Award for the Environment and also received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from New Jersey City University. Christine is an Ambassador of the US Department of Energy's Clean Energy Education and Empowerment "C-3E" Women's Initiative.
Jack Farchy
Mr. Jack Farchy is the Commodity Markets Reporter at the Financial Times in London. He covers all aspects of commodity markets and the natural resources industry – from the tactics of hedge funds to deals and disputes among mining and energy giants, as well as the political ramifications of rising (and falling) commodity prices.
He previously worked on the FT’s World News desk as a researcher and editor. He has a degree in philosophy and neuroscience from Oxford University.
Dr. Thomas Malone
Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. He was also the founder and director of the MIT Center for Coordination Science and one of the two founding co-directors of the MIT Initiative on "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century." Professor Malone teaches classes on leadership and information technology, and his research focuses on how new organizations can be designed to take advantage of the possibilities provided by information technology.
The past two decades of his research are summarized in his critically acclaimed book, “The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life” (2004). Professor Malone has also published over 75 articles, research papers, and book chapters and is the co-editor of three books: “Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology” (2001), “Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century” (2003), and “Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook” (2003).
Professor Malone has been a cofounder of three software companies and has consulted and served as a board member for a number of other organizations. Additionally, he is an inventor with 11 patents. His background includes work as a research scientist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a Ph.D. from Stanford University, and degrees in applied mathematics, engineering, and psychology.
Dr. Thom Mason
Dr. Mason, who became Laboratory Director at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on July 1, 2007, is an experimental condensed matter physicist whose primary research tool has been neutron scattering, supplemented by the use of X rays and transport and thermodynamic measurements.
Dr. Mason received a B.Sc. in physics from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1986 and a Ph.D. in physics from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1990. Following completion of his doctorate, he held a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postdoctoral Fellowship at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey from 1990 to 1991. He then spent a year as a senior scientist at Risø National Laboratory in Denmark where, in addition to conducting ongoing physics research, he supported the user program and developed new instrumentation. From 1993 to 1998, he was an assistant and associate professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto. He became director of the Experimental Facilities Division of the Spallation Neutron Source in 1998 and served in that capacity until being named Associate Laboratory Director for the Spallation Neutron Source in 2001. In October 2006, following the completion of the Spallation Neutron Source construction project, Dr. Mason was named Associate Laboratory Director for Neutron Sciences, leading a new directorate charged with delivering safe and productive scientific facilities for the study of structure and dynamics of materials.
Dr. Mason was an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow from 1997 to 1999. He has been an Associate of the Quantum Materials Program (formerly the Superconductivity Program) of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research since 1993. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2001 and a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2007. He has coauthored more than 100 publications in refereed journals, presented more than 50 invited talks at conferences, and served on a variety of advisory panels and review committees.
Mike Wittner
Mr. Mike Wittner is the Head of Commodities Research - Americas for Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking. Mr. Wittner is responsible for short-term and long-term global oil market analysis and forecasting. He has been ranked in the top 4 for oil market research in 2009-2012, according to Risk and Energy Risk magazines, including # 1 in 2009 and # 2 in 2012. In 2010, Bloomberg ranked Mike # 1 for the most accurate crude oil price forecasts for the previous year.
With 20 years of experience in oil market analysis and 8 years of experience in the geosciences, he has extensive knowledge of global and regional crude oil and refined product market dynamics and geopolitics. He joined Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking in 2007 from Credit Agricole. Prior to that, he held senior analytical positions at Koch Supply & Trading, the International Energy Agency, and PIRA Energy Group. Before getting his MBA, he worked as a geologist and project manager for an engineering firm and as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Wittner holds a BS in Geology from Cornell University and a MBA in International Business from George Washington University.
He is a regular speaker at industry conferences and seminars. His commentaries on oil market developments are frequently quoted in the international media and he appears regularly on television news programs. Media interviews have included CNBC, Bloomberg TV, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New York Times, Business Week, the wire services, and the energy trade press.
Dr. Graciela Chichilnisky, co-founder and CEO of Global Thermostat, argues that a competitive carbon market will make clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels.
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