Denver, Colorado May 13-17

Boulder, Colo., Feb. 22, 2012 – Dorothy Robyn, Ph.D., Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Installations and Environment, will address the World Renewable Energy Forum (WREF 2012) in Denver, May 13-17.

Also joining the distinguished list of speakers will be Mohamed El-Ashry, Senior Fellow of the United Nations Foundation; Jacques Kimman, Ph.D., Professor of Renewable Energy at Zuyd University in the Netherlands; and Michael Eckhart, President of the American Council on Renewable Energy.

Dr. Robyn oversees U.S. military bases worldwide, covering 28 million acres of land with 300,000 buildings and other structures valued at more than $800 billion. Her responsibilities include policy, programs and budgets related to the management of the physical infrastructure as well as environmental cleanup, conservation and stewardship. She leads the Department's effort to improve the energy security of its bases, through reduced demand for traditional energy, development of renewable sources on-base, and use of the installations as a test bed for next-generation energy technologies. Prior to joining DoD in 2009, she was a principal with The Brattle Group, an economic consulting firm. From 1993-2001, she was Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and senior staff member of the White House National Economic Council. From 1983-1987, she was an assistant professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Mohamed El-Ashry is Senior Fellow with the UN Foundation. Beginning in 1991 he served as Chairman of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), adding the title CEO from 1994 to July 2003. Prior to joining the GEF he served as the Chief Environmental Adviser to the President and Director of the Environment Department at the World Bank, as Senior Vice President of the World Resources Institute (WRI), and as Director of Environmental Quality with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Jacques Kimman is Professor in Renewable Energy at Zuyd University in Heerlen, The Netherlands. After finishing his Ph.D. in Amsterdam on multiphoton laser spectroscopy, he worked on industrial R&D at IBM and Océ. In 1992 he became program manager for solar energy research in the Netherlands. As head of the Strategy Department at Agentschap nl, an agency of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, he worked on implementation strategies for renewable energy systems. He is the leader of the subtask Energy Efficient Cities of Annex 51 of the International Energy Agency (IEA).

After a pioneering energy study funded by the Carter Administration in the 1970s, Michael Eckhart developed a solar energy project for India and Africa. He was later a three-time participant in the Clinton Global Initiative. In 2001 he was one of the founders of the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE), which aims at creating "all renewable" energy for the United States. Now the president of ACORE, he participates in renewable energy policy affairs across the globe.

For the first time, the American Solar Energy Society's National Solar Conference will be held under the same roof with the biennial World Renewable Energy Congress. The combined event is WREF 2012. The conference will draw prominent speakers and technical presentations from universities, renewable energy laboratories, installations and industries around the world. WREF 2012 will examine how renewable energy technologies address the world's economic, environmental and security challenges at every scale, from off-grid villages to gigawatt power plants.

To register for the conference, visit www.wref2012.org

WREF 2012 is presented by the American Solar Energy Society, the World Renewable Energy Network, the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Colorado Renewable Energy Society and the International Solar Energy Society. Conference program chair is Dr. Chuck Kutscher, principal engineer and group manager of NREL's Thermal Systems Group. Co-chairs are Professor Ali Sayigh of the World Renewable Energy Congress and Susan Greene, president of ASES.