Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

Global demand for green buildings grows

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A study by Dodge Data & Analytics shows that global demand for sustainable buildings will double by 2018. The research, carried out with the support of United Technologies Corporation and the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC), reports that the anticipated growth will be driven by developing green markets, such as Mexico, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, China and India.

The report, World Green Building Trends 2016, Developing Markets Accelerate Global Green Growth, finds that the percentage of companies expecting to have more than 60 percent of their building projects certified green will more than double by 2018, from 18 to 37 percent.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.constructionglobal.com/managementplanning/602/Global-demand-for-green-buildings-grows

Ecolabeling could be a way to reach ‘green’ consumers

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To differentiate your product or service as environmentally sound, you may want to obtain certification from an independent, third-party so that you can include their logo or “ecolabel” on your product’s label and other marketing materials. Ecolabeling is important way to market your product to green consumers.

"Ecolabels" identify overall, proven environmental preference of a product or service within a specific product/service category. In contrast to "green" symbols, or claim statements developed by manufacturers and service providers, the most credible labels are based on life cycle considerations; they are awarded by an impartial third-party in relation to certain products or services that are independently determined to meet transparent environmental leadership criteria.
“Ecolabels” identify overall, proven environmental preference of a product or service within a specific product/service category. In contrast to “green” symbols, or claim statements developed by manufacturers and service providers, the most credible ecolabels are based on life-cycle considerations.  They are awarded by an impartial third-party in relation to certain products or services that are independently determined to meet transparent environmental leadership criteria.

Federal Ecolabeling and Certification Programs

  • USDA Organic: Organic certification verifies that your farm or handling facility complies with the USDA organic regulations and allows you to sell, label, and represent your products as organic.
  • USDA Biopreferred: This label is for biobased products. Biobased products are commercial or industrial products (other than food or feed) that are composed in whole, or in significant part, of biological products, renewable agricultural materials or forestry materials.
  • Energy Star: Products can earn the Energy Star label by meeting the energy efficiency requirements set forth in Energy Star product specifications.
  • Design for the Environment: The Design for the Environment label means that EPA scientists have evaluated every ingredient in the product to ensure it meets stringent criteria.
  • WaterSense: The WaterSense label allows consumers to recognize products and programs that save water without sacrificing performance or quality.
  • EPEAT: EPEAT uses comprehensive criteria for design, production, energy use and recycling. EPEAT currently covers computers and displays; imaging equipment and television standards are currently being implemented and server standard development will continue in 2013.
  • Other Federal Green Product Programs

Non-Governmental Ecolabeling Programs

Non-governmental ecolabeling programs vary widely in their scope and stringency. Before applying to a specific ecolabel program, research the label and ensure that you understand the terminology involved.

Source: https://www.sba.gov/content/green-certification-and-ecolabeling 

Georgia Tech hosts statewide events this quarter to help Georgia manufacturers

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Georgia Tech is conducting a Manufacturing Growth Meeting series during the last quarter of 2014 across the state of Georgia, consisting of educational and networking events designed to deliver actionable tips and tools of the trade to help Georgia manufacturers grow their business. The series is hosted and taught by the GaMEP at Georgia Tech – the same instructors that bring you expertise in the process improvement, sustainability, and energy courses.

Meetings are held in various locations around the state and topics vary based on feedback from the manufacturing companies in each area.  Meetings are currently scheduled to be held in Lawrenceville, Savannah, Douglas, Augusta, Jefferson and LaGrange.

All meetings are $15, include lunch, and are from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Here are the meetings currently scheduled around the state:

Lean & Safe: Integrating Safety Management and Process Improvement

Has your company ever implemented a process improvement, only to realize it had an adverse effect on safety? Or vice versa? Learn how to integrate safety management into lean processes from the start and prevent potential conflicts.

  • Jefferson, GA
  • Date: October 14, 2014
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE

Where Lean Meets Green

Learn how to include energy and environmental wastes into your Lean systems– a strategy proven to maximize your return on investments. This discussion will help you discover where your facility wastes dollars in excess energy consumption, reduce operating costs and start a next step action plan to improve your company’s energy management.

  • Augusta, GA
  • Date: October 28, 2014
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE

Solving Problems with Effective Employee Training

Issues with quality, production time and even workplace culture can often be eliminated with good employee training. So, what’s the best way to train a large workforce that often includes inexperienced or temporary workers? Discover a method for training employees that standardizes work processes, creates uniform standards and encourages company-wide improvements.

