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Miriam Horn

Cleantech Specialist, Environmental Defense Fund

Miriam Horn, a clean technology specialist, manages the smart grid initiative at Environmental Defense Fund. She is a project leader on Austin’s Pecan Street Project, which recently won a $10m stimulus grant for a fully integrated smart-grid demonstration in a green-built neighborhood; the project will combine advanced metering and communications with distributed generation (including coop-owned solar and building integrated PV), storage, plug-in hybrid cars, smart appliances, smart water and sophisticated consumer controls. Project goals include maximizing and monetizing the full suite of environmental benefits, and developing new business models and an open platform to maximize participation by entrepreneurs and innovators. With Environmental Defense Fund president Fred Krupp, Horn co-authored the New York Times bestseller Earth: The Sequel, The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming (Norton, 2008). Earth: The Sequel was chosen a “best book of the year” by Fast Company; a Discovery Channel documentary based on the book aired in March 2009. Horn is a frequent public speaker; recent appearances include the keynote at the Solartech-CALSEIA Inaugural Summit and talks at the United Nations, ABA, Monterey Institute for International Studies, New York University, University of Michigan Law School and Tsinghua University, Beijing. She was a panelist with deputy energy secretary Cathy Zoi at a recent New Enterprise Associates forum and was a finals judge for MIT’s 2009 Ignite Clean Energy (ICE) prize. Horn has worked for the U.S. Forest Service and written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including Vanity Fair, The New Republic, and the New York Times. She is the author of Rebels in White Gloves; Coming of Age with Hillary’s Class—Wellesley ’69 (Times Books, 1999). A graduate of Harvard University, Horn studied environmental science at Columbia University and lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.