There’s a Certain Something…

There’s a certain something about this conference that I’m trying to put my finger on.  A tone, a sense, a gestalt that makes it different than previous conferences.  How many NESEA conferences have I been to?  Twenty?  Twenty five?  I don’t know, but I remember that some, in the early days, had a giddiness to them – like we had stumbled upon each other, discovered our commonalities, and couldn’t believe our good fortune.

This conference has something like that, but different.  For so many years we’ve been plugging away.  Through the Reagan years of undoing, the Clinton years of false promise, and the Bush years of reckless immorality, we have slogged through mud in pursuit of our goals.  Now there’s  a new opening at the same time as the magnitude of our responsibilities, and the work ahead, become ever more apparent.   There’s a sense of shared urgency – but with possibility too.  Urgency with possibility.  I didn’t feel that at last year’s conference, although Governor Patrick’s announcement that he would be forming a zero energy building task force stirred me some.  But the world has changed since last year.   The crash of the economy coupled with the rise of Obama is a convergence of historic proportion.  And we can feel the effects right here at Building Energy 09.

The conference tone was set in the Wednesday morning plenary session.  Watching 29 year old Luke Falk (“the first conference chair younger than the organization”, as David Barclay put it) open the proceedings, I was impressed with this new sign of youthful exuberance within NESEA.  Luke, I hope you will keep attracting your ilk – it’s high time for the next generation to take the reins!

Ian Bowles, secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and the Environment, reported about the work of the MA Zero Energy Building Task Force. Having served on the task force, I was curious to hear how the report had been received by the government – whether it was having an effect.  Bowles made it clear that his office is taking it very seriously, that already, with the ink barely dry, some of the recommendations are being implemented,  and that there are big plans to take it further.  Mostly, he gave the impression that this is, in general, a good time to be in government, a time of “steady tailwinds after years of stiff headwinds.”

My good friend Marc Rosenbaum completed the tone-setting with his keynote address. He shared his passion for and questions about the daunting prospect of the next big work:  fixing the nation’s buildings.  Deep Energy Retrofits seem to be on everyone’s minds.  When the Zero Energy Task Force first convened to address the governor’s charge to make zero energy building ubiquitous in Massachusetts by 2020, someone quickly mentioned that there are roughly 20,000 new housing starts in Massachusetts each yeae (even less, now), but 2.3 million existing buildings.  Clearly, to make real progress, we must focus on existing buildings.  Marc demonstrated the tools and methods, and challenged us to learn to do this well.

But he closed his talk with his personal sense of the 20 years ahead, which he is convinced will be dramatically different from the 20 years just past.  He put words to the feelings that many of us share – the sense that we are going to have to rise to a very big occasion and collaborate in new and better ways if we are to tackle the obstacles before us.  He invited us to put our shoulders to the wheel in this great journey, this “great turning”, as Joanna Macy calls it.  And he quoted Chris Martenson, if I got it right, who said, “None of us are going to get through it alone; all of us are going to get through it together.”   

I’m ready.  You?

Name: John

Bio: Long-time NESEA zealot and troublemaker JOHN ABRAMS is cofounder and CEO of South Mountain Company, a 32-year-old employee owned design/build and renewable energy company in West Tisbury. John’s book COMPANIES WE KEEP: Employee Ownership and the Business of Community and Place, was published by Chelsea Green in 2008.