Introducing Clare Giesen

It is my pleasure to announce the arrival of a new NDNer this past week, Clare Giesen who will coordinate and direct our new Electricity 2.0 initiative.   Clare joing our team is one more sign of the momentum emerging around E2.0 as new consensus is emerging in the clean energy community that the outdated architecture of the electricity sector is itself a barrier to innovation and clean technology.

Clare brings to her new role at NDN a wealth of high level energy experience.  She served as White House Liason in the US Department of Energy during the Clinton Administration working on such important issues as electricity restructuring and incentives for renewable energy.  She served as a senior advisor in the Rural Utilities Service within the Department of Agriculture, helping to secure grants for renewable energy for rural cooperatives.  A native of Texas, she served as Chief of Staff to Congressman Michael Andrews. She comes to us from a position as Executive Director of the National Women's Political Caucus.  We are excited and happy to have her on board as part of the E2.0 team.

The postponement of action by Congress on climate legislation this year only underscores the need for new creative approaches to accelerating the development and deployment of new energy technologies, nowhere more than in the electricity sector which is responsible for a large share of pollutants from fossil fuels yet is also on the brink of a clean technology revolution.

This fall, NDN's E2.0 project has an ambitious agenda to hold events on Electricity 2.0, bring together more stakeholders and advance understanding of the electricity network, its potential and what policy changes can accelerate Electricity 2.0 to unleash a renewable revolution.  We are going to be looking specifically at barriers to free trade in electricity, barriers to microgrids, new platforms for economic activity around enterprise power, how to build more redundancy and capacity into the network to improve resilience how to how to advance the Smart Grid, and how to accelerate the uptake of renewables.

I encourage everyone in the NDN community to get to know clare.  You can reach her by email at cgiesen@ndn.org.