Data centers, grid resilience and clean energy financing were front of mind for hundreds of students, faculty and industry leaders who gathered on campus last week to discuss the energy transition at one of Duke’s “flagship events.”

The University’s 10th annual Energy Week brought together experts from a wide range of professional backgrounds to explore emerging trends in the energy sector and solutions for some of its most pressing problems, like rising demand and a push to decarbonize.

The discussions also debated balancing affordability, flexibility and sustainability. 

Organized by students and sponsored by the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, the Center for Energy, Development and the Global Environment, the Fuqua School of Business and several corporate partners, the week kicked off Monday afternoon with a keynote address from Kellan Dickens, Pratt ‘07 and general manager of GE Renewable Energy’s global onshore wind product line.

In his remarks, Dickens outlined a set of three “truths” and three “challenges” that would frame the conversations happening over the following days.

He argued that the suddenness of change in the energy sector is “chronically underestimated,”  accelerating with time and increasingly important, as growing costs and climate concerns raise the stakes for a clean energy transition. But actors in the field hoping to spur innovation will have to confront questions of whether artificial intelligence will become more burden than benefit to energy development; whether the U.S. can overcome the hurdles presented by an aging, limited and fragmented grid; and whether energy security concerns and an unsettled trade landscape will upend the industry supply chain and hinder new growth.

“We are at a point in time here where technology is really going to define a faster pace of that suddenness, and that you have a really important defining dynamic of climate change and costs that are going to push us, I think, to have to do this even faster,” Dickens said.

Grappling with that faster pace was the focus of the week’s crowning jewel on Wednesday: the 17th annual Duke University Energy Conference, an all-day convention that has existed longer than Energy Week itself. There, a series of panels and keynotes were dedicated to platforming industry leaders for their insights on trends in AI growth, grid performance and energy access.

Microsoft’s vice president for energy, Bobby Hollis, opened the conference with an analysis of the current U.S. energy landscape.

He asserted that the country is at an “inflection point” with burgeoning energy-intensive technologies, but cautioned that facilitating energy growth has historically not been a strength of Western energy markets. Hollis attributed that in part to a regulatory framework that is “much slower than it was intended to be,” due to administrative requirements he described as “well-intentioned, but not well-designed.”

Although he acknowledged that a “silver bullet” solution for meeting rising energy demand without sacrificing reliability and affordability likely doesn’t exist, Hollis pointed to improving electricity transmission — the ability to transport electricity from generation sites to consumer markets in other locations — as a strategy that could be transformational.

“As you connect those transmission grids and transmission lines … it lets us grow our load in the places that are necessary for this economy to grow and ultimately to drive decarbonization, because decarbonization is still very much interlinked with electrification,” Hollis said.

An entire session was dedicated to debating the AI energy dilemma. Tyler Norris, James B. Duke fellow at the Nicholas Institute and incoming head of market innovation at Google, was joined by Cy McGeady, head of energy policy at Equinix — a global data center service provider — to discuss trends in the market.

Both speakers asserted that rising energy demand is “not something to be feared” but rather an opportunity to develop more efficient energy generation and transmission systems. That said, they outlined several barriers that will have to be overcome first, such as a lack of political will, cumbersome permitting and siting regulations, and oppositional community sentiment in locations where new infrastructure is to be hosted.

The conversation continued with keynote speaker Rebecca Kujawa, former CEO of NextEra Energy and Trinity ‘97. She spoke specifically on the impacts of artificial intelligence as reawakening ideas about the significance of energy in economic and political spheres, as it creates an “international imperative” to advance technology and create infrastructure in order to avoid “energy reliance or dependence.”

For Kujawa, solutions result from an interdisciplinary approach. Coming from a public policy background, she emphasized that modern energy issues require knowledge of engineering, policy and field operation and said “the people who work at intersections of these capabilities, these disciplines, I think are the ones that really can help solve the problems in the long term.”

Speakers from Tuesday’s energy access and development panel discussed methods of expanding grid connection to those with limited access while balancing cost and reliability. Panelist Valentina Guido, senior associate at RMI’s Global South and Strategy program, spoke about her work with minigrids and existing infrastructure as focusing on reliability as well as equity. 

“There’s so many interlinked challenges that we can solve by addressing the energy access and reliability challenge,” she said.

Others, like panelist Alix Peterson Zwane, director of research and engagement at the Nicholas Institute, warned about difficulty in attempting to solve too many problems at once. The talk began with discussion of Mission 300, an effort by the World Bank and other collaborators to establish 300 new energy connections in Africa. 

Speaking to both Guido and the goals of Mission 300, Zwane remarked that the priority should not be simply on reaching a specific number of connections.

“We’re not doing reliability and gender and inclusion and equity and last mile access all at the same time,” she said. “We should make some choices about what we do.”

Similar sentiments were raised at a Wednesday panel that focused on building grid resiliency in North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The Category 4 storm knocked out 15,000 power poles, 9 million feet of wire and 350 substations when it swept across North Carolina last fall, according to panelist Mark McIntire, director of government affairs, energy and environment at Duke Energy — the state’s largest utility, which is not affiliated with the University despite sharing a namesake.

Experts discussed the notion that utilities may be disincentivized to invest in risky ideas out of fear that failed projects could force them to raise consumer costs. This could make it difficult to innovate solutions for an aging grid — a goal of growing importance given the rising disaster threat factor. 

But some of the panelists maintained that innovation doesn’t always require significant investment, stressing that the best solutions are sometimes the simplest.

Wednesday’s conference also included a panel on transportation and first and last mile mobility, which refers to the beginning and ends of delivery and is the part of transportation most connected with consumers. Panelists discussed considerations of first and last mile logistics in shifting to greener energy for transportation.

Kate Jostworth, head of first mile at Maersk USA, spoke about transitioning to electric trucks for delivery while working in a limited timeline. She described progress as unifying people under a common goal who were “looking to build bridges [and] not find necessarily the end solution, but a bridge to a solution.” 

She later emphasized that this unification would help to alleviate the issues of demand and upfront cost that panelists identified as delaying conversion to electric vehicles.

The talk concluded with a pertinent insight from Fabio Fracaroli, senior director of global enterprises at Shell, which encapsulated the overall sentiment of the week’s speakers: that the simultaneous intersection of “mega-trends” means that “we are in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” and “anyone in any energy related space will have very, very exciting years ahead.”