Greenfield & Boston, MA . – “We’ve got three feet of storm-surge water over a hundred city blocks. We’ve got a half-dozen really angry high-level people with conflicting priorities in the same room trying to fix things. What happens when the arguing and finger-pointing stops and they get to work on solutions?”
Sound like a news report from Hurricane Sandy-battered New York City of December 2012? Actually, it’s a session description from the BuildingEnergy 13 planning process earlier that year, after Conference Chair Paul Eldrenkamp announced that resilience would be the theme of the 2013 BuildingEnergy conference and trade show. Resilience has long been on the minds of BuildingEnergy conference planners.
With a focus on renewable energy and sustainability in the built environment, BuildingEnergy is the perfect place to be having serious discussions on resilience. Says Eldrenkamp “Events have made it clear that we’re not ahead of the curve, that climate change is catching up with us. The discussions between stakeholders at BuildingEnergy will a definite advantage from a strategic point of view as well as a climate point of view.”
Indeed, the conference is well equipped to do so, with a full-day workshop and six 90-minute sessions dedicated to urban resilience as well as 76 additional accredited sessions and workshops on related sustainable building, energy efficiency and renewable energy topics.
Resiliency implies learning from mistakes as well as successes, and that’s the kind of frank, honest conversation you’ll find at BuildingEnergy. Says Eldrenkamp, “Ask a politician what mistakes they’ve made and you’ll get nothing; ask a NESEA practitioner and you can’t shut them up…you’ll get a whole seminar over lunch if you ask a NESEA practitioner what mistakes they’ve made – and you’ll learn a thing or two.”