Randy Udall
Energy Analyst & Activist, CORE
Randy Udall was one of the nation’s leading activists in promoting energy sustainability. He served for 13 years as Director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE) in Carbondale, Colorado, where his partnerships with electric utilities and local governments led to Colorado’s first solar energy incentive program, the world’s first Renewable Energy Mitigation Program and some of the most progressive green power purchasing programs in the country.
From 1982 until joining CORE in 1994, Randy was a free-lance writer specializing in the environment and related scientific topics, including energy efficiency, green buildings, acid rain, groundwater depletion, energy, clean air, global warming, and biodiversity. He also edited the quarterly newsletter of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a pre-eminent energy think tank.
Under Udall’s leadership, CORE started the first “solar production incentive” program in the United States. The program pays customers who install PV systems per kilowatt-hour for their energy. In partnership with Holy Cross Energy, a rural electric utility in western Colorado, his efforts will keep 1 million tons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere over the next 20 years. Holy Cross now has more grid-connected photovoltaic systems than any of the 930 rural electric utilities in the nation.
In 2005, Udall co-founded the Association for the Study of Peak Oil-USA to track the shifting balance between world oil supply and depletion. He was one of the independent energy experts interviewed by the National Petroleum Council when they researched their 2007 report “Hard Truths about Energy”. He was a frequent speaker and panelist on America’s energy challenges and has keynoted many annual conferences, including the American Public Power Association, the American Wind Energy Association, and the American Solar Energy Society. He was featured in a CNBC documentary The Hunt for Black Gold.
Randy hales from a Western political family renowned for enacting conservation policy, the son of Morris (Mo) Udall, former Arizona congressman and the nephew of Stuart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior. His brother Mark has represented Colorado in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Randy’s cousin Tom currently represents New Mexico in the U.S. Senate – “a distinguished body that generally fails the energy IQ test.”
An avid outdoorsman and backcountry skier, Randy skied across Baffin Island in the 1970s. Whenever he could get away with it, he escaped the grid and disappeared into the high country in the Rockies and the Sierra.
Bio from Randy Udall Energy
