• 541-342-8461 (home offlce)
• 541-729-1444 (cell)
• 1-800-944-0130 (toll free)

Kathy Ging is the co-director of the First Annual Lane County Energy Round-Up Public Forums I and II to be held 1/23 and 2/27/07 in Eugene working with co-director Pamela Driscoll, with an all volunteer group and Lane County Commissioner Pete Sorenson.

The Energy Round-Up has eight sponsors: Climate Crisis Working Group, EWEB, EPUD, Eugene Weekly, Helios Network, West Wind Forest Products, Oregon Department of Energy, and the Northwest EcoBuilding Guild.

Kathy Ging has a Master's in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has lived in Oregon for 32 years being originally from Pennsylvania and later from San Francisco. She has been a promoter of energy efficiency, ecological business practices and renewable energy sources for three decades.

Kathy directed or co-coordinated 18 renewable energy events in Oregon including the First Southern Oregon Energy Fair, Visions for Humanity in Ashland, Rogue Inventors Days, seven mini fairs, Oregon Energy Round up at the State Fair 1982-84 and Energy Independence Days in Eugene and Springfield. She catalyzed the addition of Energy Park to the Oregon Country Fair in 1982 (formerly Oregon Energy Horizons).

Kathy co-founded the Northwest EcoBuilding Guild, SW Oregon Chapter, in Eugene, and helped to organize 70 of its educational events and also spearheaded the movement to green the Eugene library, the beginning of a gradual transition by the City of Eugene to its current proactive stance toward green building practices for public buildings.

She attended the first New Energy Movement conference in Portland, OR, in November, 2004, the 1st Solar Electric Power Summit in Salem, OR, (one of five women and 37 men in attendance) and Oregon Solar Energy Industries Association Solar Expo in Portland, OR, in 2006.

She initiated the revised performance based personal income renewable energy tax credit in the Oregon legislature in the late 80s after 85% of the solar businesses had gone bankrupt because state and federal tax credits had sunset. She helped to organize the statewide momentum to win its passage 22 to zip the day before summer solstice.

This tax credit for home owners and renters is still in effect and has been expanded and revised in the last 18 years. When passed, it was widely considered to be the best renewable energy personal income tax credit in the country.

Kathy is a member of several environmental and energy groups such as Solar Oregon, American Solar Energy Society, Climate Solutions, Citizens Utility Board, 3Estrategies, OSPIRG, Co-Op America and the School Garden Project.

She was on the Technical Advisory Committee of Eugene Mayor's Sustainable Business Initiative, on the Statewide Green Building Committee and a panelist at one of the EcoDesign and Arts Conferences at the University of Oregon. In the early 80s she was on the grant giving committee of the Federal Region X Small Scale Appropriate Technology Small Grant Program.

In 1981, Kathy lobbied the EWEB board to assign staff time to research solar electric power (PVs); EWEB did fund a part time position that year. She also co-sponsored the first local all day photovoltaic seminar with former EWEB Commissioner Jack Craig.

In December, 2006, Kathy testified to the EWEB Board that they should consider researching the idea of becoming a distributed utility where power is produced on rooftops, in yards and in neighborhoods (see Rocky Mountain Institute's book, Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size; SmallIsProfitable.org Kathy owns this book written in 2002 as does one EWEB staff member.)

In 1997, Kathy won the First Citizen Activist of the Year Award from Friends of Eugene for exceptional community service and in the year 2000 she was chosen as one of 15 socially responsible business persons featured in Co-op America's yearly publication.

In the 70s she founded the Community Skills Bank and co-founded SUNERGI (Southern Oregon New Energy Institute) and was later secretary of the statewide Oregon Campaign for Public Power. She also worked on the Lane County political scene to energize Emerald People's Utility District doing extensive door to door work around the county and phone banking.

Kathy initiated the idea to form a cooperative to video renewable energy and conservation presentations at SolFest, SolWest and elsewhere, now called GREEN (Grassroots Renewable Energy Education Network).

Kathy sells real estate for Player Real Estate, has worked as a Realtor in Lane County for 21 years and is a promoter of Liberated Salad, a year round garden that grows especially well West of the Cascades, to feed activists and others interested in local, seasonal and organic food production.