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Champions of Change: Corporate Environmental Leaders

April 11, 2012 at 2:39 PM ET by Rohan Patel
Summary: 
The White House hosts an event to honor individuals for demonstrating ways that corporate environmental leadership makes sense both for business and for American communities.

Across the country, millions of people wake up every day with a mission to make their workplace and their community a better place. Tomorrow, at a Champions of Change event that you can watch live, the White House will honor an extraordinary group of these Americans. 

This event will highlight individuals who are demonstrating how environmental leadership contributes not just to the well-being of our planet, but to our economic growth and our public health. Every day, these Champions rise to meet some of the most significant environmental challenges of the 21st century. 

The President is also a leader on sustainability. He has taken unprecedented action to build the foundation for a clean energy economy and protect our environment, including by investing in and supporting leaders in the private sector and in communities across the country. Just a few of the Administration's actions include:

  • Adopting historic fuel economy standards that will double the fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks by 2025, save consumers $1.7 trillion at the pump, eliminate 6 billion metric tons of CO2, and cut oil consumption by 2.2 million barrels per day.
     
  • Partnering with dozens of CEOs, mayors, university presidents and others to commit nearly $4 billion in combined federal and private sector dollars for energy efficiency upgrades to buildings over the next 2 years at no net cost to taxpayers.
     
  • Investing $90 billion in clean energy through the Recovery Act, which has supported hundreds of thousands of jobs and put us on track to double US renewable generation by 2012. 
     
  • Directing the Federal Government – the largest energy consumer in the U.S. economy – to dramatically reduce energy use, waste and carbon pollution. These reductions can avoid up to $11 billion dollars in energy costs and eliminate the equivalent of 235 million barrels of oil over the next decade.

We all have a role to play in building a more sustainable future – for our organizations, for our communities, and for our country. 

Please tune in to learn from these Champions' experiences, and see if you can apply the lessons they've learned in your own organization. We know you will be inspired.  

The program will begin at 1:30pm EDT on April 12, 2012 at: obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/champions.  

Rohan Patel is Associate Director for Public Engagement at the Council on Environmental Quality