ACORE to Honor Renewable Energy Champions, U.S. Reps. Sean Casten and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, at Awards Gala

February 28, 2024

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), a national nonprofit organization that unites finance, policy, and technology to accelerate the clean energy transition, has named U.S. Reps. Sean Casten (D-IL) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) as the recipients of its 2024 Renewable Energy Champion Awards. The awards will be presented this evening at ACORE’s annual Awards Gala at Union Station where House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) will be providing keynote remarks.

“We are thrilled to recognize two of America’s leading advocates for advancing the deployment of affordable, reliable, and clean power with this year’s Renewable Energy Champion awards,” said ACORE President and CEO Ray Long. “Both Rep. Casten and Rep. Miller-Meeks have spearheaded numerous efforts in Congress and across the country that will help us achieve a 21^st century grid powered by clean energy. We are grateful to have their impactful leadership in the halls of Congress and continued partnership in delivering a clean energy future that leaves no one behind.”

Rep. Casten is one of the most knowledgeable lawmakers in Congress today on the paramount challenges surrounding the energy transition. He has dedicated much of his time in office to providing affordable and reliable energy for Americans and supercharging the nation’s decarbonization efforts. As a member of the former House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, Rep. Casten helped craft bold policy initiatives that formed the foundation of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, and he has been working to ensure the law’s maximum success ever since.

“We have a tremendous opportunity to not only decarbonize our economy, but also to increase Americans’ access to cleaner, cheaper, more reliable energy,” said Rep. Casten. “I’m incredibly proud to work with ACORE to ensure we seize that opportunity and am honored to receive this award.”

Rep. Miller-Meeks has been a key voice in Congress, helping to advance the cause of renewable energy in a bipartisan fashion. She emphasizes the need to prioritize technological innovation, emissions reductions, and local economic development. The Congresswoman serves as the Vice Chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus, and she represented her home state of Iowa at the COP28 conference in Dubai last year. Among the numerous examples of Rep. Miller-Meeks’ critical leadership is her attention to expanding the bulk power grid as a means to unlock new resources, bolster our nation’s security, and deliver low-cost, reliable electricity for Americans.

“I am grateful to Ray Long and ACORE on receiving the Renewable Energy Champion award,” said Rep. Miller-Meeks. “Iowa has utilized its natural resources generating energy from an array of renewables, including wind, solar, ethanol, biodiesel, compressed renewable natural gas, biomass, manure, and is a net exporter of energy. Iowa slashed its carbon intensity from electricity generation more than any other state between 2000 and 2020 and generates nearly two-thirds of total electricity net generation from renewable sources. I look forward to continuing to advocate for a cleaner, healthier environment utilizing the wide range of energy options available right here in the United States.”

Photos from tonight’s ACORE Awards Gala will be made available upon request.

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About ACORE:
For over 20 years, the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) has been the nation’s leading voice on the issues most essential to renewable energy expansion. ACORE unites finance, policy, and technology to accelerate the transition to a renewable energy economy. For more information, please visit www.acore.org.

Media Contacts:
Alex Hobson
Sr. Vice President, Communications
American Council on Renewable Energy
hobson@acore.org | 202.830.3592 (o) | 202.594.0706 (c)

Dylan Helms
Associate, Communications
American Council on Renewable Energy
helms@acore.org | 202.935.6491 (o) | 727.290.8804 (c)

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Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy Concepts Can’t Violate the Laws of Physics

Published

7 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

In the early days of 2GreenEnergy, my people and I were vigorously engaged in finding solid ideas in cleantech that needed funding in order to move forward.

I vividly remember a conversation with a guy in Maryland who was trying to explain the (ostensible) breakthrough that he and his team had made in hydrokinetics. When I was having trouble visualizing what we was talking about, he asked me to “think of it as a river in a box.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “You mean you take a box full of standing water, add energy to it get it moving, then extract that energy, leaving you with more energy that you added to it.”

“Exactly.”

I politely explained that the laws of physics, specifically the first and second laws of thermodynamics, make this impossible.

He wasn’t through, however, and insisted that, in his office, his people had constructed a “working model.”

Here’s where my tone descended into something less than 100% polite. I told him that he may think he has a working model, but he’s wrong; if he believes this, he’s ignorant; if he doesn’t, but is conducting this conversation anyway, he’s a fraud.

“But don’t you want to come see it?” he implored.

“No. Not only would not fly across the country to see whatever it is you claim to have built, I wouldn’t walk across the street to a “working model” of something that is theoretically impossible.”

—

I tell this story because the claim made at the upper left is essentially identical. You’re pumping water up out of a stream, and then claiming to extract more energy when the water flows back into the stream.

Of course, social media today is rife with complete crap like this. We’ve devolved to a point where defrauding money out of idiots is rapidly replacing baseball as our national pastime.