On this week’s episode of It’s Hot in Here, host Chris Askew-Merwin examines strategies for renewable energy development in cities, communities, and corporations. He is joined in studio by Ben Kunstman, a member of a Michigan Sustainability Case (MSC) team looking at municipalization, and Olivia Katz and Sean Pavlik, students at the Erb Institute at the University of Michigan who worked at the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) over the summer. The segment also features an interview from Randy Knight, the city manager of Winter Park, Florida, who successfully municipalized their electric utility.

Boulder, Colorado is currently in an ongoing process of trying to municipalize their electric utility, meaning the city would take control of management and distribution from the existing, investor-owned utility Xcel Energy. Boulder is seeking to meet long-term renewable energy and greenhouse gas goals, and municipalization offers the opportunity to control their own future. The MSC case looks at the logistics of the proposal in Boulder, and examines the changing role of electric utilities.

Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is a Colorado-based non-profit think-and-do-tank that focuses on the efficient and restorative use of resources.  RMI’s Shine Initiative is working to open up an untapped 30GW market segment in U.S. clean energy market – community-scale solar.  As defined by RMI, the community-scale solar market includes traditional shared solar projects and other mid-sized arrays (.5-5MW) owned by utilities and third-parties.  Shine works with both buyers and sellers of solar PVs to develop innovative community-scale solar pilot projects that leverage economies of scale, shared cost-reduction levers and standardization of system design and business model to cut costs over 40%, with a path towards unsubsidized wholesale prices.  As a summer fellow on the Shine Initiative, Olivia Katz developed a corporate valuation model for solar developers which allowed the Shine team to test hypotheses around business model-redesign and ultimately show solar developers that pursuing community-scale solar market could create tremendous corporate value.  

Olivia Katz is a third-year student at the Erb Institute at University of Michigan, pursuing her MBA at the Ross School of Business and MS at the School of Natural Resources and the Environment.  Prior to graduate school she worked in environmental and energy policy in New York and Colorado and enterprise technology startups in San Francisco.  At the University of Michigan, Olivia has focused on renewable energy and strategy.  She spent her first summer as a summer consultant at Parthenon-EY, a growth-strategy consulting firm in San Francisco.  She spent her second summer as a summer fellow in Rocky Mountain Institute’s Shine Initiative.  Olivia is passionate about finding market-based solutions to drive the sustainable use of resources and believes that increasing renewable energy penetration is one of the most effective ways to achieve this goal.

In the final portion of the episode, Sean Pavlik discusses the growing space of corporate renewable energy procurement based on his summer spent at RMI’s Business Renewables Center in Boulder. Large corporates from all sectors are increasingly choosing to meet their energy needs through large scale wind and solar developments. The Business Renewables Center (BRC) provides a platform to convene corporate buyers and renewable energy developers as well as providing educational tools to accelerate this market. The BRC is aiming for this market to provide 60GW of new renewables development due to corporate purchases by 2030—the equivalent of tens of millions of homes worth of electricity consumption.

Sean Pavlik is a second-year MBA/MS graduate student at the Erb Institute, a dual-degree program between the Ross School of Business and School of Natural Resources and Environment. Sean is focusing his graduate studies on energy and sustainability issues within corporations with an emphasis on strategy. Before coming to Ann Arbor, Sean spent three years in Washington, DC, working at the intersection of government and business on key international energy, trade, and security issues, primarily with the U.S. Congress. He also spent two years working in Japan after his undergraduate studies. Sean received his B.A. in Environmental Sciences and International Studies from Northwestern University.

This week on It’s Hot in Here, our hosts Malavika Sahai and Chris Askew-Merwin unpack the podcast component of the  Michigan Sustainability Case (MSC) on urban farming in Detroit. They are joined in studio by Calli Vanderwilde, a Master’s student in the School of Natural Resources and Environment who just finished working through this complex case study. Listen as they conduct a phone interview with Jeffrey Pituch, the Director of Development of the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative, one of the most prominent urban farming groups in Detroit. With grooves, banter, and calls from curious, engaged listeners, this is one show you don’t want to miss.  For more information on this and other Michigan Sustainability Cases please visit learnmsc.org.

