In May 2022, ASU’s College of Global Futures launched Climate Conscious Leadership (CCL), a brand new professional certificate program aimed at professionals from all backgrounds who want to take action on the climate crisis in their professional and personal lives. Fast forward one year to May 2023, and CCL alum Joel Hansen stands proudly behind Washington Governor Jay Inslee as he signs a bill into law that would allow energy-saving projects to be funded by private entities when the building owner does not have the capital.
Hansen is featured in this article published by The Chronicle, which details the discovery process of how this bill turned law was born…
Hanson said the effort for HB 1777 started in November 2022 when he was working with a large school district to develop an LED lighting retrofit project for one of its schools.
“We toured the buildings with a lighting engineer and talked about how much energy we thought would be saved with modern energy efficient lighting,” Hanson said. “At the end of the tour, the school district’s sustainability manager turned to me and said, ‘This is great, what about my other 69 buildings?’”
From there, Hansen worked with Rep. Beth Doglio and other representatives to write the bill and support it all the way through signing into law.
Here is link to the related video (HB 1777 is signed at roughly the 32 minute mark) – Governor Jay Inslee Bill Signing – TVW.