Investors To Meet Policy Makers To Discuss Ways To Foster Clean Energy Entrepreneurship And Green-Collar Job Creation At ACI Home Energy Summit

Online, March 10, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Affordable Comfort, Inc. (ACI), the nation's leading educational resource for home performance and weatherization, is pleased to welcome politicians, private investors, academics and entrepreneurial home performance contractors as they discuss the acceleration of clean energy entrepreneurship and green-collar job creation at the ACI Home Energy Summit in San Francisco, CA, March 28-29, 2011.

The ACI Home Energy Summit is a high-level gathering of industry thought leaders that kicks off the week-long ACI National Home Performance Conference, the largest event of its kind, with an expected 2,000 attendees who are interested in and passionate about improving the energy efficiency, comfort, health, safety and durability of homes.

This year's summit is perfectly aligned with President Obama's Startup America campaign, which was launched at the White House on January 31, 2011, to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation. For the first time in ACI's history, leading venture capital firms, including Ascent Partners Group, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Foundation Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, will join the conversation between the public and private sectors on ways to transform the market for residential energy efficiency retrofits. All the VC firms participating in the summit discussions bring successful experience in greentech/cleantech investments to the conversation.

"The industry has typically been supported by incentive programs that help homeowners afford major energy efficiency upgrades, and that has helped us get this far," says Aaron Goldfeder, Co-Founder and CEO of EnergySavvy, a Seattle-based start-up that connects homeowners with incentive programs and qualified contractors, who will moderate the VC session Attracting Private Capital: Perspectives from Institutional Investors. "But to achieve long-term sustainability and more good jobs in local communities, we have to develop modern policy approaches, attract investment capital and leverage the private industry in our programs. We have been able to grow EnergySavvy substantially thanks to innovative customers and investors who share our vision."

The current speaker roster is as follows (subject to change):

• Senator Olympia Snowe, Republican, Maine (invited)
• U.S. Congressman Peter Welch, Democrat, Vermont (invited)
• Commissioner Karen Douglas, California Energy Commission (invited)
• Adam Siegel, Assistant Vice President, FTI Consulting
• Byron McCann, Managing Partner, Ascent Partners Group and Co-Chair Northwest Energy Angels
• Joshua Raffaelli, Principal, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
• Paul Holland, General Partner, Foundation Capital
• Trae Vassallo, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers
• Aaron Goldfeder, Co-Founder and CEO, EnergySavvy
• Adam Winter, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President of Building Science, Recurve
• Allison Forbes, Labor and Worker Rights, Sierra Club
• Amy Fazio, Executive Director, ACI
• Annette Bubak, Co-Founder and Director of Marketing and Business Development, Distinct ENERGY Performance
• Benjamin Goldstein, EERE Buy American Coordinator and Workforce Guidelines Project Lead, United States Department of Energy
• Bernadette Rivera, Director of Operations, Laborers' International Union of North America (LiUNA)
• Brandon Tinianov, CTO, Serious Materials, Inc.
• Charles Segerstrom, Supervisor of Energy Efficiency Training, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) Energy Training Center
• Chris Dorsi, Managing Partner, Saturn Resource Management Inc.
• David Lee, Director of Residential Building Programs, United States Department of Energy
• David Terry, Executive Director, NASEO (invited)
• Dian Grueneich, Commissioner (former), California Public Utilities Commission
• Dr. Arthur Rosenfeld, Commissioner (former), California Energy Commission
• Dr. Kathleen Hogan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), United States Department of Energy
• Joan Glickman, Special Assistant, United States Department of Energy
• John Hayes, President and COO, AFC First Financial Corporation
• John Tooley, Senior Building Science Consultant, Advanced Energy
• Julie Hughes, Senior Policy Advisory, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, United States Department of Energy
• Kara Rinaldi, Founder and President, AnnDyl Policy Group, LLC
• Larry Zarker, CEO, Building Performance Institute, Inc. (BPI)
• Merrian Fuller, Principle Research Associate, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Mike Rogers, Senior Vice President for Market Development, GreenHomes America
• Pat Fox, Director of Operations, Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC)
• Rick Gerardi, Vice President Business Development, WellHome
• Roderick Morris, Senior Vice President Consumer Marketing and Operations, OPOWER
• Sammy Chu, Project Director of the Long Island Green Homes Initiative, Town of Babylon, NY
• Sean Penrith, Executive Director, Earth Advantage Institute
• Stephen Cowell, Chairman and CEO, Conservation Services Group
• Stephen Crouch, Residential Marketing Manager, Johns Manville
• Stephen McKenna, Director of Building Efficiency, Murtha Construction
• Steve Baden, Executive Director, RESNET
• Tracy Price, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Linc Group

"Improving the energy efficiency of America's 129 million existing homes will be a key contributor to protecting our families and our economy from volatile energy markets. It is also one of the fastest and most sustainable ways to put our construction industry back to work," says Amy Fazio, Executive Director of ACI. "We are proud to be able to offer a forum in which politicians and the private sector can sit at one table to discuss ways they can work together to achieve these goals."

Unemployment rates in the construction industry remain the highest among all industries at 21.8% in February 2011. Construction employment grew by 33,000 in February, with specialty trade contractors accounting for the bulk of the February job gain (+28,000), according to numbers released March 4, 2011 by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The home performance and weatherization sector is among the fastest-growing specialty trade contractor niches. The Building Performance Institute, Inc. (BPI), a non-profit organization that develops standards and grants professional certifications and company accreditations for the home performance industry reported significant growth in 2010: total certifications standing at 229% of 2009 totals and company accreditations doubling for the second year in a row.

Key contributors to this growth are a rise in the number of newly formed small businesses offering energy improvement remodeling services, and the development of utility, state and local homeowner energy efficiency incentive programs under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). In addition, federal tax credits for energy efficiency retrofits allowed this segment of the remodeling industry to remain relatively stable during the economic downturn, according to A New Decade of Growth for Remodeling: Improving America's Housing 2011, a report published by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

Members of the media are encouraged to attend the summit. To request credentials for the event, please contact Stephanie Inglis at [email protected].

In addition to the Home Energy Summit, ACI's National Home Performance Conference, March 29 to April 1, 2011, will offer 144 core sessions-more than ever before in the event's history-providing cutting-edge information for contractors, builders, energy raters, remodelers, designers and weatherization professionals.

For more information on the ACI National Home Performance Conference 2011 and find updates to the conference agenda, visit http://acinational.org/