  • Savannah, GA
  • Date: November 11, 2014
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE

Bridging the Generational Gaps in Your Workforce

At a time when three generations (Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y) co-exist in the workplace, how do you create an environment that addresses the needs and expectations of the entire workforce? Discuss each generation’s unique qualities and learn how organizations can use this knowledge to motivate employees, reduce turn-over, improve morale, and improve the overall culture of the workplace.

  • Douglas, GA
  • Date: December 3, 2014
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE
  • Lawrenceville, GA
  • Date: December 11, 2014
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE
  • LaGrange, GA
  • Date: January 29, 2015
  • More information or to register CLICK HERE

EPA proposes new guidelines for greener federal purchases

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing draft guidelines that will help the federal government buy greener and safer products.  In response to broad stakeholder interest, EPA is seeking public input on these draft guidelines and a potential approach to assessing non-governmental environmental standards and ecolabels already in the marketplace.

“As the largest purchaser in the world, the U.S. government is working to reduce its environmental footprint,” said Jim Jones, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “The government buys everything from furniture to lighting to cleaning products. These guidelines will make it easier for federal purchasers to meet the existing goal of 95 percent sustainable purchases while spurring consumers and the private sector to use and demand safer and greener products.”

The draft guidelines were developed by EPA, the General Services Administration, and others following several listening sessions with a wide range of stakeholders on how the federal government can be more sustainable in its purchasing and how it can best meet the numerous Federal requirements for the procurement of sustainable and environmentally preferable products and services. The draft guidelines were designed to assist federal purchasing decision makers in more consistently using existing non-governmental product environmental performance standards and ecolabels.

The draft guidelines address key characteristics of environmental standards and ecolabels, including the credibility of the development process and the effectiveness of the criteria for environmental performance. The draft guidelines were developed to be flexible enough to be applied to standards and ecolabels in a broad range of product categories.

For more information on the draft guidelines visit:  http://www.epa.gov/epp/draftGuidelines

For more information, read the Federal Register Prepublication Notice (PDF) and the EPA’s press release.

GSA issues recommendation for ‘green’ building certification

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U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has issued a recommendation on the federal government’s use of third-party green building certification systems.  GSA is required by law to issue a recommendation to the Department of Energy (DOE) on how the federal government can best use certification systems to measure the design and performance of the federal government’s construction and major renovation projects.

“GSA has opened this review to an extensive public process, and we’ve made this recommendation using input from the public, industry stakeholders, and sustainability experts,” said Kevin Kampschroer, Director of GSA’s Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings, on Oct. 25, 2013. “We’ve found two tools that allow us to measure how federal buildings of all kinds can best save energy, improve overall performance, and cut down utility costs.”

In its recommendation to DOE, GSA recommended the Green Building Initiative’s Green Globes 2010 and the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) 2009 as the third-party certification systems that the federal government can use to gauge performance in its construction and renovation projects. Other certification systems were not selected because they did not align with the government’s requirements. Additionally, under today’s recommendation, GSA will conduct more regular reviews in order to keep up with the latest green building tools that the market has to offer.

Third party certification systems like LEED and Green Globes help in measuring reduction targets for water, energy, and greenhouse gas emissions against industry standards. Agencies can use one of the two certification systems that best meet their building portfolios, which range from office buildings, to laboratories, to hospitals, to airplane hangars.

Federal construction and modernization projects must adhere to the government’s own green building requirements by law and executive orders. No one certification system meets all of the federal government’s green building requirements. Green building certification systems are just one tool that GSA uses to cut costs and meet sustainability and economic performance goals.

GSA has worked to make federal buildings more efficient by reducing water and energy use, which saves taxpayer dollars and reduces the impact on the environment.  GSA’s efforts to increase sustainability are a central part of its mission to deliver the best value in real estate to the government and the American people.

Greening the supply chain “listening session” scheduled Mar. 17

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GSA Regional Administrator Shyam Reddy, along with the Federal Environmental Executive Council on Environmental Quality’s Michelle Moore, extend an invitation to you to attend the Greening the Supply Chain “listening session,” sponsored by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday, March 17, 2011, in Atlanta, Georgia.

