ALBUM – 2024 Energy Vision Awards Celebration & Benefit

Energy Vision held its 18th Annual Leadership Awards event on October 10th in New York City to great acclaim, with about 120 people there for a delightful Fall evening. This year EV’s work marked a new frontier. 

For a decade we have examined clean energy technologies that could move this country toward a sustainable future. But this year we provided the first data-driven roadmap for how the U.S. can reach the climate goal it agreed to under the 2021 Global Methane Pledge to cut methane emissions at least 30% by 2030 (“30×30”). We showed just what technologies and strategies can get us to 30×30 in our report, Meeting the Methane Challenge. According to the international scientific community, meeting this goal is vital if our world is to avoid “runaway” global warming. 

We found that almost half the goal can be achieved by capturing the huge stream of methane emitted by food, manure and other organic wastes. And two Energy Vision awards went to companies that are real leaders in advancing this strategy.

The first Leadership Award went to South Jersey Industries (SJI) for its Linden Renewable Energy project, a massive project in New Jersey that will process an astonishing 40% of the food wastes from New York City in airless anaerobic digester (AD) tanks, so the methane biogases from these wastes don’t escape into the atmosphere. The second award was presented to LoCI Controls and Landfill Group for their initiative doing “real-time” tracking of the methane biogases coming from landfills so these gases can be more efficiently trapped. LoCI captured 32% more methane at one huge landfill in just four years of this tracking.

The final award, for lifetime achievement, went to Joanna Underwood – founder, president emerita and senior adviser to Energy Vision, and founder and longtime president of the environmental group INFORM. She was recognized for her lifelong, pathbreaking environmental leadership across a wide range of issues and sectors, including the organic waste-to-fuel strategy.

The evening concluded with a fun raffle in which winners netted an exclusive lunch with actor and environmental activist Rainn Wilson, trips to an eco-friendly resort in the Dominican Republic, a weekend in a solar house in the beautiful Hudson Valley, NY, wine from the sustainable Hunt Country Vineyards, theater tickets, and priceless original art. We would like to extend our deepest thanks to Jay Bell, the talented designer behind this remarkable event, and to Gordon Donovan for capturing the memorable moments beautifully through his lens.