Mar 15th, 2010 ~ 4:30 to 7:00 ~ Aspen, CO  Doerr-Hosier Center at Aspen Meadows, Home of the Aspen Institute

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Agenda:

6:30-7:00:  Q&A

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Speakers Bios:

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Until recently, Anita M. Burke, worked for Shell International as the advisor to the Shell International Committee of Managing Directors on the operationalisation of sustainable development and the energy portfolio implications of a carbon constrained future. During her 18 years of working in all aspects of the upstream and downstream portions of the oil business, she has delivered profitable technologies and organizational processes that have delivered on the sustainable development and climate change strategic vision. Anita is internationally recognized as a thought leader in the area of sustainable development. She has helped to co-create visionary strategies for the future and practical, tactical actions to deliver on our need to go beyond organic and disentangle us from the hydrocarbon energy system. She is practical and passionate about local living economies and the processes that will contribute to the evolution of our relationship with the planet and each other.

Her deep belief in the mystery, commitment to seeking the Divine and the sometimes messy manifestation of the awakening soul, is the magic that underpins her work. She weaves the poet, healer, seeker and deep connection to the earth into the business pragmatics to resonate in a way that tantalizes the heart into right action.

She is currently writing, speaking internationally and advising governments and green businesses on social responsibility, operationalizing sustainable development and practical actions for delivering on socioeconomic change. She is also a partner in several innovative green businesses in both North America and China.

MAYOR PEGEEN HANRAHAN is in her 12th year of elective service with the City of Gainesville, and was re-elected as Mayor in March 2007. Support for her elections has been broad and bipartisan, and has included endorsements from diverse groups. In addition to her public service, Pegeen is a registered Professional Engineer. She currently is a consultant to the Trust for Public Land in their Conservation Finance Program, and has spent five years with Terra-Com Environmental Consulting, a groundwater remediation firm where, in 2003, she was promoted to Senior Vice President. Pegeen is a native and lifelong resident of Gainesville, and is married to Tony Malone, a civil engineer with CH2MHill. Their daughter, Evyleen Mary Malone, was born in September 2005 and their son, Quinn Joseph Malone, was born March 2007.

Pegeen presides at City Commission meetings and currently serves as the Chair of the Commission’s Audit, Finance and Legislative Committee. Mayor Hanrahan is also Co-Chair of the Implementation Committee of the Gainesville/Alachua County 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness and past Chair of the Alachua County Library Governing Board. She is Past President of the Florida League of Mayors and is a member of the Mayors Innovation Project, a nationwide network of cutting-edge mayors, and serves on the Steering Committee for the United Way's Success by Six Initiative.  Mayor Hanrahan also is a board member of Alachua Conservation Trust, a non-profit land conservation organization, and served as its Executive Director for over three years. She is an appointee to the Government Policy Technical Working Group of the Governor’s Action Team on Energy and Climate Change, serves on the board of LeRoy Collins Institute, an independent nonpartisan and non-profit organization which studies and promotes creative solutions to key private and public issues facing the people of Florida and the nation.

Pegeen has served on the boards of the Girl Scouts of Gateway Council, the Healthy Communities Initiative, Dance Alive, Sustainable Alachua County, and Friends of Ring Park. She is a past Vice President of Women for Wise Growth, served as co-chair of the Citizens for Equal Opportunity political action committee, and was a member of the Northeast Florida Regional Advisory Committee for the Florida Engineering Education Delivery System (FEEDS). Pegeen served as the chair of the Search Committee for the City's Charter Officer for Equal Opportunity. In 2002, she was elected by the membership of the Suwannee-St. Johns Group of the Sierra Club to its Executive Committee. In 2002, she co-hosted "Magic Community Talk," a weekly radio show on Magic 101.3 FM, an African-American station.

