"Report from the Trenches: "Beyond Oil" Conference in Redmond, Wash. " Green Car Advisor

Report from the Trenches: "Beyond Oil" Conference in Redmond, Wash.

By Gordon Feller, Urban Age Institute

Is there any end in sight to the endless stream of conferences, convened nearly every day of the week, where the post-carbon future is being debated?

My guess is that the answer is "no" - at least not until new and critically needed policies are adopted by government and the private sector.

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This is why the Beyond Oil: Transforming Transportation" conference sponsored by the Seattle-based Cascadia Center has been such a useful two-day event.

This program has been more than just another conference -- in some ways is akin to the annual "Meeting of the Minds" organized by Urban Age Institute.

"Beyond Oil" was convened at Microsoft's tech-savvy meeting center at the company's HQ in Redmond, Wash., and one keynote ("A New Road Ahead") was presented by someone we'll be hearing more from: Rob Bernard, Microsoft's Chief Environmental Strategist.

The Redmond gang's clearly thinking very hard about the future of transport, and Bernard hinted that some products are likely to be coming out of their R&D pipelines.

Well known big-wigs - including ex-CIA Director Jim Woolsey - shared the stage with numerous lesser known stars, several of whom deserve a lot more attention than they're now getting.

Two of the best of this latter category are the co-convenors of "Beyond Oil": Bruce Agnew, Cascadia's director, and Steve Marshall, the organization's Senior Fellow.

Cascadia is no longer a secret resource.

With a $10-million grant from the Gates Foundation, it's become a genuine pioneer, helping develop and support policies and practices that could make plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles (and other innovative technology) an integral part of the urban landscape. But they're not car-fixated, as any glance at their research web pages helps to show.

Nor is Cascadia overly fixated on congestion pricing or tolls or 'intelligent transport systems' or any of the many other emerging technologies.

As Agnew, Marshall and several of the other presenters were making clear (though no one said it quite this way): The hardware part is easy; it's the human element and the other 'soft' stuff' that is hard.

Changing people's perceptions, altering behavior, re-engineering organizations and systems - these are the really big challenges that the next U.S. administration, and all of the rest of us, will be facing.

The parade of politicians who presented during "Beyond Oil" are too numerous to count, and some of them actually seem to know what they are talking about, most especially Redmond's mayor, John Marchione, and Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Not surprisingly, one underlying theme that kept rearing its head throughout the program was that however important the money is, and it's going to be important, our next president's playbook has to be filled with more than just a slew of new federal funding programs for PHEVs and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-house (V2H) technologies.

During his luncheon address on day one, Andy Frank, a UC Davis Professor and one of the fathers of the electric vehicle "movement," made a passionate plea for a new kind of public-private partnership.

We should all be asking ourselves these big questions: What's the useful role of government (beyond being a 'market-maker' that becomes the largest single first-mover customer for new technologies by acquiring them for the federal vehicle fleet)?

Another new 'rising star' to watch for is a small but important non-governmental organization called "Clean Air Initiative - Asia."

CAI has its Secretariat in Manila but it is operating in dozens of countries. During my own travels in Asia I've seen, first-hand, that it's having an impact in hundreds of Asian cities that are seeking out what CAI's Dutch-born Director, Cornie Huizenga, calls "Clean Mobility Frameworks."

U.S.-based city leaders have a lot to learn from their Asia-based counterparts, and CAI is quite right to be focused on city-to-city learning amongst peers.

PS: Tom Alberg, a venture capitalist with Silicon Valley-based Madrona Venture Group, introduced one of the other keynoters: Shai Agassi, the former SAP exec who is now the founder of Better Place (http://www.betterplace.com/), the organization working to introduce battery-electric vehicles and a battery charging and exchange infrastructure in Israel and a number of other countries. More on them - and the problems they're facing -- at another time....

Gordon Feller is the widely published chief executive officer of the Urban Age Institute, a California-based organization working to promote healthy urban growth including sustainable environmental planning, poverty reduction and cooperative strategic planning among cities.