Kate Hanley | November 13, 2014
For the past seven years, EDF Climate Corps fellows have delivered incredible results: $1.4 billion in energy savings identified since 2008. Since I started working at EDF over two years ago, I’ve always known that to be true. But this summer was the first time I saw it first hand, working to support a subset of this year’s 117 amazing fellows.
Two weeks ago, at the 5th Annual EDF Climate Corps Network Event, we celebrated the great work of all the fellows, participating organizations, alumni and partners to cut costs and emissions. We also recognized three outstanding fellows in our first ever Fellowship Awards.
Diane Regas, Senior Vice President for Programs at EDF, and Carl Ferenbach, Chairman of the Board of EDF, co-presented the awards during a reception on the 31st floor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, with spectacular views of the Boston harbor. The location could not have been better to recognize the achievements of our award winners.
This year’s cohort of fellows was truly an outstanding group of future energy leaders. The 2014 fellows were chosen from our largest applicant pool yet: 700 students for 117 spots. And, they worked on a wider range of projects than ever before, looking for energy savings across entire value chains. All told, this year’s fellows identified over 500,000 metric tons of annual CO2 reductions, equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of about 115,000 cars.
With such an amazing cohort of fellows, choosing winners was a difficult task, but EDF Climate Corps is excited and proud to announce the winners of the 2014 Fellowship Awards.
The Best Business Case Award is presented to Nicholas Zuba, fellow at CA Technologies.
This award is given to the fellow with the most compelling business case for his or her project. Our winner had the daunting task of finding energy savings at a company that has hired EDF Climate Corps fellows since 2010 and invested millions in efficiency improvements. Building on the work of previous fellows, he explored ideas that could deliver big results – like variable frequency drives on chillers and real-time energy management dashboards. The selection committee and external reviewers noted this was one of the strongest business cases they had ever seen.
The Innovation Award is presented to Rob Youngs, fellow at The City of Los Angeles.
The innovation award is given to the fellow whose project uses creative, out-of-the-box approaches to break down barriers to energy efficiency. Our winner started the summer with a clearly defined project: analyze the results from energy-efficiency upgrades in a large portfolio of buildings. But then he saw an opportunity to have a much bigger impact. He produced a comprehensive roadmap that the organization could follow to cut energy use by 14 percent across 500 buildings and save $2 million in net operating costs in the first year.
The Collaboration Award is presented to Fatou Jabbie, fellow at Northrop Grumman.
The collaboration award is given to the fellow who catalyzed collaboration on energy solutions across the EDF Climate Corps network. Our winner was one of the most frequent contributors to the EDF Climate Corps LinkedIn group, and she organized weekly conference calls for all of the fellows working in data centers. Her approach benefitted not only her own project, but those of other fellows as well. She clearly recognized and embraced the value of EDF Climate Corps as a network.
About EDF Climate Corps
EDF Climate Corps (edfclimatecorps.org) taps the talents of tomorrow’s leaders to save energy, money and the environment by placing specially trained EDF fellows in companies, cities and universities as dedicated energy problem solvers. Working with hundreds of leading organizations, EDF Climate Corps has uncovered nearly $1.4 billion in energy savings. For more information, visit edfclimatecorps.org. Read our blog at edfclimatecorps.org/blog. Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/edfbiz and on Facebook at facebook.com/EDFClimateCorps.