This Greening the Supply Chain meeting will convene leading corporations and small businesses in the Atlanta area with CEQ’s Office of the Federal Environmental Executive, national and regional executives from the GSA, the Minority Business Development Agency, and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

In 2009, President Obama signed Executive Order 13514, Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance.  Among other goals, the Executive Order called on GSA to lead the development of recommendations for greening the Federal supply chain and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This conversation will focus on those recommendations, broaden the conversation with the private sector, and address how we can move forward together to achieve these goals.

The GreenGov Supply Partnership is a collaborative effort between the Federal Government and its suppliers to create a greener, more efficient supply chain that will help build a clean energy economy. 

The Greening the Supply Chain listening session will take place from 2:45PM – 4:30PM on Thursday, March 17, 2011 in Auditorium B at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Global Communications Center, 1600 Clifton Rd., NW, Atlanta, Georgia.

To attend, you must pre-register.  Please register by Friday, March 11th. 

If you have any trouble registering or have questions, contact mailto:gggh@cdc.gov?subject=Greening%20Governement.

Green Government: An interview with GSA’s top Green building officials

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The General Services Administration (GSA) is one of the largest owners of real estate in the country, composed primarily of office buildings and courthouses, land ports of entry, and warehouses.  The GSA owns and leases more than 354 million square feet of space in 8,600 buildings across the nation.

The GSA is also the owner of one of the greenest real estate porfolios.  As of the summer of 2010, the GSA had 48 LEED-certified owned and leased buildings with approximately 150 more working towards accreditation. Eighteen of those projects exceeded the minimum with LEED Gold certifications, and one GSA lease, the FBI Regional Office in Chicago, achieved a Platinum LEED rating for Existing Buildings.  The GSA has required LEED Silver certification for its projects for some time, and now requires that new Federal buildings achieve LEED Gold certification.

While I was at GreenBuild in Chicago, I had the chance to sit down with Kevin Kampschroer, GSA’s Director of the Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings and Eleni Reed, GSA’s Chief Greening Officer.

We talked about GSA’s experience greening the Federal government’s real estate portfolio, implementing the GSA’s LEED Gold requirement and the challenge–and benefits–of trying to do four times as many contracts as the GSA normally does because of the influx of $5 billion in Stimulus funding. 

Here is what they said:

GBLB: What has the GSA done with the Stimulus money? 

KK: The GSA has a bit of a different position than other agencies because the GSA actually enters into the contracts with builders and other receipients, as opposed to granting funds to states and other entities that ultimately contract with the recipients.  As of the end of September we had awarded $5 billion [for greening the Federal real estate and fleet].  After the award, it takes some time for the contractor to get the contract and hire the people and do the work, but we have made $1 billion in payments so far.

GBLB: What was impact of the Stimulus money on the GSA?

KK:  As a result of the Stimulus, we awarded four times as many contracts as the GSA usually does in the same period of time.  This forced us to find ways to be more efficient in what we were doing.  For example, we started “speed dating.”  Where decisions had to be made, we put all the decision makers in a room togther to come to a decision quickly.  Executives and managers had to delegate some of the decision-making to ensure efficiency. 

Because the projects had to be “shovel ready,” many of the designs were already done.  The designs met our specifications, but were not necessarily the best possible designs–the most you can do with the budget that you have.  Going forward, we are retooling our performance criteria and specifications to spur teams to be more innovative and creative with the budget they have.

For example, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is a net-zero building.  We gave the team specifications, and we incentivized the team by paying them mroe the closer they got to the goals.

For other projects, we had a relatively brief minimum performance criteria which was a goal statement for the project.  It has resulted in more rapid and more innovative designs. However, this requires accepting a shift in risk to the Government side.  But the less risk you take, the less you get [in terms of innovation and design.]

This also has implications for allocating capital.  The GSA has to allow for approximation up front and not require everything to be fixed from the beginning of the project.  

GBLB:  Now that you have all these green buildings, what are you going to do next?  

ER: We are looking to get good metrics about whether we are doing what we set out to do [in terms of building performance].  We have 250 buildings with baseline metrics across a wide variety of project types so we should be able to get some good data. 

GBLB: How will the experience with the Stimulus funds impact the agency going forward? 

KK: We will be more efficient and more effective.  We will have achieved significant improvement in our portfolio [of buildings].  The budget will be extremely lean in the future.  It will be important to apply the lessons we have learned [about how to do projects more efficiently] to operating and maintaining the buildings to prevent deterioration.  We have an opportunity in tracking the performance of the inventory over time and across the portfolio.