In 1999, Pegeen developed a successful $80,000 grant application to the USEPA Environmental Justice through Pollution Prevention Program to employ urban-area African American teenagers, and continues as a volunteer with that effort. She developed and teaches learning modules in topics such as brownfield redevelopment and stormwater management for the participants in this “Environmental Ambassadors” program. Pegeen also designed and co-wrote a successful EPA Sustainable Development Challenge Grant and a U.S. Brownfield Pilot Project Grant. Vice President Al Gore and Congresswoman Karen Thurman recognized her leadership in the latter at the White House. She has participated in obtaining numerous other grants from the Florida Communities Trust, and conceived and authored a 2001 grant of $2.88 million for acquisition of Blues Creek Ravine and Fox Pond, which were purchased by the Trust for Public Land. She has also participated in obtaining grants from the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, the Florida Office of Greenways and Trails, the Land Trust Alliance, and several private foundations. She also developed outreach tools and a strategic plan for the Florida Local Environmental Resource Agencies (FLERA), a non-profit coalition representing city and county environmental programs. She also served as a member of the State of Florida's Construction and Demolition Waste Task Force.

Under contract with the St. Johns River Water Management District, in 1999 Pegeen developed “WaterSmart Communities,” a decision-making toolkit for elected and appointed officials. She has worked on sustainability issues for the Florida Center for Construction and Environment, and was an engineer and manager with the Alachua County Environmental Protection Department's Hazardous Materials Program from 1992 to 1997. She received her Bachelor's (1989) and Master's (1992) degrees in Environmental Engineering from the University of Florida, as well as a BA in Sociology (1989), also from UF. Pegeen was a National Merit Scholar, a Florida Graduate Scholar, a National Science Foundation Undergraduate Fellow, and attended UF on full academic scholarship. Pegeen’s graduate research in water resources focused on management of leachate and stormwater at Municipal Solid Waste Landfills. She is a member and past alumni sponsor of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, Florida Alpha Chapter at the University of Florida.

CRAIG LEWIS is the Founding Principal of RightCycle, a consultancy that achieves desirable Smart Energy outcomes via legislation, regulation, and public funding (grants, loan guarantees, siting incentives, etc). RightCycle also assists clients with the critical project development activities of evaluating project site viability and securing off-take agreements via RFO proposals and PPA negotiations. Mr. Lewis focuses his efforts in California and at the Federal level. He has over 20 years of experience working in high growth industries, including renewables, wireless, and semiconductors. Mr. Lewis transitioned from the wireless industry to the Smart Energy industry in 2005 by spearheading energy policy development for Steve Westly’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign in California. Until early-2009, Mr. Lewis was VP of Government Relations for GreenVolts, a solar technology company, where he served for two years securing successful policy outcomes in legislation, regulation, and public funding; and in supporting the first solar project to successfully navigate California’s RPS RFO process.

Mr. Lewis is a leading Smart Energy strategist and advocate. He is the Founding Principal of the FIT Coalition and is currently leading the legislative effort in California to implement a comprehensive Feed-In Tariff (FIT) that will increase the size of California’s renewable energy market by more than an order of magnitude. Mr. Lewis’ legislative proposal is referred to as the Renewable Energy & Economic Stimulus Act (aka REESA FIT). The REESA FIT is being pursued via AB1106, which is authored by Assemblyman Fuentes, Chair of the Assembly Utilities & Commerce Committee. AB1106 is expected to be signed into law in 2010. Mr. Lewis is also a leading advocate for comprehensive FITs throughout the United States and for using them to unleash the tremendous potential of Wholesale Distributed Generation (WDG), which is the 20MW-and-under, distribution-interconnected market segment that avoids transmission dependencies and the long delays that are associated with transmission build-outs.

Mr. Lewis has held senior government relations, corporate development, and marketing positions at wireless and semiconductor leaders, including Qualcomm, Ericsson, LinCom Wireless, Comarco Wireless, and Altera. He was active in the strategic planning and lobbying efforts to obtain the long-sought approval for CDMA technology in China; and has led the establishment of several successful business operations in Asia. Mr. Lewis received his MBA and MSEE from the University of Southern California, and his BSEE from UC Berkeley. 

Randy Udall is a consulting energy analyst and one of the nation's leading activists in promoting energy sustainability. He is the former Director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE) in western Colorado. During his tenure, CORE's partnerships with individuals, governments and utilities led to Colorado's first solar energy incentive program, the world's first Renewable Energy Mitigation Program which has raised $6 million, the world's stiffest carbon tax, and some of the most progressive green power purchasing programs in the country. Udall is a Co-Founder of ASPO-USA and was one of the peak oil experts interviewed by the National Petroleum Council when they researched their 2007 report on the Hard Truths about Energy. He writes and speaks widely on why "energy is an IQ test Americans tend to fail."