Ginny Gnadt
Senior Public Relations Specialist
(414) 297-6770, gnadtv@matc.edu

MILWAUKEE (March 12, 2011) – Milwaukee Area Technical College hosted the 8th annual “Green Energy Summit” March 9-12 at the Frontier Airlines Center, 400 W. Wisconsin Ave. The theme of the 2011 summit was “The Green Frontier: Historic Changes, Unprecedented Opportunities,” focusing on promoting investment, development and education for the green global economy.

The public was invited to attend. Students were admitted free of charge. The summit was a collaboration of business, education and government entities.

The first three days featured plenary and breakout sessions with local, regional, national and international experts. Workshops and field trips were offered on March 12. The full agenda is available at http://greenenergysummit.org/Portals/0/2011/Documents/2011SummitAgenda.pdf.

Highlighted presentations included:

-- Wednesday, March 9: “Green Business Day.” Featured speakers included Will Allen, director, Growing Power; C.S. Kiang, chairman, Sustainable Development Technology Foundation, and founding dean, College of Environmental Sciences, Beijing University; John Mathews, senior vice president, corporate affairs, and chief sustainability officer, Diversey Corporation; and Andrew Winston, author of Green to Gold and Green Recovery.

-- Thursday, March 10: “Green Energy Day.” Highlighted speakers included Larry Kazmerski, executive director, Science & Technology Partnerships, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL); Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth, (sic) Deep Economy and The End of Nature; Naomi Oreskes, author of Merchants of Doubt; Lindene Patton, chief climate product officer, Zurich Financial Services; and Mary Ann Wright, vice president, global technology and innovation accelerator, Johnson Controls Power Solutions.

-- Friday, March 11: “Green Career Pathways & Sustainability Day.” Featured speakers included David Foster, executive director, BlueGreen Alliance; David Orr, author of Design on the Edge: The Making of a High Performance Building; Thomas Llewellyn Wright, scientist emeritus, U.S. Geological Survey, and research associate, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University; and Judy Ziewacz, director, Wisconsin Office of Energy Independence.

Major sponsors included the Wisconsin Technical College System, the University of Wisconsin System, Johnson Controls, A.O. Smith Corporation, the Wisconsin Energy Corporation, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Wisconsin Office of Energy Independence.

Conference details for the 2012 summit as well as videos and presentations from the 2011 are available at the summit webpage: www.greenenergysummit.us.