Governor O’Malley Appoints Leading Educator, Solar Innovator to Board of Maryland Clean Energy Center

Gov. Martin O’Malley

Gov. Martin O’Malley has appointed a prominent academic researcher and a solar industry finance expert to fill two vacancies on the Board of Directors of the Maryland Clean Energy Center.

Eric Wachsman, PhD, Director of the University of Maryland’s Energy Research Center, will serve through June 2015.

 

George Ashton, co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer of Sol Systems, Inc., a national leader in aggregating solar renewable energy credits, is fulfilling a term that runs through September 2012.



Eric Wachsman, PhD



Wachsman and Ashton join existing members of the Center’s Board of Directors who oversee its mission of helping consumers, supporting businesses and advising lawmakers in Maryland as the state scales up its clean energy industries and energy efficiency initiatives. Other Board members include Jeremy Butz, Carol Collins, Ken Connolly, Jeff Eckel – who serves as the current Board Chairman – and Malcolm Woolf, Director of the Maryland Energy Administration.

“I am so proud to announce the appointment of two very talented individuals to the Board of the Maryland Clean Energy Center,” said Governor O’Malley. “As Maryland continues to emerge as a national leader in clean energy, their leadership will help us move toward a better and more sustainable future for our children. I’d like to thank them for their willingness to step up and serve the people of our State as we work to find innovative ways to reach our clean energy goals in the toughest of times.”

I. Katherine Magruder

“We are privileged to have two such high-caliber and forceful clean energy advocates join us as we move into our second year of operation,” said I. Katherine Magruder, Executive Director of the Maryland Clean Energy Center. “They will help facilitate the adoption and generation of clean energy along with the new jobs, consumer savings and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that come with it.”

George Ashton

In addition to his leadership of UM Energy Research Center, Wachsman holds the William L. Crentz Centennial Chair in Energy Research at the University of Maryland, College Park. Previously, Wachsman was Director of the Florida Institute for Sustainable Energy and a professor of materials science and engineer at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He has authored dozens of research papers since beginning his career as an engineer for chip-maker Intel. He earned his PhD and Masters of Science from Stanford University. Wachsman is filling out the remainder of the Board term served by Dan Goodman.

Ashton has been instrumental in growing Sol Systems into one of the country’s leading aggregators of solar renewable energy credits, or SRECs. Solar system owners earn 1 SREC for every 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity their systems generate each year. Before Sol Systems, Ashton was a Senior Account Executive at Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored enterprise chartered by Congress chartered to provide liquidity and stability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets. Ashton earned his MBA from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University Maryland in College Park.

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Rentricity Supports Pennsylvania American Water Clean Energy Recovery Project

I've been covering renewable energy for sometime now and I am still amazed at all the ways that we are saving energy in this country and around the world once we put our mind to it. Rentricity Inc., the renewable energy recovery company located in New York City, has been selected for Pennsylvania American Water’s first energy recovery project in Butler, PA.


Pennsylvania American Water was recently granted funds in support of the project from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s PEDA program and represents the water company’s first such project in the Commonwealth. Rentricity will be implementing its Flow-to-Wire system to capture excess flow and pressure at the Pennsylvania American Water Oneida Valley Water Treatment Plant to generate ‘green’ electricity.

“Pennsylvania American Water is committed developing clean energy alternatives to offset the rising cost of electricity anticipated in the region,” says Daniel J. Hufton, senior director of production for Pennsylvania American Water. “The energy recovery system will generate clean electricity from gravity flows at our water treatment facility and will be used for power in the plant.”

Rentricity and Pennsylvania American expect the energy recovery installation to be completed and generating clean electricity for Pennsylvania American Water in the latter part of 2011. “The project is another example of water systems stepping up to take advantage of existing untapped pressures and flows within their distribution system to create efficiency and support the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s renewable portfolio standards, says Frank Bursic, Regional Director of Rentricity.

Rentricity has identified 6,500 PRV sites in the US that have the potential to 520 mWs of clean energy from $1.5 billion of installed capital cost, according to the company.

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