The World Renewable Energy Forum (WREF) kicked off Monday with over 60 concurrent sessions ranging from solar testing, to policy issues to empowering women in sustainable energy. It was busy.

The week-long event is attended by people across the world and consists of over 200 sessions, including ignite sessions. It’s a first for the event. “We wanted to be able to fit in more presentations at this conference,” said event organizer Chuck Kutscher, PhD, Principal Engineer and Group Manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). “In this format the speaker has a 5-minute presentation and in that presentation gets 20 slides. This is a challenge. [The slides] automatically advance every 15 seconds. It encourages people to make very concise slides and it also encourages people to limit the amount of information,” he said.

During the opening remarks, Dan Arvizu, NREL director touched on many points that will be echoed throughout the conference. “The potential of renewable energy is not in question,” he said, citing a recent NREL study. Solar alone could provide more than all the power needed on earth. “Strictly from solar—and it is many many multiples of what the global consumption is, on something of the order of 192 exajoules and several orders of magnitude more solar energy available than the amount of energy the planet consumes,” he said.

A majority of the driving force behind more renewable energy will be developing nations. “No matter what we do in North America or in Europe what happens in the developing economies really matters in terms of the goal that we set aside for ourselves,” Arvizu said.

While the U.S. is looking to natural gas as a low-cost form of energy, Arvizu cautioned that it wasn’t enough and that natural can only serve as a bridge fuel. “If we care about carbon…one of the things you will find is that even with natural gas. If we don't start phasing out…natural gas by 2040, 2050, we will not achieve any of the carbon [reduction] goals that we have set for ourselves.”

Also speaking during the opening session Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) said Colorado is an ideal place to hold WREF since the state is among the most progressive in terms of pushing towards renewables adoption. “People are beginning to accept and recognize that we cant' keep going down the same road. We have been investing much more significantly in preparation for these changes.” Among other things he cited Colorado’s 24 federal research laboratories and research institutions.

Clean Energy Authority will have daily coverage of select sessions from WREF throughout the week.