GBLB: What about your requirement that GSA projects achieve LEED Gold certification?

KK: We select contractors who know that this is the expectation.  We have been doing LEED Silver for a decade, this is raising the bar to LEED Gold, but the architect and engineering firms know how to do it. 

When we budget the project, we have adjusted the process to allow for LEED Gold certification.  We have done studies on standard versus green construction, you can do LEED Silver for less than conventional construction because of integrated design. 

GBLB: Have you ever had a project fail to get the mandated certification? 

KK: The way we started out was that our goal was LEED Silver.  We have had building that did not reach that level of certification, but never had one that failed to acheive minimum LEED certification.

For more on the GSA’s efforts, Architecture Week had an article by Kevin, and Kevin’s testimony before the House Subcommittee on the GSA’s Stimulus efforts is available here.

–  by Shari Shapiro – Dec. 9, 2010 – Sustainable Cities Collective

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Agencies bust myth of year-end buying sprees

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Some agency officials say they are following a well thought-out approach to spending what’s left in their fiscal-year information technology budgets — a game plan that defies the myth that departments rush to spend funds before they become unavailable after Sept. 30.

The phenomenon of the year-end spending sprees first came to light in 1980, when the Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management issued a report that found the hurry to obligate expiring funds before the end of the fiscal year often led to a lack of competition, inadequately negotiated contracts and the purchase of low-priority items.

In a 1998 follow-up to that study, the Government Accountability Office concluded agencies’ spending patterns were hard to assess because quarterly budget data, which could show a spike in fourth-quarter spending, was unreliable. Since then, federal auditors haven’t evaluated the issue much, and information on last-minute expenditures can be hard to obtain, according to some academic researchers.

Ramji Balakrishnan, an accounting professor at the University of Iowa who co-wrote a 2007 report on the subject, recently told Federal News Radio that he was able to access figures on year-end spending at U.S. Army hospitals largely because his co-author, a veteran, had contacts inside the military. According to the paper, which was published in the Journal of Management Accounting Research, administrators stockpiled supplies toward the end of a fiscal year, but then saved more money than they spent during the year-end splurge at the start of the next fiscal year.

A trend of precalculated buying seems to be occurring at several agencies with large IT budgets, including the General Services Administration and Veterans Affairs Administration, according to government officials.

In April, Administrator Martha Johnson directed GSA’s chief information officer, Casey Coleman, to complete five high-priority IT projects within 18 months — a feat that Coleman said the agency finished in 10 weeks. The agency’s IT budget for fiscal 2010 is $605.9 million. By quickly wrapping up the projects, which included boosting the capacity of GSA’s networks and adding remote private networks for teleworkers, Coleman was able to focus late-year spending on supplemental purchases for the agency’s increasingly mobile workforce, she said.

“By doing that we really set the foundation for IT modernization for the agency,” Coleman said in an interview with Nextgov. “Now we are in Phase 2 of our modernization program.”

Phase 2 involves purchasing green products. Johnson this summer challenged GSA to eliminate the federal government’s adverse effects on the environment, what’s known as creating “a zero environmental footprint.”

The agency plans to spend its IT money in September on products and services that support the zero e-emissions goal, Coleman said. GSA will invest in videoconferencing equipment; shared printing workstations to replace individual desktop printers, which are rarely used; and a cloud computing tool for e-mail, scheduling and other interoffice communications. Cloud computing is an arrangement that provides online access to hardware and software, eliminating the need to rely on energy-hungry, in-house data centers for IT services.

A contract for cloud services is expected to be awarded in October using fiscal 2010 money earmarked for spending in September.

GSA was unable to provide information on remaining money the agency returned to the treasury at the end of the last fiscal year.

The thinking is that GSA, as the nation’s biggest storefront, can expand the green IT market governmentwide — and perhaps nationwide — by purchasing environmentally responsible goods. Experimenting at the departmental level also might enable GSA to eventually offer governmentwide, eco-friendly IT contracting vehicles, agency officials said.

Veterans Affairs, which has a $3.3 billion IT budget, will spend its remaining fiscal 2011 funds on rolling out systems that can quickly exchange patient records via the Web, VA officials said. Such expenditures should increase access to health care, including mental health services, they added. September money also will support upgrades to benefits delivery systems and the department’s IT infrastructure.

