Biography

• Speaker Bio
• Biography (Short)
• Biography (Long)
• Resume of Paul Gipe
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• Paul Gipe Press Photos

Paul Gipe is an author, advocate, and renewable energy industry analyst.

Speaker Bio

Paul Gipe has written extensively about renewable energy for both the popular and trade press. His most recent book, Wind Energy Basics: A Guide to Home- and Community-scale Wind Energy Systems is available from Chelsea Green Publishing. In 2004, Gipe launched a campaign to bring electricity feed laws back to North America. The campaign has grown into a continent-wide grassroots movement that has put renewable energy feed-in tariffs on the political agenda in Canada and the US.

Biography (Short)

Paul Gipe has written extensively about renewable energy for both the popular and trade press. He has also lectured widely on wind energy and how to minimize its impact on the environment and the communities of which it is a part. For his efforts, Gipe has received numerous awards.

His most recent book, Wind Energy Basics: A Guide to Home- and Community-scale Wind Energy Systems was published by Chelsea Green in May, 2009.

Gipe's book, Wind Power: Renewable Energy for Home, Farm, & Business is available in both hardback and paperback and is published in French as Le Grand Livre de l'Eolien by les éditions du Moniteur.

In 2004, Gipe served as the acting executive director of the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association where he created, managed, and implemented a provincial campaign for Advanced Renewable Tariffs. The campaign sought to adapt electricity feed laws to the North American market and was instrumental in placing the European concept on the political agenda in Canada and the United States.

Gipe first publicly called for a feed law in the US in his campaign for the board of directors of the American Wind Energy Association in 1998.

Biography (Long)

Paul Gipe has worked with wind energy since 1976. He is best known for his advocacy of wind energy and for his articles and books on the subject. He has lectured widely on wind energy and how to minimize its impact on the environment and the communities of which it is a part. Through his writing and public speaking, Gipe has sought to popularize the use of wind energy worldwide. For his efforts, Gipe has received numerous awards.

In 2004, Gipe served as the acting executive director of the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association where he created, managed, and implemented a provincial campaign for Advanced Renewable Tariffs. The campaign has grown into a continent-wide grassroots movement that has put renewable energy feed-in tariffs on the political agenda in Canada and the US.

Gipe first publicly called for a feed law in the US in his campaign for the board of directors of the American Wind Energy Association in 1998.

From 1986 to 1994, Gipe represented the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) on the West Coast. He was the executive director of the Kern Wind Energy Association from 1987 to 1995. He also served on AWEA's board of directors from 1996 to 1998.

Gipe has written seven books: Wind Energy: How To Use It (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1983), Wind Power for Home & Business (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 1993), Wind Energy Comes of Age (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995), Glossary of Wind Energy Terms (Knebel, Denmark: Folaget Vistoft, 1997), Wind Energy Basics (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 1999), and Wind Power: Renewable Energy for Home, Farm, and Business (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2004). Wind Energy Basics was translated into Spanish under the title Energía Eólica Práctica (Seville, Spain: Progensa, 2000) and translated into Italian under the title of Elettricità dal Vento (Rome: Franco Muzzio Editore, 2002). Wind Power: Renewable Energy for Home, Farm, and Business was translated into French under the title Le Grand Livre de l'Éolien (Observ'ER, 2007). His most recent book is Wind Energy Basics: A Guide to Home- and Community-scale Wind Energy Systems (Chelsea Green, 2009).

Wind Energy Comes of Age was selected by the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, for its list of outstanding academic books in 1995.

Gipe contributed a chapter to Guide de L'Énergie Éolienne (Paris: Collection Etudes et Filières, 1998), and co-authored a chapter in Wind Turbine Technology (New York: ASME Press, 1994). He was the principal contributor to the Izaak Walton League's Landowner's Guide to Wind Energy in the Upper Midwest. He was one of the lead authors of Wind Power in View: Energy Landscapes in a Crowded World (San Diego: Academic Press, 2002). Gipe has also written numerous articles for both the popular and trade press. His photography has appeared in magazines, books, commercial slide sets, brochures, and posters. He has lectured widely on wind energy in the United States and abroad.

From 1999 to 2003 Gipe measured the performance and noise emissions from small wind turbines at the Wulf Test Field in the Tehachapi Pass. The results of his tests have been published in WindStats Newsletter and are available on this web site under the section titled Small Wind.

In the early 1980s, Gipe managed a pioneering anemometer loan program in Pennsylvania, and in the early 1990s installed two highway advisory radio stations in California. Gipe's script for one of the transmitters won a 1993 TIMMY award for descriptive interpretation.

Gipe's interest in wind energy grew out of his wish to limit the environmental effects of conventional energy sources, particularly those of coal and nuclear power. He contributed to the seven-year struggle for passage of the National Surface Mining Act, which regulates the strip mining of coal in the United States. As part of that effort, Gipe co-authored Surface Mining, Energy, and the Environment.

While a student at Ball State University, Gipe contributed to a citizens' group that successfully petitioned the Indiana Legislature to ban the sale of phosphate detergents. He graduated with an interdisciplinary degree in Natural Resources.

Gipe has modeled the noise and air quality impacts of proposed highway and mass transit projects in Pennsylvania, studied the geohydrologic impact of strip mining in Montana, evaluated water pollution in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and represented the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Sierra Club before the Pennsylvania state legislature. He is a past member of the Sierra Club's technical advisory team on energy, and past chapter chair of the Kern-Kaweah chapter.

During his career, Gipe has received numerous awards for his work. The Canadian Wind Energy Association gave him its Individual Leadership Award in 2009 for his work on Ontario's groundbreaking system of Advanced Renewable Tariffs. In 2008 the World Wind Energy Association presented Gipe with their World Wind Energy Award. In 2005 the Kern-Kaweah chapter of the Sierra Club awarded him the Sierra Club Cup, the chapter's highest honor. In 1998 the World Renewable Energy Congress honored him as a "pioneer" in renewable energy. And in 1988 the American Wind Energy Association named him as the industry's "person of the year".

• Resume of Paul Gipe