Mayor Phil Gordon opening the event at the LEED Certified Phoenix Convention Center! The building has a huge solar panel installation and our light Rail system is "as far as he knows' the only solar rail stop in the country. Mayor Gordon is one of 15 of the country's green mayors. Pretty cool!
Greenhouse gases has been reduced already and by 2025 over 25% of the city will have shade structures to reduce heat island effect. Mayor Gordon cultivated great talent that will remain now that his 2nd term is almost finished. Congrats to Mayor gordon for all his accomplishments and welcome Greg Stanton! Maria Baier, Land Commissioner for the State Land Department, which manages 13% of the land in Arizona. She wants to keep "our product" our land viable. She encourages all od us to keep requesting funding for universities to continue research. Andrew Soulier, Ernst & Young, spoke of the company seeing opportunity in Phoenix for sustainability. He then introduced Ed Fox, Chief Sustainability Officer, APS. Ed went on to say that APS employees volunteer over 165,000 hours doing community service. There are plaques in every conference room at APS regarding sustainability. They expect a 50% growth in population by 2030. APS and other utilities talk about decoupling their service as their existing model for earnings is outdated. As APS continues to reduce their profits to investors, new business models will be implimented. Al Halvorsen, senior Director of Environmental Sustainability, Frito-Lay North America, and drives Pepsico Performance with Purpose program. Frito-Lay has 13 LEED Certified Buildings! They are a HUGE corporation with loads of Brands under their umbrella. They have green teams back in the 90's for each company brand. Their Casa Grande plant was built in 1984. That plant is now almost off the grid! They recycle 75% of their water daily. And they send nothing to the landfills from that plant. This is their showcase plant and it's in AZ! They are using this plant as a benchmark for their other plants. Their business model is now to be authentic & transparent. This is just the start of an all day event with many more speakers to come.