The Dean's Council Breakfast Club is the Bren School's primary forum for sharing leading-edge research and engaging our support community in discussion about a range of issues relevant to environmental science, If you are interested in joining the community of Bren School supporters either as a donor or Corporate Partner please contact Jennifer Purcell Deacon at (805) 893-5743. We look forward to having your involvement! |
The Breakfast Club is free of charge and is open to Corporate Partners, current Bren School donors and invited guests. The Club meets quarterly from 7:30-9:00 a.m. at the University Club of Santa Barbara, 1332 Santa Barbara Street. To receive an invitation with details, please contact Jennifer Purcell Deacon by e-mail or by calling (805) 893-5743. The next Breakfast Club Meeting: Friday, May 1, 2009, 7:30 a.m., University Club Topic:Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Overhead versus Underground Power Distribution in Southern California Guest Speaker: Sarah Bumby, Katya Druzhinina, Rebe Feraldi, and Danae Werthman.
Past Breakfast Club Topics and Speakers Topic: The Carbon Disclosure Project Guest Speaker: Michael Wadden Michael Wadden is a senior executive at Accenture, with more than 15 years of experience at the global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company. In his most recent role, Mr. Wadden led the formation of new businesses in the pharmaceutical, digital content and entertainment, and environmental sustainability areas. Combined, these new business entities are expected to contribute more than $1 billion of revenue over the next five years. He is currently involved in launching a new business called Accenture Smart Building Services and is helping to grow Accenture’s sustainability consulting practice. Mr. Wadden graduated from the University of Kansas with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. Launched in 2000, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is the largest repository of corporate greenhouse gas emissions data in the world, with 77 percent of Fortune 500 companies signed up. CDP's 385 signatory investors have $57 trillion in assets under management and include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays Group, and Mitsubishi UFJ. Accenture is helping to define and build the capabilities required for the CDP to be successful.
Topic: Red State, Blue State, Green State: The Politics of the Environment Guest Speaker: Sarah Anderson, Bren School Assistant Professor – Environmental Politics Sarah Anderson arrived at the Bren School in 2007, bringing valuable expertise in political structures and dynamics, which profoundly influence environmental policy. Her research interests include legislatures, political parties, public policy, statistical methods, and environmental politics. Those interests are reflected in her experience in Washington, D.C., where she worked as a U.S. congressman’s legislative assistant and also researched legislation to brief members of the House National Parks and Public Lands Subcommittee. Her current projects include an extension of her dissertation work, in which she analyzed (and found serious limitations to) the three main models for predicting government spending at the level of appropriations bills. In other projects, she is working to quantify the impact of environmentally concerned constituents on congressional voting, and seeking to determine the degree to which environmental voting, agricultural voting, and voting in other policy areas reflect more general voting in Congress.
Topic: Green Pieces: A Business Plan for Green Modular Housing Guest Speakers: MESM Students from the Bren Class of 2008, Nicole Dejonghe, Max DuBuisson, Jamie Britto, and Kelly Schmandt.
Topic:The British Columbia Connection and Renewables for California Guest Speaker: Paul B. Manson, President and CEO, Sea Breeze Power Corporation Paul Manson has over 10 years of experience in the renewable energy industry. He has fostered the growth of several companies in their start-up stage, and has extensive experience in the administration of public companies. In addition to serving as President and CEO of Sea Breeze Power Corp., Mr. Manson is also President of a management consulting firm, Banks Island Management Services Inc. With broad experience in the acquisition of assets and a strong vision for a sustainable future, Mr. Manson was instrumental in Sea Breeze Power Corp.’s (then International Powerhouse Energy Corp.) acquisition of private wind energy development company, Sea Breeze Energy Inc. Since then, Mr. Manson has contributed significantly to the growth of British Columbia’s wind energy industry, and through the initiation of independent transmission projects through a joint venture, the growth prospects for British Columbia’s Independent Power Producers industry.
Topic: Climate Change & Water: Rights and Runoff. Guest Speaker: Dr. Christina Tague, Assistant Professor at the Bren School. Dr. Tague, studies interactions between hydrology and ecosystem processes and explores how eco-hydrologic systems are altered by climate and land used changes. Dr. Tague is one of the principle developers of RHESSys, Regional Hydro-ecological simulation system, a coupled model of spatially distributed carbon, water and nitrogen cycling. This modeling approach seeks to provide science-based information on spatial patterns of vulnerability in water quantity, and ecosystem health.