On this week’s episode of It’s Hot in Here, Rebecca Hardin and Malavika Sahai sit down with Don Shump of the Philadelphia Bee Company to discuss traditional and urban beekeeping practices, as well as the challenges beekeepers face in this day and age.

Don started The Philadelphia Bee Company in 2007, and has been dedicated ever since to providing residents access to honey, wax, and pollen all harvested within city limits, as well as educating  Philadelphians about the importance of bees and other pollinators.

This riveting discussion includes segments on the conservation status of bees, how urban areas are adopting specialized techniques to safeguard pollinators, the ongoing debate on hive medication, and much more.

Rich Wieske of Green Toe Gardens also calls in to discuss bee activity in his hives, and we revisit a conversation from a previous It’s Hot in Here episode, Buzzfeed: Wild Bees Meet Urban Farming about colony collapse and wild bee species.

We really enjoyed having Don in our studio, and we hope you enjoy this episode of It’s Hot in Here.

Did you miss the live broadcast for the fantastic panel event chaired by Cecilia Muñoz, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council (and an University of Michigan alum)? This panel consisted of public servants from rebounding Midwestern cities, including a former It’s Hot In Here host, Kerry Duggan, Deputy Director for Policy at the Office of the Vice President, who talked about place-based work in action on the ground in Detroit, MI; Gary, IN; and Youngston, OH. The panelists shared how their localities collaborated across local, state, and federal levels to make progress on long-standing issues in their communities, such as pervasive blight, crime, poor community trust in law enforcement, chronic homelessness and more.  Watch the full panel at http://fordschool.umich.edu/video/2016/21st-century-public-leadership-lessons-rustbelt-panel.

Travel back with us to the hot month of June 2010 in Baltimore, Maryland. Commissioner Douglas Nazarian, Chair of  the Maryland Public Service Commission (MPSC) is in the hot seat. He is considering whether to approve a  proposal from Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) to use a 200 million dollar budget granted by the Department of Energy to  roll out smart meters across their service territory and to institute a new electricity pricing plan that would rely on the meters.

Smart meters, an upgrade from the traditional analogue electric meters, have been heralded as a key step towards the elusive smart grid. They are designed to facilitate communication between end users and utility companies, to help individuals and communities save on electricity, to help utility companies cut operational costs, and to decrease the risk of costly and life-threatening blackouts during peak summer demands. They are typically considered a win-win-win for electric ratepayers, the utility company, and the environment.

Yet many consumers fear privacy violations, health impacts, and other downsides to deploying this new technology.  What will Doug decide? Today’s broadcast features the audio recording and editing work of “Mad Genius” Ed Waisanen, working with Gianna Petito. Gianna is a co-author on this case with Arman Golrokhian (in studio today!)  and Geoffrey Burmeister, and the faculty advisor for the case is economist Michael Moore.

Listen in with us for more than just great tracks from Nina Simone and Rod Lee about Baltimore, but also for Doug’s reflections on his decision making, as well as conversations with Paula Carmody of the People’s Council for Maryland, who represented  the interests of ratepayers in that turning point for a town with a lot of governance challenges.  A final subject, Kim Curry, is an attorney in the General Council office  for BGE, and she emphasizes the need for the company to profitably provide electricity to ratepayers. Discover firsthand how each actor played roles and perceived Doug and his commission’s decision first to block the proposal,  then to accept a modified version that took into account key ratepayer concerns.

With this blogcast we are showcasing the audio component of this Michigan Sustainability Case, one in a series of new approaches to case based teaching and learning  that use audio and visual imagery alongside text and engaged teaching techniques to expand the appeal and traction of sustainability science beyond traditional learning methods, and beyond classrooms into civic, commercial, and community contexts.  

