EEMI Professors Royce Francis and Scott Sklar were star attractions at the 2016 GreenGov conference sponsored by the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality, which was held in the Jack Morton Auditorium in the center of GW’s Foggy Bottom campus. The Director of GW’s Sustainability Collaborative, Dr. Kathleen Merrigan, coordinated the entire event and moderated much of it.
The 2016 GreenGov event was focused on examining strategies for meeting the goals set forth in the March 2015 Executive order, “Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade.” It brought together leaders and change makers from across the federal government. Policymakers, academics, practitioners, and experts participated in a wide array of panels to discuss sustainability efforts at the federal level.
Professor Sklar spoke on the topic of “Advancing Clean Energy: Lessons Learned During the Obama Administration.” Professor Francis addressed the topic of “Drops of Life: Sustaining Water Resources.”
Other speakers at the conference included Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack; Christy Goldfuss, Managing Director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Dan Utech, Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change; Dennis McGinn, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment; Leslie Jones, Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, Department of Agriculture; and several dozen additional senior experts from the federal government, the private sector and the NGO community.
Overall, the conference was highly effective in revealing information on ways to make federal operations more efficient and environmentally friendly.