SOLAR 2013 Explores Renewable Energy and Mitigation of Extreme Weather Events

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Renewable energy provides resiliency for communities in the face of climate-related weather disasters. The ASES National Solar Conference in Baltimore, MD, April 16-20 will examine the role of renewable energy in planning, mitigation and recovery from increasingly disruptive events such as Superstorm Sandy.

Boulder, CO, March 7, 2013 — The American Solar Energy Society (ASES) will focus on the relationship between renewable energy and extreme weather events at its annual national solar conference, SOLAR 2013, in Baltimore, April 16-20.

For a day-long series of sessions on “Extreme Weather: Strategic Opportunity for Renewable Energy,” ASES will convene a cross-disciplinary group of state and local officials, utilities, businesses, insurance and finance experts, researchers and renewable energy companies, to strategize about the role of renewable energy in reducing risk from extreme weather events.

Speakers for the “Extreme Weather” session on Thursday, April 18, include:
– Alice LeBlanc, former head of the Office of Environment and Climate Change at American International Group (AIG), where she designed and implemented AIG’s global corporate climate change strategy. AIG suffered losses of $1.4 billion as a result of hurricane Sandy.

• Margarett Jolly, Distributed Generation Ombudsman for Con Edison, will present the electric utility’s point of view on extreme weather mitigation.

• Drew Torbin, VP-Renewable Energy at ProLogis, will talk about the potential of commercial solar to improve resiliency in natural disasters. ProLogis is one of the world’s largest commercial real estate firms, managing over 500,000 million square feet of industrial space in 22 countries.

• Patricia Hoffman, Assistant Secretary, Department of Energy, Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, will discuss grid reliability and energy security.

Renewable energy can slow the pace of climate change by displacing fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But only recently has it become clear that renewable energy can save lives and money during and after extreme weather events, through “islanded” microgrids that combine renewable energy with backup storage, and maintain local power when the grid goes down.

Hurricane Sandy, which left 8.2 million people without power for weeks on end, is estimated to cost at least $60 billion. Half of that amount is from the loss of business, mainly due to power failures, while the rest is from property destruction.

About the American Solar Energy Society:

Established in 1954, the nonprofit American Solar Energy Society (ASES) is the nation’s leading association of solar professionals and advocates. Our mission is to inspire an era of energy innovation and speed the transition to a sustainable energy economy. ASES leads national efforts to increase the use of solar energy and other sustainable technologies through the publication of the award-winning SOLAR TODAY magazine, the ASES National Solar Tour – the largest grassroots solar event in the world, and the the ASES National Solar Conference. For more information about ASES and the SOLAR 2013 conference please visit http://www.ases.org/solar2013