At the end of fiscal 2009, Veterans Affairs let $462,000 in IT-related funding lapse, or become unavailable for new purchases.

In the past, officials at the Environmental Protection Agency spent all of their IT money by the end of the year, but only after careful planning, they said. Last year, EPA did not return any IT-related funding to the treasury. The agency’s enacted IT budget for fiscal 2010 is $465 million.

A significant portion of EPA’s technology infrastructure spending is managed under a business model that quantifies IT needs at the beginning of each fiscal year, officials said. “This process promotes spending that is thought-out and forecasted, and minimizes a potential end-of year spending surge,” EPA spokeswoman Latisha Petteway said.

— By Aliya Sternstein – NextGov.com – 08/26/2010

Energy contracts help agencies reach green goals

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Agencies have until Sept. 1 to tell the White House what they think of the strategy to reduce federal greenhouse emissions.

The administration extended the comment deadline from Aug. 16 to give agencies more time to understand the governmentwide requirements for calculating and reporting greenhouse gas emissions associated agency operations.

The draft calls for agencies to report their baseline 2010 greenhouse gas emission inventory by January 2011.

“The data required to develop an agencywide inventory will likely be drawn from multiple levels throughout an agency’s organizational structure,” the draft strategy states. “This guidance has been developed to provide federal agency users, whether representing facility-level activities or headquarters-level functions, with the necessary information to fulfill reporting requirements.”

One way several agencies are not only reducing their carbon footprint, but saving money as well is through the Energy Department’s Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) contracts. And soon, DoE will provide agencies with a dashboard to better understand and track energy efficiencies through the program.

“These contracts are used by federal agencies basically to tap into the technological and financial resources of the private sector to implement energy savings from renewable energy projects and related activities that generate savings to the agency’s utility bill,” said Skye Schell, a supervisor in the Federal Energy Management Program, which is part of DoE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy department.

Schell said agencies can benefit from upgraded infrastructure and modernized plants.

“They cover a wide range of technologies,” he said. “Really any efficiency technology implementation you can think of probably has been included in Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs) over the year. Different renewables, wind projects, solar thermal, photovoltaics, geothermal, all have been aspects of ESPCs. It’s quite a breadth of technology.”

He added that the investments are in the tens of millions of dollars as agencies may replace a central heating plants or converting a fossil fuel infrastructure to a biomass plant.

The cost of a typical project can run between $8 million and $10 million. The company bids on the work using a type of share-in-savings approach.

Schell said the one big difference is the energy companies’ estimate and the agency agrees to the projected savings on the front end of the deal.

“We do ongoing measurement and verification to determine if the savings were in fact achieved, and if so, then the energy savings companies gets their share of savings,” Schell said.

Usually on share-in-savings contracts, vendors make the upfront investments and receive money as the savings come in. Agencies have used this type of contract in the past for recovery audit initiatives.

Agencies also receive savings from paying less for electricity or water or other types of energy.

More and more agencies are starting to use the program. Schell said in 2008, the vehicle saw about $300 million in terms of investment value in projects. A year later, the investment increased to $450 million, and Schell expects the value to increase by another $100 million to $550 million in 2010.

He said about 19 agencies have active projects with DoE, the Justice Department and the Navy among the biggest agency users of the contract.

Schell said these contracts usually are long-term deals where companies invest more than $10 million and are paid back with interest on average over 18 years.

Over the next six months, Energy will give agencies more data to better understand how to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprints.

Schell said Energy will make its ESPC dashboard available for government officials and contractors.

“We are tracking key indicators of program performance,” he said. “The dashboard answers questions such as trends in agency uses of the program, which Energy Service Companies are participating, what is the pipeline of projects and awards, the time it takes from inception to award, the cost of borrowing associated with the program, and the cost of BTU saved associated with the program. It really gives us a decent snapshot of the program efficiency and effectiveness.”

Energy has used the dashboard since 2008, mostly for internal tracking. But Schell said by the end of the calendar year, Energy will have removed any sensitive data and ensured the information in the dashboard is accurate and open it up to agency users.

“Agencies using our program may be interested in information and trends to compare their experiences with others, and also this might be a tool we use to put out report cards for ESCOs for agencies to review against different parameters,” he said.

