ADVERTISEMENT
What You Should Know About the National Hydropower Association’s Clean Currents 2022 Conference
A roundtable-style session at Clean Currents 2021.
T
he National Hydropower Association (NHA) will be holding its industrywide Clean Currents 2022 trade show and conference the week of October 17 in Sacramento, California. Marla Barnes, NHA’s vice president of membership and industry engagement, gives us a preview of what makes this event, run by the industry, for the industry, unique and valuable. Hydro Leader: Please introduce NHA. Marla Barnes: NHA is the national trade association in the United States that focuses on championing waterpower in all its forms. We have three main missions. First, we advocate for the waterpower resource with Congress, policymakers, and wholesale electricity market designers, pushing to get tax credits, stronger certainty in licensing, inclusion in wholesale electricity market design, and so on. Second, we connect employees of our more than 280 member organizations with other waterpower professionals to create forums for learning from each other, doing business together, and networking. The national and regional events we offer are one important way we do that. Third, we inform not only our member organizations, but the industry at large on both policy and technical developments, helping them understand why these developments matter to them and their work. We do that not only through our online POWERHOUSE media platform but through our entire NHA committee and council structure.
Marla Barnes: Several years ago, the NHA board of directors decided it was crucial that we hold our own conference and tradeshow, allowing the industry to control
36 | HYDRO LEADER | July/August 2022
the format and content and enabling 100 percent of the revenue to be reinvested into industry advocacy, rather than going to a for-profit private events company. There are lots of conferences and trade shows out there, but there are two things that make Clean Currents unique. First, it’s for the industry, by the industry. It’s not run by a private company; rather, it’s organized with extensive input from NHA member organizations, exhibiting companies, and others. The industry as a whole provides ideas about content, the most useful and productive setup for the exhibit hall, and speakers and activities. Second, Clean Currents provides an opportunity to raise funds for the work of NHA. The board recognized that to do the work that it was asking the association to do to move waterpower forward, there needed to be more available capital. Those additional funds can’t always be raised by increasing membership dues. We saw in the new event an opportunity to create nondues revenue that would go right back into the association. If a company is going to participate in an event, it makes sense to choose an event at which that investment goes straight into the work of advocating for the industry. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about the format and size of this year’s Clean Currents, and how it compares to last year’s inaugural event. Marla Barnes: One unique characteristic of Clean Currents is that instead of having a traditional exhibit hall and then holding conference sessions in a completely different part of the building, it has a integrated community feel. In some conferences, people leave the exhibit hall, go to the sessions, and sometimes never get back to the exhibit hall. To avoid that, we replaced the exhibit hall with a central location where everything happens, which we call CC Central. hydroleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF NHA.
Hydro Leader: Please tell us about NHA’s Clean Currents conference and what makes it distinctive among other industry conferences and events.
The Innovation Power House at Clean Currents 2021.
