Power Where It's Needed: Designing Renewable Energy into Urban Data Centers and Public Space
An event at DC CLIMATE WEEK — Commodity Talent LLC Presents :
Every development presents an opportunity to deploy renewable energy where it is needed most — adjacent to demand loads and embedded in the communities it serves. Yet onsite generation is routinely treated as an afterthought: aesthetically inconvenient, financially vulnerable, and among the first items cut during value management. Clean energy migrates to remote sites, disconnected from urban fabric and public life — even as energy-intensive facilities like data centers continue to expand into cities, intensifying local grid demand and overtaxing long distance transmission infrastructure.
This panel argues for a different model. It examines how architects, artists, and developers can position renewable energy systems as core to a building's design identity — a generator of form, materiality, and public meaning. What is the current state of energy-generating materials and integrated systems? How are developers of data centers rethinking the relationship between energy production and site? And where funding mechanisms like percent-for-art programs already exist, can those resources be directed toward infrastructure that is both culturally significant and functionally generative?
AGENDA
Time
3:00 Welcome and framing — moderator
3:05 Presentation — Elizabeth Monoian & Robert Ferry, LAGI
3:15 Presentation — Terry Lee, Garvey Labs
3:25 Presentation — Ernest Popescu, Metrobloks
3:35 Presentation — Trevor Lee, Olin Studio
3:45 Moderated panel discussion
4:10 Audience Q&A
4:30 Refreshments and networking
Moderator: Julia C.K. Stein, public artist and Director at Commodity Talent, whose work centers community engagement, climate justice, and urban infrastructure.
DC Climate Week is not responsible for this event. It is organized by the organizing group, and being listed on the DCCW calendar is not an endorsement of content or partners.