— by Jason Miller – August 19, 2010 – FederalNewsRadio.com

New report shows significant potential for renewable energy in the South

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The South could generate 20-30 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources within the next 20 years – up from less than 4 percent today — if strong federal policies are enacted, according to a report released today by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Duke University. The analysis, “Renewable Energy in the South,” finds that conventional wisdom has underestimated the available renewable resources in the region and that a federal renewable electricity standard (RES) would enable the South to capitalize on this untapped renewable energy potential.

Read the Full Report Here: http://www.spp.gatech.edu/aboutus/workingpapers/renewable-energy-in-the-south

The South lags behind all other regions in renewable electricity, obtaining 3.7 percent of its power from renewable sources, compared to 9.5 percent for the country as a whole. Only four states (Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, and Texas) have a state-level renewable portfolio standard, while three others have voluntary renewable energy goals.  The fate of renewables in the South is not only important for the region, but for the nation as a whole since, in 2008, the region accounted for 44 percent of the country’s energy consumption.

Opponents of renewable energy production claim that the South lacks the renewable energy resources to capitalize on the growing demand for clean energy.  However, the report finds that there are abundant renewable energy resources available that can be tapped if supportive policies are put in place. The report shows that if a 25 percent (by 2025) federal RES is enacted, the amount of electricity supplied by power companies from renewable sources could increase more than 250 percent above the level expected in 2030 if no new federal renewables policies were enacted.

A number of other studies have shown a large potential for renewable energy in the South,” said Etan Gumerman of Duke University’s Nicholas Institute and co-lead researcher of the study.  “Our study shows that significant increases can actually be achieved, particularly through supportive local or federal policies.”

The report, using a customized version of the economic modeling system used by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, finds that a federal renewable electricity standard and carbon pricing system would increase the proportion of electricity derived from renewable sources by power companies in every state, particularly in wind and biomass. By 2030, the report shows, federal carbon pricing policy would increase renewable electricity production in the South by 390 percent.

“Countries around the world are already tapping into the potential of renewable energy, and are capturing export markets and generating jobs in the process,” said Dr. Marilyn Brown of the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-lead researcher of the study.  “The report demonstrates that although many states in the South are off to a slow start, renewable initiatives are now underway across the region, and the potential for expansion is promising.”  

In addition, the report finds that electricity produced by end-users, such as households and businesses using small-scale solar electric and heating facilities, would also benefit from federal policies and could supply a substantial portion of the region’s renewable electricity.  Under a 25 percent RES, for example, renewable electricity supplied by utilities and end-users could increase by 154 percent. Carbon pricing policy could lead to a 266 percent increase above the total level of renewable electricity expected in the absence of federal policy changes.

“In the future, households and businesses have the potential to become major suppliers of clean, renewable electricity,” added Dr. Brown.  “This changes the way we need to think about the South’s renewable energy potential.”

About Dr. Marilyn Brown and Georgia Tech:

Dr. Marilyn Brown, a professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is an internationally-recognized leader in the analysis and interpretation of energy futures in the United States. In 2007, Brown was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize along with the other members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Vice President Al Gore. Additional information about Brown and her research can be found at http://www.spp.gatech.edu/faculty/faculty/mbrown.php.  Brown has been nominated to serve on the Board of the Tennessee Valley Authority and awaits confirmation.   

Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts offers one of the world’s top public policy programs. The research-intensive and globally engaged curriculum aims to solve complex problems in the public interest related to issues of research and technology, energy and sustainability, economic development and governance. The School of Public Policy is dedicated to scholarship and learning that is reflective, effective and sustainable.

About Etan Gumerman and Duke University’s Nicholas Institute:

Etan Gumerman is a scientific engineer at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.  Prior to joining the Nicholas Institute, Gumerman was employed by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and served as the lead modeler and analyst for the Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future Project.  In this role, Gumerman coordinated the efforts of scientists at five national laboratories.  

The Nicholas Institute is a nonpartisan institute founded in 2005 to help decision makers in government, the private sector, and the nonprofit community address critical environmental challenges. The Institute responds to the demand for high-quality and timely data and acts as an “honest broker” in policy debates by convening and fostering open, ongoing dialogue between stakeholders on all sides of the issues and providing policy-relevant analysis based on academic research. The Institute’s leadership and staff leverage the broad expertise of Duke University as well as public and private partners worldwide. Since its inception, the Institute has earned a distinguished reputation for its innovative approach to developing multilateral, nonpartisan, and economically viable solutions to pressing environmental challenges.

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