Plenary Speakers
Terry Collins is Thomas Lord Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Institute for Green Science, Carnegie Mellon University and is a champion in the field of green chemistry. Collins obtained his B.Sc. (1974), M.Sc. (1975), and Ph.D. (1978) degrees from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. After postdoctoral work at Stanford University, he joined the faculty of Caltech in 1980 and the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University in 1987. He has a number of research awards, including the 1998 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. He has been recognized internationally for his work in creating a new class of oxidation catalysts with the potential for enormous, positive impact on the environment. Dr. Collins serves on the editorial advisory boards of C&E News and Environmental Chemistry and is associate editor for the Americas of the journal “Green Chemistry.”
Douglas Dahle is Principal Program Manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO. He obtained a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and got his Professional Engineer license in Virginia. Since 1992, he has provided advice, consultation and technical policy support to the Department of Energy's Office of Federal Energy Management Programs (FEMP). He has key expertise in assisting Federal agency implementation of Energy Savings Performance Contracts and other innovative financing mechanisms for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. He leads an NREL team lead conducting GIS based analyses and reports on Renewable Energy Potential for several federal agencies (BLM, USFS, DOE Legacy Management) to assess renewable energy production potential on federal lands. Mr. Dahle is an expert technical consultant and facilitator for federal agency implementation of utility scale solar Renewable power generation plants on federal lands.
Lisa Feldt is the Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER). In that capacity, she is responsible for managing EPA’s hazardous and solid waste management programs, hazardous waste cleanup programs including RCRA corrective action, Superfund and federal facilities cleanup and redevelopment, Brownfields program, oil spill prevention and response program, underground storage tank program, and emergency response program.
Lisa joined OSWER in November 2009 at the request of Administrator Lisa Jackson. Previously, she ran an environmental consulting firm focused on conducting regulatory reviews and assessing environmental liabilities for numerous industry and governmental clients. Prior to that, Lisa had a long history of federal service at both the Department of Energy (DOE) and EPA. While at DOE, she managed the nation's largest cleanup program, the remediation of the country's nuclear facilities and sites that were used in the nuclear weapons program during World War II and the Cold War. She also served as Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management, where she was responsible for all aspects of the nuclear cleanup program. During her tenure at EPA, Lisa was one of the key individuals responsible for the establishment and implementation of the technical and regulatory components to the Superfund program. She was also instrumental in the development of the National Radon program to address radon in schools and homes throughout the country. Lisa received her degree in Civil Engineering from George Washington University. She is a public servant at heart and is honored to be back in federal service at EPA.
Curtis "Curt" Spalding, has extensive experience in the environmental protection field as an advocate, policy analyst and administrator. For almost 20 years, he served as Executive Director of Save The Bay in Rhode Island, a nationally recognized, 20,000-member environmental advocacy and education organization. He established the Narragansett BayKeeper and Habitat Restoration programs which reconnected Save The Bay to ecologically important Bay issues and oversaw the successful completion of the $9 million Explore The Bay Campaign and construction of the Save The Bay Center at Fields Point in Providence, RI. Prior to joining Save The Bay, Spalding was an Environmental Protection Specialist and Presidential Management Intern at EPA’s offices in Boston and Washington, D.C. Spalding received his bachelor’s degree from Hobart College and an M.P.A. from SUNY at Albany in Albany, NY.
Lucy Edmondson is the Deputy Commissioner for Policy and Planning at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP). As Deputy Commissioner, Ms. Edmondson is leading MassDEP toward achieving priorities that include addressing climate change, managing water resources, recycling and reusing solid waste, redeveloping brownfields, and reducing toxics use and emerging contaminants. Ms. Edmondson was at the New England Office of the U.S. EPA in Boston for 13 years. At the EPA she advanced the New England Office's clean energy and clean diesel programs.
Ms. Edmondson holds an undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College in Maine, and a Master’s Degree in Environmental Policy from Tufts University in Medford.
