Project Milwaukee: Power Switch Panelists

On Monday, June 10 at Discovery World, WUWM's public forum featured perspectives from utilities, academia, environmentalists and policymakers. The forum will air on Lake Effect Friday, June 14 at 10 a.m.

The Panelists

Thomas Content
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Energy Writer
Thomas Content reports on energy issues for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and writes the Plugged In blog for JSOnline.com. His reporting on energy and climate change, in the series A Change in Climate: Global Warming and Wisconsin, won the National Press Foundation Stokes Award for Energy Writing in 2007. Content joined the Journal Sentinel staff in 2000. He previously worked at newspapers in Green Bay, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. He became interested in energy issues while sitting in the back seat, waiting in long gas lines in the 1970s.

Deborah Erwin
Public Service Commission
Deborah Erwin is the renewable energy specialist at the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin. She provides lead policy analysis on renewable energy development in Wisconsin, and provides additional policy support and technical expertise on investigations and special projects. Prior to joining the commission staff in 2008, Erwin practiced renewable energy law in Minnesota, working on project development, land leasing and permitting matters. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School. She is President of Midwest Renewable Energy Tracking System, Inc., the regional non-profit that oversees the M-RETS renewable energy credit tracking system.

Andy Hesselbach
We Energies
Andy Hesselbach is Project Director of We Energies. He has spent 23 years in the energy industry covering a broad range of responsibilities in energy generation and energy procurement. Over the last decade, he has concentrated on the development, permitting, and construction of various electric generation facilities, including Wisconsin’s two largest wind farms and the newest natural gas and coal-fueled facilities. He continues to focus on the evaluation and development of generation projects across all technology types. The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin tapped into Hesselbach’s expertise in wind power development, when it appointed him to the PSC’s Wind Siting Council in 2010. A registered Professional Engineer in Wisconsin, Hesselbach holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA from Marquette University.

Charles McGinnis
Johnson Controls
Charles McGinnis is U.S. Director-Commercial Energy Solutions for Johnson Controls Inc. McGinnis manages a high performance team of business development, engineering and project managers focused on the U.S. Property Assessed Clean Energy-Commercial Real Estate Market. In the previous role as Director of Strategic Projects he led a national, cross functional program and field office, for the Building Efficiency Division of Johnson Controls. He managed the development and administration of projects funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to deliver over $800 million in revenue over a three year time period. In his previous role as Regional Solutions Manager for the Building Efficiency Division, Solutions Group of Johnson Controls, McGinnis had general management responsibility for the Energy Services and Solutions Business in the Midwest.

Gary Radloff
Wisconsin Energy Institute
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Gary Radloff is a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Director of Midwest Energy Policy Analysis for the Wisconsin Energy Institute (WEI). He is an Honorary Associate/Fellow with the Nelson Institute, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE). Radloff also has served as the Interim Director with the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative at the University of Wisconsin. He is the lead author or co-author of The Wisconsin Strategic Bioenergy Feedstock Assessment (2012); The Biogas Opportunity in Wisconsin (2011); and Guidelines for Sustainable Planting and Harvest of Nonforest Biomass in Wisconsin (2012). Radloff is the former Director of Policy and Strategic Communications at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Past activities include helping to coordinate policy initiatives such as the Governor’s Consortium on the Biobased Industry and the Working Lands Initiative.

Shahla Werner
Sierra Club - John Muir Chapter
Shahla Werner has been the Director of the Sierra Club - John Muir Chapter in Wisconsin since 2008. She earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied forest beetle biodiversity and an invasive insect, called the introduced basswood thrips. She previously worked as an entomologist for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation & Natural Resources. Werner also worked in development for WORT-FM community radio and the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin, and was the volunteer co-president of the Wisconsin National Organization for Women.