New energy meeting coming to Omaha

WASHINGTON — Omaha will host the first regional follow-up meeting to a White House conference on spurring new energy advancements, the White House announced Friday.

The June 16 meeting in Omaha will bring together area business leaders, government officials and philanthropic organizations to continue discussions from Friday's conference about how to support small businesses and accelerate energy innovation, all with an eye on creating more jobs.

The Omaha meeting is an opportunity to focus the discussion on what new energy advancements could mean for the Midwest.

Several Nebraskans participated in the White House conference, including Kristi Wamstad-Evans, who represented Omaha as its sustainability coordinator.

Wamstad-Evans said having Omaha host the first regional follow-up session makes sense given the energy-related work already under way in the area. For example, Omaha and Lincoln recently were awarded a $10 million competitive federal grant to retrofit old buildings in established “green zones.”

She also noted work being done at the Peter Kiewit Institute and companies such as Gallup.
“In Omaha, we have very practical innovative thinkers,” she said.

It also didn’t hurt that the lead coordinator for Friday’s conference was Howard Buffett, a domestic policy adviser at the White House and the grandson of Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett.

Former U.S. Senate candidate Scott Kleeb, a Democrat, also attended the conference. His company in Hastings, Neb., performs energy efficiency assessments and retrofits on homes with no upfront costs to the owner.

Over time, the company receives a cut of the savings the homeowners see on their utility bills until the cost of the work has been covered.

Kleeb said it’s an innovative way to finance home energy improvements for middle-income families who make too much to qualify for certain federal programs, but don’t have the extra money sitting around to pay for the upfront expenses. Kleeb said Buffett invited him to attend the conference after hearing about the company’s work.

Kleeb said there’s a lot of potential for energy savings in the residential sector.

“Folks have gotten really excited about it because they’ve been scratching their heads for 30 years saying, ‘How do we figure this out?’” Kleeb said. “We found a way to figure it out.”

The philanthropic community was represented at Friday’s conference by Jeff Yost, president of the Nebraska Community Foundation.

The foundation can help when it comes to educating people and fostering energy-related business opportunities, he said. Energy efficiency holds a lot of promise for helping low- and middle-income families.

“If they can reduce their utility bills ... that creates disposable income for other things,” Yost said.

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