[act-ma] Boston Area Solar Energy Association Forum: What Does Paris Mean To You?

[Mike H]

Boston Area Solar Energy Association Forum: What Does Paris Mean To You?
Thursday, January 14
Doors open at 7:00 p.m.; Presentation begins at 7:30 p.m
Location: First Parish in Cambridge Unitarian Universalist; 3 Church Street, Harvard Square

Big news from Paris. The largest assemblage of heads of state opened the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21), which surpassed expectations to deliver the historic Paris Agreement ("L'accord de Paris") to globally reduce climate change and sent a signal to investors that the closing of the fossil fuel era has begun.

What was it like to be there, to witness history? Paris, so horribly stricken, received a lift in spirit from the promise of this agreement, negotiated and adopted by consensus in France's greatest city.

Quinton Zondervan was there, our January 14th BASEA Forum speaker, and will tell us what it was like and what the U.S. agreed to.

Zondervan sees carbon pricing, at the federal and state level, embodied in our nation's transition to the renewable energy economy envisioned in the accord. Locally, he will relate how the U.S. Congress's multi-year extension of the Business Energy Investment Tax Credit (ITC) is reinvigorating a successful solar deployment program in Cambridge.

Join us at the Boston Area Solar Energy Association Forum for a personal view of the global Paris Agreement from local climate activist Quinton Zondervan.

Quinton Zondervan is an entrepreneur, non-profit leader and dedicated community activist in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In December 2015, as part of a delegation from the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC), Quinton served as an official observer to the COP21 climate talks in Paris.

Two of his letters advocating for carbon pricing were published in the New York Times and the Boston Globe. Quinton cofounded and serves as the President and board chair of the Climate Action Business Association, Inc. and as President of Green Cambridge. He was a leader of the Net Zero buildings emissions zoning petition in Cambridge in 2013, and served the City Manager appointed year-long Getting to Net Zero Task Force, which produced a 25 year action plan, adopted by the City Council, for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings in the city to zero as quickly as possible. Quinton is an active member of MIT Alumni for Climate Action Leadership. He currently works as a software consultant, and is the VP of Technology at internet start-up company eCare Vault, Inc. Quinton holds a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and two bachelor's degrees in the fields of mathematics and computer science from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. Quinton lives in Cambridge with his wife and two children.

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The Boston Area Solar Energy Association - www.BASEA.org contact: higginsm at mit.edu