Venture Capital Plenary Panel
Moderator: Carlos Pachon of EPA's Office of Superfund Remediation
and Technology Innovation
Panelists: Marc Faecher, TRC Companies, Inc.; Mary K. McClellan, Environmental Finance; Bill Penn, Clean Land Fund
The panel will focus on the important topic of financing greener cleanups and discuss current trends in the field. The panel will include several experts with backgrounds related to financing environmental technologies and Brownfields redevelopment who will provide their perspectives and share their experiences with conference attendees. Panelists will provide perspectives on equity fund sources that finance innovations in environmental technologies, identifying parties and aligning interests to foster innovation in environmental cleanup, and understanding the role developers play in reducing the environmental footprint of site remediation and redevelopment efforts.
Marc Faecher is responsible for the management of TRC’s Exit Strategy® environmental liability transfer portfolio. In this role, he manages and oversees the legal, business and technical aspects of each of the sites within the portfolio. Encompassing more than 100 main sites and hundreds of ancillary facilities, the aggregate remediation value across TRC’s Exit Strategy portfolio exceeds $550 Million, backed by greater than $1.4 Billion in Cleanup Cost Cap/Stop Loss and Blended Finite Risk insurance coverage. Mr. Faecher has structured transactions, including liability transfer programs using TRC’s Exit Strategy Program to (i) enable the acquisition and redevelopment of contaminated Brownfield sites; (ii) resolve sites through bankruptcy proceedings; (iii) settle complex multi-party contribution and cost recovery litigation; (iv) resolve major Superfund liability; and (v) facilitate merger and acquisition transactions. Throughout his career, Mr. Faecher has conducted due diligence, and structured, closed and managed transactions involving billions of dollars of environmental liability and cumulative assets valued in excess of several billions of dollars. Mr. Faecher has remediation risk management and cost reduction experience at hundreds of sites under various State and Federal cleanup programs throughout the country. TRC Companies, Inc. (NYSE: TRR) is an engineering, consulting, and construction management firm that provides integrated services to the environmental, energy, infrastructure, and real estate markets and has pioneered the concept of environmental liability transfer.
Mary McClellan is a Senior Financial Advisor with expertise in debt and equity financing and funding mechanisms in the private and public sectors. While at JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America, Ms. McClellan financed companies in technology, industry, energy, public utilities, and real estate. Subsequently she used this experience at The World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and The Nature Conservancy to create innovative financing for green technology, renewable energy, and climate change projects. For the IFC, Ms. McClellan was instrumental in creating a $100 million energy efficiency program and financing new ventures in alternative energy. She assembled project financing for energy efficiency and green technology in Eastern Europe, and analyzed the financial viability and projected rates of return for environmental remediation and sustainable growth ventures. With both The World Bank and The Nature Conservancy, she structured new finance and market mechanisms, as well as financial risk diversification, for environmental ventures. Ms. McClellan also worked with the U.S. State Department, USAID and private firms to obtain over $90 million of environmental financing, including debt-for-nature swaps, trust funds, and private equity for environmental projects. She is a Senior Advisor for a current financing project in Bolivia, and on the Boards of the Women's Council on Energy and the Environment (WCEE), and Women in Technology, in Washington, DC. Multilingual, Mary has a B.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan, an M.A from Tufts University and an M.B.A. from Columbia University.
Bill Penn is the Principal of the Environmental Financial Advisor LLL, an independent consulting firm which provides financial advisory services to nonprofit organizations, businesses and governments on Brownfields finance issues. He was the financial administrator for the construction of a new $10.1 million Sewer Treatment Plant. To date he is responsible for arranging $28 million of financing including the first $14.45 million Tax-Exempt General Obligation Bonds through a Special Taxing District for a Brownfields development project. He has also structured Tax Lien Sales and issued TANs. Currently he is the financial administrator for a $1.3 million DECD Infrastructure Grant. Internationally, he has been a senior financial advisor to the Ukraine Ministry of Finance assisting them in developing a municipal capital market for the Ukraine through the establishment of the Municipal Development Fund which was to be funded by a $150 million loan from the World Bank. His other international assignments have include developing a Regional Environmental Action Plan for the Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia funded by the World Bank and developing environmental infrastructure financing mechanisms in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and the Slovak Republic - all funded by USAID. Bill is also the founder and President of the Clean Land Fund (www.cleanlandfund.org), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the remediation and redevelopment of Brownfields for public benefit purposes. Bill has been an Adjunct Professor at Baruch College of the City University of New York teaching real estate finance and is a guest lecturer at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.