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Energy Vision Presents Energy Vision Awards at Its Fourth Anniversary Celebration

^{Published on 2010-11-26 06:10:44 - Market Wire}
 

NEW YORK--([ BUSINESS WIRE ])--Energy Vision, a national non-profit organization that promotes the benefits of clean, renewable petroleum-free transportation fuels, presented its 2010 Energy Vision Leadership Awards to Andrew J. Littlefair, President and CEO of Clean Energy (Nasdaq:CLNE), and to Smithtown, New Yorka™s Environmental Director Russell K. Barnett, at the organizationa™s Fourth Anniversary Celebration in Manhattan. The aall-greena affair, co-chaired by Ed Begley, Jr. and fellow actor Blythe Danner, featured organic hors da™oeuvres by renowned Chef Jean Claude Lanchais, a silent agreena auction, and a door prize putting the winner behind the wheel of a Honda GX Civic natural gas vehicle with a free fuel card from Clean Energy.

"Energy Vision is just a great organization"

aOur awardees are true aEnergy Visionaries,a™a said EVa™s President, Joanna Underwood to the 100 guests who included government and business leaders, environmentalists and actors. Their work exemplifies the power of action. aAndrew Littlefaira™s Clean Energy, a California-based company, working across the US and Canada, and Russell Barnett working on the local municipal level in Smithtown, NY, have both effected changes that are addressing climate change, reducing this countrya™s risky reliance on foreign oil and cutting urban vehicle-related pollution by advancing the use of cleaner alternative fuels in transportation,a she said.

Andrew Littlefair has presided over Clean Energya™s growth since he and T. Boone Pickens founded the company (first as Pickens Fuel in 1997), to build a network of refueling stations across North America, delivering natural gas as a vehicle fuel. They saw the era of oil waning with dwindling world supplies and natural gas as the cleaner, cheaper, domestically abundant fuel that could take its place. They fought through the tough early years of the industrya™s growth. Today Clean Energy operates over 200 natural gas refueling stations providing fuel for more than 20,000 vehicles a day: refuse trucks, transit buses, airport shuttles, trucking and other municipal fleets. Recognizing, when few others did, that natural gas was a pathway to a renewable form of this gas that could be made from wastes, Clean Energy now is producing renewable natural gas, (abiomethanea).

Russell K. Barnett, recipient of Energy Visiona™s 2010 Municipal Leadership Award, pioneered in bringing change to the local level on the East Coast. Barnett, in 2006, saw the price of diesel fuel as extremely volatile and, in negotiating a new refuse collection contract for Smithtown, NY, he identified natural gas as a viable alternative. Taking a controversial stand, he wrote contract terms requiring use of natural gas trucks. Seven months later, his township was the first in the East to have a 100% natural gas refuse fleet and, with Clean Energya™s help, the largest natural gas refueling station in the Eastern US. Now Smithtown also buys natural gas snow plows, dump trucks and Honda Civics. Barnett, with his eye always on the future, is now exploring how Long Islanda™s organic wastes can be turned into renewable natural gas.

aOnly with the willingness of business leaders such as Andrew Littlefair to break new ground, designing new, more environmentally sound fuels, products and technologies, and the willingness of local leaders such as Russ Barnett to adopt them, will this country move toward a sustainable future,a added Energy Vision President, Joanna Underwood.

Ed Begley, Jr. event Co-Chair, applauded Energy Visiona™s four years of work. aEnergy Vision is just a great organization,a he said. aIt is out there promoting practical steps we can take today to slash this country's dependence on foreign oil, reduce pollution, cut down greenhouse gases a" steps moving us toward sustainability. EV is taking the biggest, most fuel-consuming fleet a" garbage trucks a" off diesel fuel and putting them on a new diet of cleaner natural gas on the way to an even better gas fuel made from waste a" biomethane.a

Energy Vision (EV) is a national non-profit organization, founded in 2007, that analyzes and promotes ways to make the swiftest possible transition to pollution-free, renewable energy sources and to the clean, petroleum-free transportation fuels of the future. Visit [ www.energy-vision.org ].