With so many companies laying off workers in droves, there will be a lot of empty office spaces in the coming months. This sad event could be a boon to companies that recycle cubicle structures and other office furniture.

At the Oregon Facilities and Sustainable Buildings Expo I met with Karl Kirchgasler, of RBA Furniture Solutions , which is in the business of refurbishing the ubiquitous office furniture made by Herman Miller.

Kirchgasler says he has seen an uptick in business since Wall Street imploded, both in customers looking to cut costs by buying recycled furniture, as well as in companies looking to sell or giveaway furniture they no longer need. RBA removes the fabric for cubicle pieces, recycles it, and then reupholsters and repaints them to good as new condition.

The Expo itself was much smaller than I expected, and sparsely attended. The economy is likely to blame. Several vendors said those in attendance seemed to be a high quality audience.

Portland General Electric: Since I'm a firm believer that smart grid technology (see more here will be a hot area of investment in 2009, I stopped by the PGE booth to see how they were getting involved. To my amazement, the first PGE representative (Ken Griffin) I spoke with said he didn't know what smart grid was. Huh?? Utility people don't know about building intelligence into the power grid to make it more resilient and to accommodate renewable energy sources? I would think that it would be top of mind for everyone in the company.

Fortunately, PGE's Chris Walker, who works on energy efficiency, stepped in, and said that the utility was in the process of installing smart meters for all 800,000 residential and commercial customers. The project started recently and will be finished within three years. The company is also working with large customer Intel on a demand response program that would enable the chip manufacturer to reduce power consumption or share its on-site generation as needed.

Advanced Green Technologies:AGT was showing off its solar technologies that scale from residential to medium-sized business customers. The company's new SuperNova Concentrated Solar System is a bit different in that unlike large scale solar systems that use reflectors to send heat to very tall towers that heat a liquid, this product is for much smaller scale and heats only water, which can be used for hot water or to heat a building. Solar thermal is an underutilized technology when compared to PV for power generation, but that may be changing.

AGT, which is about one year old, also offers thin film Uni-Solar products that can sit on top of a standard roof. AGT's Raoul Meekcoms said the product is being installed on Nike's child care center and the new Lance Armstrong center.