While this case narrative evokes the 2010 as the present, the podcast continues beyond this decision-point, allowing the actors involved to reflect on the events of the past in light of the present and vice versa, in effect updating the case, and inviting users to enter the learning platform as both learners and contributors to what is an updatable, dynamic case for forward learning on this topic.

John Barrie , founder and executive director of the Appropriate Technology Collaborative, recently won recognition for that organization as one of the Sustainia Top 100 Sustainability Solutions of 2016. Why? Because they create new sustainable technologies that promote economic growth and improve the quality of life for low income people worldwide.

To celebrate, consider coming out this evening from 6pm onwards at the Zingtrain event space in Ann Arbor. You may know Zingerman’s as INC. magazine’s “coolest small company in America.”  We know them as good food and drink, but that will be combined tonight with show and tell of cool technologies in ATC’s trademark two way street of sustainable development, teaching and learning across continents by living together and, as Barrie puts it on air, “learning to fail fast, so we get to designs that WORK.” 

But we digress. Today on our show, to a soundtrack of Guatemalan tunes from hip hop/slam to metal,  Monika Goforth, Guatemala Program Director for ATC,  joined  hosts Chris Askew-Merwin and Malavika Sahai to discuss their award winning Mayan Power and Light program, bringing solar power and equitable business solutions to rural Guatemala. Listen to John and Monika describe the impact this work has had on the health, wealth, and self-determination of women as young as sixteen who are able to become role models in their communities, learning new technologies and business models. If their passion excites you (it excited us…John and Monika raced out of the studio saying to each other “epoxy…we need to get back to Zingtrain with epoxy before cocktail hour!”) then check out their website at apptechdesign.org or their facebook to see how you can get involved locally or abroad.

And we’d be remiss not to mention that Audio Engineer Ed Waisenan held it down  in the booth, with his trademark approach to keeping it humble, yet hot. If that doesn’t “sustainia” we don’t know what will.

What happens when citizens take up arms against the Federal Government to assert their rights to manage their own land and economy as they see fit? Is it ever as simple as “hands off our herds and forests?”  As the trial of Ammon Bundy heats up in Oregon this week, and that of his father Cliven Bundy looms later this winter, we dig into our archives to consider the meanings of these conflicts. Drawing from the interviews conducted by Mike Burbidge (with backup from Harry Rice) last winter we reveal drivers and dimensions of the Bundy situations that shed new light on the trial and its relevance to environmental governance in the U.S. and beyond.

Recorded in the cold of last year’s Ann Arbor winter (but the heat of the Malheur refuge standoff), we feature voices and insights on the tensions behind the armed conflict. You can see more in our It’s Hot out There archive. And you’ll definitely be hearing more from our hot new host Chris Askew-Merwin.

This week’s episode on It’s Hot in Here highlights the 2016 Ross School of Business iMpact Challenge and how social entrepreneurship food ventures can address food access and affordability issues in Detroit.  

As part of Ross’s MBA orientation program, incoming students receive a 72-hour challenge to work intensely with their newly formed MBA section, to ideate, create, and pitch a profitable venture with a social mission in Detroit. It begins with a series of workshops, community conversations, team challenges, and pitch competitions that engage more than 400 students across five academic programs at Ross.

In the studio we welcome Jeff Domagala, Associate Director for MBA Programs at the Sanger Leadership Center, who helped create this year’s iMpact challenge; Jeff Tenza, former IHIH host/engineer, who co-led a tour of students to interview Ann Arbor food entrepreneurs at Argus Farm Stop, Washtenaw Food Hub, and Tilian Farm Development Center.  Remaining mics were surrounded by members of the incoming winning section, Section 5: Vaish Shastry,  Nancy McDermott, and John Barbour.

We discuss the theme, the experience, the people, and the way a group of initial strangers developed a program which utilizes “cosmetically challenged” food to create prepared meals served on wheels.

Continue reading Impact Detroit: 72 hours and 80 humans →