Professor Scott Sklar, Director of Sustainable Energy in the GW Engineering-hosted GW Environmental and Energy Management Institute (EEMI), is serving as the General Chairman of the 2024 Annual Conference of the American Solar Energy Society, founded in 1956. This major event, entitled “ASES National Solar Conference, SOLAR 2024: Connecting Technology & Policy” will be held at GW on May 20-23, 2024.
The National Solar Conference is America’s leading conference on the emerging trends, technology, and opportunities shaping the new energy economy. The American Solar Energy Society’s cutting-edge conference series introduces attendees to the leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs moving the industry forward. With the solar energy and energy efficiency sectors changing at an unprecedented pace, this conference helps participants understand the changes and uncover the billion-dollar opportunities. ASES supports the global initiative that a world equitably transformed to 100% renewable energy is an urgent necessity.
The ASES National Solar Conference, SOLAR 2024: Connecting Technology & Policy will elevate public, institutional, and governmental awareness of the critical role solar energy is playing in the global energy landscape. It will promote ASES’ overall goal to “accelerate equitable solar adoption and universal sustainable living by educating and building community.” The conference will focus on research models, examples, and tools for negotiating the challenges to advancing renewables by following justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) principles.
Instructions on submitting proposals and application for scholarship opportunities appear on the ASES SOLAR 2024 Conference website at https://ases.org/conference/.
Professor Sklar has served as the EEMI Director of Sustainable Energy, well as the acting Director of the GW Solar Institute, since 2015. For the past 23 years, he also has served as the President of the D.C.-based company The Stella Group that helps to facilitate the projects of clean energy companies around the world.
Prior joining EEMI and forming The Stellar Group, Professor Sklar worked for 10 years as an energy and military aide to Senator Jacob Javits on New York, three years as both the Washington, D.C. Director of the National Center for Appropriate Technology (a federally-funded applied clean energy technical center), and two years as Political Director for The Solar Lobby founded by the big-nine environmental groups. From 1985 to 2000, he served as the Executive Director of both the National Bio Energy Industries Association and the Solar Energy Industries Association in Washington, D.C. for 15 years.
During his Senate tenure, Professor Sklar co-founded the Congressional Solar Caucus that led many of the innovative legislative initiatives promoting renewable energy in the 1970’s. Professor Sklar is co-author of two books, The Forbidden Fuel, published in 1985 and updated and re-released in early 2010 and the Consumer Guide to Solar Energy, which recently was re- released for its third printing.
Professor Sklar frequently provides tours for GW faculty and students of his off-the-grid solar home and also his office building in Arlington, Virginia. The home has a 6.4 KW muti-PV solar
electric system tied to a large battery bank, solar water heating, passive solar building features, energy efficient fixtures and appliances, a photovoltaic roof vent fan, and an Earthlink direct exchange geothermal heat pump for space heating and cooling, as well as advanced Sage electrochromic glass sunroom windows that darken/lighten via electricity.
His tours also include The Stella Group's Virginia office building (behind Prf. Sklar’s residence), which also is completely grid independent, using with PV roofing shingles, small wind turbine, hydrogen fuel cell, all tied toa web-enabled battery bank. His 2022 Nissan Leaf SL is also 100% powered from his renewable energy systems.