Koomey's talks

Dr. Koomey has taught and lectured in the U.S, Europe, Australia, and China. Some representative talks are listed below. If you are interested in receiving PowerPoint or PDF versions of these talks, please send email. If you are interested in having Dr. Koomey give a lecture, please note that because of his busy travel schedule at least a month's advance notice is usually required.

The cost of plenary lectures for companies and conferences range from $10,000 to $20,000 per lecture. Pro-bono lectures can be arranged if the cause is a good one and the audience is large enough. Private training seminars on critical thinking skills are also available for a cost of $250 (half day) or $350 (full day) per student, with a minimum of 20 students required.

Recent plenary lectures have included "Facing the climate challenge" (a talk on the world's options for confronting climate change, focusing on the need for both technological and institutional change), "Electricity use and efficiency of data centers : A review of recent data and developments", "Historical costs of nuclear power in the U.S.", and "Sorry, wrong number: Avoiding pitfalls in quantitative analysis".

If you are interested in arranging a talk or a workshop, please send email.

Online access to some of Dr. Koomey's talks

On July 29, 2001, Dr. Koomey talked with Dr. Moira Gunn for the public radio program TechNation about Turning Numbers into Knowledge. To download a Real Player file of this interview, click here.

On January 10, 2003, Dr. Koomey talked with Bob Garfield of public radio's On the Media program about differing estimates of the amount of oil to be found in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge. To see the transcript and listen to the interview, click here.

On November 14, 2005, Dr. Koomey participated on a panel at Sun Microsystem's Summit on 21st Century Eco-Responsibility, along with Amory Lovins of Rocky Mountain Institute, Christin Ervin (formerly at the U.S. Department of Energy), Noah Horowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Greg Papadopoulos and Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems. To view that panel click here.

On January 31, 2006, Dr. Koomey led EPA's Conference on Enterprise Servers and Data Centers. You can view the presentations (including Dr. Koomey's introduction to the meeting) by going here.

On September 20, 2007, Dr. Koomey talked with Professor Margot Gerritson of Stanford University about energy used by data centers for the Smart Energy Podcast. At that same link you'll find an audio interview with Dr. Koomey on the historical costs of nuclear power.

In late October 2007, Dr. Koomey talked with TechTarget's Matt Stannsberry about the costs and benefits of servers in the data center.

On December 4, 2007 Dr. Koomey gave a Google Tech Talk on data center electricity use that was posted on Youtube. He begins that talk by discussing the need for institutional and behavioral innovations (like those enabled by information technology) when facing the climate challenge.

Selected invited lectures: climate

Facing the Climate Challenge: What You and We Can Do.

Creating the Future: Cost Effective Options for Minimizing Climate Risks and Reducing Oil Dependence

University of WI, Madison, Roy Weston Distinguished Global Sustainability Lecture, October 26, 2006

Notes on Facing the Climate Challenge

Asking the right questions about climate change mitigation costs

Scientific Symposium in Celebration of the 50the Anniversary of ECN - the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands, in Petten, the Netherlands, November 17-18, 2005.

Costs of reducing carbon emissions in the U.S.: Some recent results

Sonoma State University, February 20, 2002
Lewis and Clark College Fourth Annual Symposium on Environmental Affairs, Portland, OR, October 19, 2001
American Association for the Advancement of Science, San Francisco, CA, February 20, 2001
Australian Greenhouse Office, Canberra, Australia , November 29, 2000
University of Sydney, Department of Applied Physics, Sydney, Australia, November 24, 2000

Cutting carbon emissions: Burden or benefit?

Designing voluntary pollution prevention programs in the real world: Some stories from the front lines

Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management Colloquium, UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA, May 17, 1999

Selected invited lectures: critical thinking skills and quantitative analysis

Responsible use of numbers in decision making

Sorry, wrong number: Avoiding pitfalls in quantitative analysis

Plenary talk for The Data Warehousing Institute Conference, Las Vegas, NV, February 22, 2007
University of California, Davis, December 2, 2005.
Plenary talk for one of Dupont’s Six Sigma Engineering groups, Newark Delaware, March 15, 2005.

Sorry, wrong number: The use and misuse of numerical facts in analysis of energy issues

Stanford University, November 21, 2003
Yale University, October 29, 2003
Board of Directors, Rocky Mountain Institute, October 4, 2002

Sorry, wrong number: Why getting the numbers right really matters

Selected invited lectures: forecasting

Avoiding Common Pitfalls in the Use of Energy Forecasting Models for Scenario Analysis

Detroit Edison Company, April 17, 2007
Conference on Interrogating the Practice and Politics of Scenarios, Brown University, Providence, RI, March 23-24, 2007

Long-term Energy Forecasts: Is Useful Learning Possible?

