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Speaker at the University of California summit

WattTime featured at the UC Carbon Neutrality Summit

 October 29, 2015 

WattTime yesterday joined the University of California Carbon Neutrality Summit [link] as one of two featured startups for the Entrepreneurs forum [video]. At the conference, Governor Jerry Brown and UC President Janet Napolitano both spoke about the urgent need for more innovative climate change solutions.

Many speakers focused on Napolitano’s vow to turn the ten UC campuses into “living laboratories” to generate solutions that can be adopted on state, national and global levels.

“Climate change impacts issues as varied as disease management, food security, the preservation of water resources, the stability of fragile governments, and transportation infrastructure,” Napolitano said. “Addressing these challenges, and reducing our carbon footprint, is a moral imperative.” [source]

To address these challenges, the UC Climate Solutions Group presented 10 scalable solutions to move the world towards carbon neutrality. The group, comprised of 50 experts from 10 UC campuses and national laboratories, stressed the moral implications of climate change in the executive summary of their report: "Bending the Curve: Ten scalable solutions for carbon neutrality and climate stability.”

“15 percent of us contribute 60 percent of the pollution. We’re leaving behind a planet of uncertain future for our children, grandchildren and generations unborn,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, chair of the UC Climate Solutions Group.

As part of the Entrepreneurs forum, WattTime Executive Director Gavin McCormick spoke in particular of the importance of the UC’s “living laboratories” concept. Panelists agreed that the concept has been invaluable for helping ideas take off by allowing university facilities to be used to test innovative new ideas early on. McCormick remarked that early adoption of new WattTime technologies at UC Merced and UC Berkeley was a crucial factor in WattTime’s ability to calibrate our new carbon saving technology [link] to the daily operating needs of users.

“This is a call to action. We put all of our best minds in California on this — a very formidable force. Nothing less than that is required,” said Brown.

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