Philips, 3M, Whirlpool Among ACEEE Honorees

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) presented special 30th Anniversary awards Wednesday to individuals and organizations who have made outstanding contributions to the field of energy efficiency.

ACEEE’s year-long activities celebrating its 30th anniversary as an organization culminated in a gala reception featuring remarks by Cathy Zoi, Acting Under Secretary and Assistant Secretary, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

ACEEE’s Board of Directors chose to recognize and celebrate some of the many ideas, individuals, and organizations that have had large impacts on the success of energy efficiency over the past decades by presenting the following awards:

• Arthur H. Rosenfeld and Amory Lovins have been visionaries in the field of energy efficiency. What we know as energy efficiency today is in significant part  because of their imagination, dedication, and hard work. Art Rosenfeld, one of ACEEE’s founders, recently retired as head of the California Energy Commission. Amory Lovins is Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
• Rep. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts has championed energy efficiency throughout his Congressional career and was the original sponsor of the first federal bill law enacting federal appliance energy efficiency standards in 1987.
• Seattle City Light, the municipal electric utility serving the city of Seattle, Washington, has operated the nation’s longest-running energy efficiency program, initiated in order to reduce the need to build power plants and buy electricity.
• Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) has been a unique organization that advises utility regulators and state and federal policymakers on issues including energy efficiency and resource planning, competition, distributed generation and demand response, renewable energy, and climate change.
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Electricity Market and Policy Group has been conducting research and training into energy efficiency, demand response, distributed generation, renewable energy, electricity reliability, and other topics for over a decade. Its research related to energy efficiency has included work on how to build portfolios of energy efficiency programs to achieve policy objectives, how to design and evaluate effective energy efficiency programs, and how to quantify the economic impacts and benefits of energy efficiency and demand response for customers and society.
• Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings represented South Carolina in the Senate from 1966 through 2005. Senator Hollings was the original sponsor of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, which introduced the Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirement.  
• Dan Becker has been a player in every major legislative effort to improve vehicle fuel efficiency and reduce vehicular emissions throughout his career at the Sierra Club, the Center for Automotive Safety, and the Safe Climate Campaign, and as a member of President Clinton’s Presidential Advisory Council on Personal Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Reductions.
• Philips Lighting (NYSE: PHG) has been a leader in advancing energy-efficient lighting. In 1980 Philips introduced the first compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) with an integrated ballast that could be screwed into a standard incandescent light socket, which helped revolutionize the lighting industry. Currently, Philips is an industry leader in developing light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs, which promise to be the next step in improved efficiency lighting technology. 
• 3M (NYSE: 3M) has been a pioneer and leader in working to manage energy use as carefully as it manages other inputs. Over the past three decades, 3M’s corporation-wide energy management program has initiated different energy management efforts to increase the competitiveness of its good and services.
• Whirlpool Appliances (NYSE: WHR) has been one of the leaders in improving the energy efficiency of refrigerators and other household appliances through technological advances fueled by steady research and investment. Whirlpool won the "Golden Carrot" award in the 1990s for super-efficient refrigerators and has been a long-term supporter of the federal appliance standards program. 
• New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has been one of the world’s leaders in innovative ideas and research and development for energy efficiency concepts and technologies. NYSERDA is a public corporation for New YorkState that conducts research and development to help the state reduce its petroleum use by helping its citizens reduce energy use, promote renewable energy use, and protect the environment. NYSERDA was the initial developer and implementer of the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® program. Accepting the award on behalf of NYSERDA were current and past Presidents Frank Murray, Bill Valentino, Paul Tonko, and Peter Smith.
• The State of California has been the nation’s visionary and leader in imagining and implementing policies to reduce its energy and environmental impact with the first appliance efficiency standards; vehicle fuel economy standards; and extensive, aggressive gas and electric utility efficiency programs. Through the inspired work of the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), many of the energy efficiency and sustainability policies adopted and tested in California have influenced policies and programs in other states and around the world. CPUC Commissioner Dian Grueneich accepted the award on behalf of the state.
• ENERGY STAR® is the single strongest energy efficiency brand in the nation. The program helps residential, industrial, and commercial users to save energy through consumer information and education, and through market-based partnerships to remove market barriers to private efficiency actions. Current and past Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ENERGY STAR executives John Hoffman, Cathy Zoi, Kathleen Hogan, and Gina McCarthy received the award on behalf of ENERGY STAR’s program workers, administrators, and partners. Today ENERGY STAR works with nearly 3,000 manufacturers to label the energy use of more than 40,000 individual energy-using products, works with more than 1,500 retail partners, and has 8,500 partners building more comfortable, energy-efficient homes in every state.