The Environmental and Energy Management program organized and conducted an important session at the October 5-7, 2011 Symposium that was held on GW’s Foggy Bottom Campus.
Sponsored by the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality and hosted by GW, the GreenGov Symposium was focused on the performance goals set by President Obama in his Executive Order 13514 on Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance signed on October 5, 2009. The Executive Order commits the Federal Government to leading by example in its operations by requiring Federal agencies to set greenhouse gas reduction targets, increase energy efficiency, reduce fleet petroleum consumption, conserve water, reduce waste, support sustainable communities, and leverage Federal purchasing power to promote environmentally-responsible products and technologies.Topics covered at the 2010 GreenGov Symposium included clean energy, water efficiency, getting to zero waste, greening the supply chain, and sustainable communities.
The session organized by EEM was entitled "Federal Greenhouse Gas Reporting and Metrics," and was conducted on October 5. The session was extremely popular, with well more than 150 people packed into a room designed to hold only 100 participants, and more spilling out into the hallway. The popularity was due to new requirements being imposed on the private and public sectors for greenhouse gas emissions reporting and the fact that we assembled probably the four most knowledgeable people available on this topic.
EEM Doctoral candidate was instrumental in arranging the speakers for the session, and EEM Lead Professor Jonathan Deason chaired the event.
Speakers and topics at the session are summarized below:
• Horst Greczmiel, Associate Director, Council on Environmental Quality (and holder of an LL.M. degree in environmental law from GW) discussed the forthcoming NEPA GHG guidance that will address the issue of how GHG emissions are to be operated into NEPA compliance processes, including the intersection between the draft NEPA guidance and federal GHG reporting requirements.
• Katherine Sibold, Manager of the Integrated Program Strategies Program, Division of Climate Change, at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, discussed the new federal Mandatory Reporting Rule that will require all facilities emitting more than 25,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent to report such emissions (estimated to be more than 10,000 facilities nationwide).
• Mary Sotos, World Resources Institute and co-author of the new GHG Protocol for the US Public Sector, discussed the recently issued public sector protocol in which the World Resources Institute has been heavily involved.
• Leslie Gillespie-Marthaler, Senior Program Manager, Council on Environmental Quality, explained EO 13514 and the federal guidance to implement it, including the federal GHG reporting protocol and where we are in the process.
The Symposium overview brochure can be seen here.
The Program brochure can be seen here.
More information about GreenGov and the GreenGov Symposium is available at www.whitehouse.gov/greengov.