President Obama: Beef Up Energy Efficiency

Mitch Kennedy, Build with Nature, LLC

01/30/2009

Name: Dr. Mitch Kennedy, ND, LEED-AP
Business: Build with Nature, LLC
Position: Sr. Sustainability Engineer
NESEA member since: 1993 - 1996 and 2006 - 2008
Website: http://buildwithnature.net/Welcome.html

Business description: Focused upon industrial energy efficiency and carbon footprinting for manufacturing facilities.

How do you define sustainability?
Localized inter-dependence, energy miserly thinking and respect for future generations.

What project are you most proud of?
Locating opportunities for a 70 percent reduction in carbon footprint for a 6.7 MWh energy user all through efficiency improvements.

What energy advice do you have for the new president?
Beef up assistance programs for efficiency, in manufacturing, residential, transportation and transmission and generation. This could reduce our use by 50 percent alone.

What promising technology would you like to know more about?
I am intrigued by small-scale concentrating solar technologies.

What's the public's biggest misunderstanding regarding sustainable energy systems?
That you can power your entire house with a few photovoltaic panels without doing anything to improve the building performance.

What prompted you to join NESEA?
I continue to be impressed with the substance, and uncompromising quality of the publications, workshops and conferences.

What's the most irritating example of 'greenwashing' you can think of?
Lack of full-disclosure. For example, a wall covering product that is touted as Cradle-to-Cradle certified, but only because it can be incinerated in a trash-to-energy plant.