Resilient Harvests Conference 2022

The Resilient Harvests Conference brings together multidisciplinary leaders interested in a resource-efficient future for controlled environment agriculture (CEA) to build consensus on government regulations, utility and efficiency program support, and technology integration.

Get Up To Speed. Learn about California's Energy Codes & Standards for Controlled Environment Horticulture as they are rolling out. Understand how they will frame agriculture's future, along with other emerging global policies and regulations.

Extend Your Network. Meet the policymakers, efficiency program administrators, standards developers, and industry leaders who are determining the path toward agricultural resilience.

Shape the Future. Collaborate and add your voice to advance energy and water efficiency, decarbonization, and increased agricultural productivity.

Commissioner Andrew McAllister is serving his third term on the California Energy Commission.

At the Energy Commission, he leads the policy area of energy efficiency, including the Building Energy Efficiency Standards, appliance efficiency, and load management and flexibility. More broadly, he is focused on enabling modern, data-rich analytical tools to support strong clean energy policy development and program implementation.

Commissioner McAllister has worked on energy deployment and policy since the early 1990s. He has worked across the world to deploy clean, cost-effective energy solutions with counterparts ranging from tiny remote communities to the largest of utilities. He administered two of California’s signature renewable energy programs, developed and operated energy efficiency programs for utilities, and conducted a broad range of policy-related research for California and the federal government.

He is a board member and immediate past board chair of the National Association of State Energy Officials, and a board member of the Alliance to Save Energy. His deep grounding in technology, policy, and the marketplace provides him with uncommon insight on the accelerating changes taking place in California’s energy sector.

Before joining the Energy Commission, he was managing director at the California Center for Sustainable Energy. He worked with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association International, Ltd. in Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa on renewable generation, load management, utility planning, and remote power projects. He was a project manager at an energy-consulting firm and an energy efficiency analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Commissioner McAllister holds a master of science and a Ph.D. from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor of arts from Dartmouth College. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Controlled Environment Agriculture is relatively energy intensive. As our society rapidly transforms to carbon neutrality, CEA must immediately become more energy efficient, maximizing resource recapture through ‘closed-loop’ systems design, with what added power is needed soon being provided from climate-neutral sources. Presently, much CEA uses fossil natural gas for primary energy; however, when properly integrated through combined heat and power, can do so in an environmentally superior manner. Examples include using biogenic energy sources where practical, and capturing carbon from onsite or adjacent generation and using this as a resource to accelerate plant growth. Such integration substantially reduces GHG impacts from energy use and provides both development and operating flexibility, as compared to central plant power. Planning forward, carbon neutral fuels such as biogas, biomass and optimized solar power will replace fossil fuels and these distributed resources are a natural part of integrated CEA energy systems. This panel will explore the current state of the art in CEA energy systems that minimize environmental impact and discuss direct pathways to net-zero carbon for the industry.

Moderated by David Van Holde - P.E., CEM, Director, US Dept. of Energy CHP Technical Advisory Partnerships, Washington State University, Extension Energy Program

Traeger Cotten – Senior Project Manager – Distributed Energy Resources, Southern California Edison
Kurt Parbst – President, Borlaug
Dick Kramp – Ing, AB Energy USA

POLICIES, PROGRAMS & PRACTICES TO ADVANCE EFFICIENT GREENHOUSE & VERTICAL FARMING

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