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis at the Conference on Learning and Climate Change, Laxenberg, Austria, April 10-11, 2006

Forecasting the “efficiency gap”

Dynamic analyses for a dynamic world: the importance of policy context

International Energy Agency/DOE Workshop on Technologies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Hilton Crystal City, Arlington, VA, May 6, 1999

What can history teach us? A retrospective examination of long-term energy forecasts for the US

Selected invited lectures: general energy

1973 vs 2005: Technology and the Energy Crisis

Panel at the Sun Microsystems Summit on Eco-Responsibility and Design for the Environment, San Francisco, CA, Nov. 14, 2005. Chaired by Michael Krasny of KQED. Also on the panel: Amory Lovins (RMI), Greg Papadopoulos (CTO, Sun Microsystems), Scott McNealy (CEO, Sun Microsystems), Noah Horowitz (NRDC), and Christine Ervin (Former US Assistant Secretary of Energy)

Identifying new energy opportunities

Gave talk and moderated a panel session on new energy opportunities for the MIT Club of Northern California, at Parc, October 4, 2005.

Selected invited lectures: information technology electricity use

Electricity use and efficiency of servers and data centers : A review of recent data and developments

Data Center Operations Conference (plenary) in Athens, Greece, March 13, 2008
Computerworld Premier 100 leaders conference (plenary) in Orlando, FL, March 11, 2008
American Power and Electronics Conference (plenary) in Austin, TX, February 25, 2008
Computerworld Data Center Directions Virtual Conference (plenary), February 13, 2008
Yahoo! in San Jose, CA, February 7, 2008
Webinar for the Climate Group in the UK, December 11, 2007
Google, Mountain View, CA, December 4, 2007
Intel Fellows Meeting (plenary), San Diego, CA, November 29, 2007

Understanding Data Center Electricity Use

Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, October 3, 2007
Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA, August 29, 2007
Webcast for SearchDataCenter.com, August 21, 2007

Data Center Electricity Use: What We Know

Intel Developer Forum, San Francisco, CA, September 19, 2007.
VC taskforce meeting in Palo Alto, CA, June 20, 2007
Detroit Edison Company, April 17, 2007
EPA stakeholder workshop at the Santa Clara Convention Center, February 16, 2007

Measuring energy consumption and performance of servers: Progress on energy metrics

Measuring energy consumption and performance of data centers and servers

Data center power use: a review of the historical data

Latest measured data on data center power use in the U.S.

Latest estimates of power densities of data centers in the U.S.

Estimating electricity use “associated with the internet”: A cautionary tale

Western Region Air Partnership Forum, San Francisco, CA, June 1, 2000
Telecommunications Industry Energy Workshop, AT&T Technology Center, Washington DC, March 20, 2000

Electricity used by the Internet: How an urban legend became conventional wisdom

National Energy Modeling System conference, Washington, DC, March 12, 2002
Site Uptime Network Conference Atlanta, GA, October 10, 2001
U.S. Telecom Association Conference Dallas, TX, May 22, 2001
International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, Denver, CO, May 8, 2001 (Keynote address).
Electronic Industries Association Spring Conference, Environmental Issues Council Meeting, May 7, 2001

Re-estimating the Annual Energy Outlook 2000 forecast using updated assumptions about the Internet economy

Office equipment electricity use: Of urban legends and key uncertainties

NY Academy of Sciences/Tellus Institute Joint Symposium on E-Commerce and the Environment, New York, New York, October 24 - 25, 2000

Selected invited lectures: nuclear power

A Presentation of Work in Progress: Historical Costs of Nuclear Power in the U.S.–A Reactor-by-Reactor Analysis

Detroit Edison Company, April 17, 2007
University of Calgary, May 11, 2006
University of California, Berkeley, February 8, 2006
Stanford University, December 14, 2005

Selected invited lectures: reducing oil dependence

Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profits, Jobs, and Security

The Colorado Springs World Affairs Council, January 24, 2006
St Mary’s College, Moraga, CA, January 10, 2006
University of California, Davis, December 2, 2005

Classes taught

• Class titled “Analyzing combined heat and power technologies from engineering, environmental, and economic perspectives” at Stanford University, Spring quarter 2004.

• Class on critical thinking, analysis, and data presentation skills as a lecturer for IBM’s Performance Testing Group in Morgan Hill, CA, using Turning Numbers into Knowledge as the text. March 29-31, 2004.

• Class titled “Quantitative methods for forecasting energy futures” at Stanford University, Winter quarter 2004.

• Class summarizing the U.S. energy system and some tricks of the trade as a lecturer for an internationally known energy company in Portland, OR, from February to November 2001. Conducted five such classes in 2001.

• Class titled “Tricks of the Trade,” as a Senior Lecturer at the Energy and Resources Group, at the University of California, Berkeley (Spring 2000).

• Class titled “Energy Policy for Economies in Transition” as a lecturer at the Central European University, in Budapest, Hungary (July 1999). Taught comparative economics of power generation and efficiency technologies, analytical techniques for evaluating those technologies, and key historical events in energy policy.