The Missouri Energy Summit

This is the season where Conferences seem to thrive. Thus, having recently got back from the EIA Energy Conference in Washington (that had, I believe some 1,200 attendees) this week sees me driving up North to the Missouri Energy Summit. Although taking place on the Columbia campus of the University of Missouri, the event is chaired by Jack Carney, the Chancellor of Missouri University of Science and Technology and runs for Wednesday and Thursday of this week. It is suggested that there will be over 2,000 folk at the meeting, and the Keynote Address by T. Boone Pickens is already sold out.

As with the earlier conference I will be trying to put up a couple of posts decribing what goes on, however, in contrast with the Washington meeting I am scheduled to take part in the Poster Sessions, and am also giving a paper (on coal use, mentioning in passing recent comments on the size of American and global coal reserves and the EROI on coal as it moves forward). But then I check the Website and lo! The breakout sessions at which I am speaking are also now sold out. So if you don’t have a seat, then, other than watching live video of the presentations through the Conference Website this may be your only other source of information – though we will see what sort of press we draw.


The meeting starts at 11:45 am on Wednesday with Mr. Pickens talking at 12:15 in Jesse Auditorium. This will be followed by a review of some of the Energy Related Research that is being carried out by the four campuses of the University system, and then a panel of invited speakers.

These include:
Hon. Dale Klein, chairman, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Joan Woodard, Ph.D., executive vice president and deputy laboratory director for integrated technology programs, Sandia National Laboratories: "The Dimensions of Energy Security"
Daniel F. Cole, senior vice president, Ameren Corp.
Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for 21st Century Energy
Himadri Pakrasi, director, International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability, Washington University
Bob Dixon, senior vice president and global head of efficiency and sustainability, Siemens Building Technologies; industry vice chair for the Alliance to Save Energy
Michael Chesser, chairman and CEO, Great Plains Energy and KCP&L
Bob Kruse, executive director of global vehicle engineering for hybrids, electric vehicles and batteries, General Motors.

On the Thursday the program starts at 7:30 am with:
Robert K. Dixon, leader, Climate Change and Chemicals Team at the Global Environment Facility
Mark Templeton, director, Missouri Department of Natural Resources
The Governor will then speak, followed by:
Richard Sayre, director, Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
Robert Duncan, vice chancellor for research and a professor of physics, University of Missouri-Columbia: Prospects for Discovery of New Energy Science


From 10 am there are then four concurrent tracks (on Power Generation, Transportation and Biofuels, Energy Infrastructure and Materials for Energy Applications) in the sessions through lunch.

In the afternoon there are break-out panels that run consecutively on Clean Coal; Transportation and Biofuels; Nuclear Energy and Infrastructure Development with the meeting closing at 5 pm.

I’ll let you know how it goes.