Topic: California’s Energy-Water Nexus. This breakfast presentation described the inextricable link between energy and water. Although water supplies and energy supplies are thought of by the general public as two separate systems, this paradigm discounts the fact that energy itself consumes significant quantities of water. Likewise, it is also overlooked that the distribution of water requires large amounts of energy. This interdependence of energy and water is known as the energy-water nexus.
Guest Speakers: MESM Students from the Bren Class of 2007, James Lee Stacy Tellinghuisen, Bliss Dennen, Dana Larson and Cheryl Lee. In California, where water supplies are already limited, the effects of climate change and regional population growth threaten the future available supply of water for energy production. Meanwhile, rising prices of fossil fuels and concern over greenhouse gas emissions have led to broader interest and investment in renewable energy sources. Renewable energy sources not only reduce dependence on fossil fuels which emit the greenhouse gases linked to climate change, but in some cases also reduce the amount of freshwater required for energy generation. Other ways to reduce these freshwater inputs are through the use of reclaimed water and technologies such as IGCC and dry cooling. This presentation quantifies the amount of freshwater required to produce energy for different types of primary energy sources and power generation technologies. This project uses this information to compare the water input requirements of several different energy portfolios, using California as a regional case study. To learn more see http://fiesta.bren.ucsb.edu/~energywater/
Topic: Embracing the Environment. This breakfast presentation described the vision and policy behind Toyota’s commitment to the environment and its efforts to meet that commitment in North America and globally. Bill Duff received his B.Sc (Hons) Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1968. Over the next 10 years, he held positions in Perkins Engines’ Research Division, Product Planning and Marketing Planning. In 1978, he moved, to the United States, to run their North American Marketing Planning Department and eventually headed up their Manufacturing, Procurement and Supply Division.
Topic: The Problem of Water Guest Speaker: Gary Libecap, Distinguished Professor of Corporate Environmental Management, Bren School
May 5, 2006 Tom Umenhofer, Vice President and Technical Director, ENTRIX, Inc. Topic: In the Wake of Katrina February 3, 2006 Ernst von Weizsäcker, Dean, Bren School October 7, 2005 Tom Lovejoy, President, Heinz Center May 6, 2005 Ann Notthoff, California Advocacy Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council February 11, 2004 Dennis Aigner, Professor, Bren School. Topic: Environment and the Bottom Line October 8, 2004 Jerry Clifford, Deputy Assistant Administrator, US EPA, International Affairs. Topic: USEPA's Role in Emerging Global Environmental Issues May 7, 2004 Bob Goldberg, Professor, Department of Molecular, Cell & Developmental Biology, UCLA. Topic: Super Plants for the 21st Century February 13, 2004 Oran Young, Professor & Co-Director, Program on Governance for Sustainable Development. Topic: Managing the Global Carbon Cycle: Policies and Measures vs. Targets and Timetables October 2, 2003 Hunter Lenihan, Assistant Professor (Marine Ecology and Resource Conservation), Bren School. Topic: Coral Restoration: Ecology at its Best May 2, 2003 Lynn Scarlett, Assistant Secretary for Policy Management and Budget, U.S. Department of the Interior. Topic: Environmental Entrepreneurship: Moving from Conflict to Cooperation February 7, 2003 B.J. Kirwan, Attorney, Latham & Watkins (Los Angeles). Topic: New federal regulations concerning "New Source Review under the Clean Air Act," recently promulgated by the EPA and sued by several eastern states. October 4, 2002 Dennis Allen, president, Allen Associates; Dean's Council member. Topic: Curitiba, Brazil's Ecological City, Offers Inspiration for an Alternative to Urban Sprawl May 3, 2002 Robert Stephens, Assistant Secretary, California Environmental Protection Agency. Topic: Future Directions in Environmental Policy February 1, 2002 Timothy Cohen, Vice President, URS Corporation. Topic: Boeing and the Environment: Past and Present October 19, 2001 Frank Davis, Professor, Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. Topic: Confronting Climate Change in California May 4, 2001 Jody Freeman, Professor of Law, UCLA. Topic: Trends in Environmental Law and Regulation: The Supreme Court and the Bush Administration February 9, 2001 J. Andrew Hoerner, Senior Research Scholar and Director of Research, Center for a Sustainable Economy (CSE), Washington, DC. Topic: Good Business: Using Market Incentives to Promote Environmental Improvement |
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