Bill Ritter tapped for energy meeting at White House
March 14, 2013
Bill Ritter was a frequent White House guest as Colorado's former governor, but last week, he had his first meeting with President Barack Obama as founding director of Colorado State University's Center for the New Energy Economy.
President Barack Obama recently included CSU's Bill Ritter in a White House meeting on energy.
Ritter was one of a select group of business and thought leaders from the energy sector who met with Obama to discuss priorities consistent with the President’s commitment to “enhance safe American energy production and respond to the threat of climate change,” according to the White House.
Natural gas, renewables covered
Among the topics covered were the role of natural gas, new opportunities for renewable energy such as wind, solar and biofuels, the importance of clean energy research and increased energy efficiency.
In addition to Ritter, participants included:
• Jim Hackett, Executive Chairman, Anadarko
• Lew Hay, Executive Chairman, NextEra, Chairman, Edison Electric Institute
• Walter Isaacson, President and CEO, Aspen Institute
• Shirley Jackson, President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Eric Lander, Professor, MIT and Harvard, PCAST
• Alex Laskey, President and Founder, Opower
• Debra Reed, CEO, Sempra
• Terry Royer, President and CEO, Winergy
• Jeff Shaw, CEO, Southwest Gas
• Fred Smith, Chairman, President, and CEO, FedEx
• Cass Sunstein, Professor, Harvard Law School
• Sue Tierney, Managing Principal, Analysis Group
• Cynthia Warner, President, Sapphire Energy
During his tenure in the state Capitol, Ritter signed more than 50 clean energy bills into law. Now governors, legislators and regulators in other states look to the Center for the New Energy Economy for non-partisan guidance on energy policy. The center has helped build essential partnerships nationally and in Colorado around research-based clean energy solutions, workforce development and advancement of technologies that will fuel long-term, sustainable economic growth.
Center gaining attention
In October, the Center for the New Energy Economy received the National Cleantech Leadership Award at the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association awards, honoring Ritter’s efforts to work on a non-partisan basis with energy policymakers around the country.
Colorado State has been a world research leader in engineering clean and alternative energy solutions for decades. More than 120 faculty from all eight CSU colleges are involved in sustainability science and clean-energy research. Colorado State faculty oversee the largest and most prominent independent engines research laboratory in North America, which helps to develop distributed power grid systems, clean-burning industrial engines, two-stroke engines to reduce pollution from taxis in the Philippines and cleaner burning cookstoves in India, Nepal and Nicaragua.
CSU also established the School of Global Environmental Sustainability as an umbrella organization to develop and promote new strategies for global sustainability that address environmental challenges and inform solutions to global environmental problems, with an emphasis on areas such as food security, energy and the environment.
Contact: Emily Wilmsen
E-mail: Emily.Wilmsen@colostate.edu
Phone: (970) 491-2336
