In my previous blog post, I suggested that the energy industry has entered its own post-modern era – characterized by new power dynamics, decentralization and strange bedfellows. Several compelling examples emerged during SXSW Eco which bear this out. Here are six:

  • A reversal of traditional “power” dynamics, as articulated by Chip Wood of Duke Energy and Mark Feasel of Schneider Electric, is redefining the relationship between utilities and customers. In this narrative, consumers dictate their energy needs. Not to a single utility, they say, but to a multiplicity of electricity sources, such as: community solar installations, rooftop solar panels, electric vehicle charging and power storage, and traditional utility providers. This marks the end of an era marked by the rigidly enforced one-way flow of electrons from a single utility to a single consumer
  • Concepts like “n-directional” power, further to the point above, were described by Debbie Kimberly of Austin Energy. This descriptor evokes the sense of power flowing in a multiplicity of directions. This displaces and subverts the time-honored tradition of one-directional power flows from a central power plant to the electrical outlet. With renewables, demand management software and storage, power can flow in previously unfathomable directions – much like a post-modern story plotline.
  • Previously un-related concepts became interwoven in new ways, as described by Brendan Owens of the U.S. Green Building Council. He never would have predicted that he, an architect, would moderate a panel focused on industrial concepts like power engineering. And yet, he says, architects and neighborhood planners are intersecting with power generators to achieve balance between strange bedfellows: electricity and design. For example, where should a neighborhood site a community solar garden to optimize aesthetics?
  • Temporal overlap – in other words, several timelines envisioned at once, was suggested by McDonough. He says sustainability is not about companies being “less bad” year-over-year. It should be understood as “intergenerational value creation”; in other words, a company can only create value insofar as it applies to future generations and today’s generation – a narrative judged against multiple equally important timelines.
  • The multiplicity of valid character motivations and perspectives, rather than traditional hero-enemy dichotomies, was evoked by Etosha Cave of Opus 12. An ambitious Stanford PhD, she reimagined the value of waste (ie, garbage and toxic emissions) as feedstock for chemicals and fuels. In her childhood in Houston, her proximity to toxic waste sites provided a deeply personal understanding of waste as “the enemy,” and yet she expanded this character’s definition to also be the “hero.” Both character traits are equally possible. Dr. Cave gets extra post-modern points for locating her own startup up in a chorus of other startups changing the energy economy, saying it is “one opus in a symphony.”  Her vision of the energy future is much more complex than that of previous generations
  • A bewildering distribution of micro- and nano-grids across the African continent also exemplify this new energy narrative. Seyi Fabode of Asha Labs explained how centralized power narratives hold little relevance to a world (like Africa) where power reliability can only be delivered by decentralized generation systems from multiple sources – solar, fuel cells, CHP, etc.

Perplexing in vision? Yes. Frustrating to deploy? Yes. But is the new energy reality empowering in its complexity? Definitely. As Kimberly of Austin Energy, a 34-year power industry vet, remarked, “This is one of the most exciting rates of change I’ve ever seen.” By extension, it’s an unprecedented time for communicators to make sense of it all for energy stakeholders.

Joey Marquart is a senior vice president in the Energy sector.