The Horinko Group’s Environmental Speaker Series Luncheon on September 20, 2013 featured U.S. EPA’s Tom Murray, Chief of the Prevention Analysis Branch in the Pollution Prevention Division of the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics.  Mr. Murray presented on and engaged the room in thoughtful discussion around a growing framework, which he and his staff were instrumental in creating, known as E3—Economy Energy, and Environment.

E3 is a coordinated federal and local technical assistance initiative helping communities, manufacturers, and manufacturing supply chains adapt and thrive in today’s green economy.  E3 efforts engage government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, NGOs, banks, foundations, business owners and other investment partners, community partners, and sustainability-focused organizations to help manufacturers identify inefficiencies in plant operations, reduce energy consumption, minimize their carbon footprint, prevent pollution, increase productivity, and drive innovation.

The E3 framework is tailored to each community where it is implemented, taking on new partners and new approaches to meet the community and manufacturer’s needs.  E3 was first started at the American Electric Power utility in Columbus, Ohio and has since expanded to 22 states.  The mission dovetails with the Obama Administration’s Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership as well as other private and governmental sustainability efforts such as Design for the Environment, the Sustainability Consortium, the Brownfields program, and the Green Power Partnership among others.

Following the presentation, discussion focused on topics such as the impressive reach across government agencies that E3 has been able to achieve and the systemic community changes that parallel an E3 project — e.g. to attract businesses to a redeveloped Brownfields area, manufacturing chains, transportation systems, schools, healthcare systems, etc. must all be developed.

More information about E3 can be found at www.e3.gov.

To download Mr. Murray’s PowerPoint presentation, please visit: http://www.thgadvisors.org/luncheons/ESS2013Sep20Slides.pdf.