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Intertribal Council On Utility Policy honored with "World Clean Energy Award for Courage" in Basel, Switzerland.

Intertribal COUP Environmental Justice Wind Project is one of nine international winners of inaugural international award.

Basel, Switzerland. June 15, 2007. The very first World Clean Energy Awards were presented Friday, at the traditional "Faktor 4- Festival" in Basel, Switzerland. The awards honor the world's premiere projects promoting the large-scale use of renewable energies. From among some 70 nominated projects, a high-profile international jury of renewable energy experts picked the nine winners of the first international renewable energy Oscars, who traveled to Switzerland from as far away as Abu Dhabi, China, India, Kenya, Sweden and the Rosebud and Lower Brule Sioux Indian Reservations in the United States to receive their awards at the Congress Center in Basel.

In this awards process, Europe and the World have once again discovered American Indians, but this time it is in recognition of the work and aspirations of the Tribes of the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy (COUP) starting with the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation's single 750 kW turbine project in promoting the joint assessment and development of an initial 80 to 240 MWs of tribally owned wind projects. The COUP plan proposes expansion of these projects to up to 3,000 MWs of tribally owned, utility scale wind power across the reservations in the northern Great Plains by 2015 through COUP's Environmental Justice Intertribal Wind Power plan.

Accepting the prestigious "Special Award for Courage" on behalf of the Intertribal COUP Tribes were Patrick Spears, President and Robert Gough, Secretary.

Spears and Gough accept the 'World Clean Energy Award" for COUP's Intertribal Environmental Justice Wind Demonstration Project in weekend ceremonies in Basel, Switzerland.

The COUP project team developed the COUP Plan that encourages tribally owned development of significant distributed wind generation on Indian Reservations as a viable strategy for building sustainable homeland tribal economies:

1. to address past and ongoing environmental injustices resulting from the building of the mainstem dams on the Missouri River to the detriment of Indian culture and reservation economies from flooding of tribal lands to the impacts of climate change, and

2. to provide for future tribal economic, cultural and community sustainability and capacity building based upon renewable energy generation of clean power to offset the burning of lignite coal, the most CO2 intensive source of electricity in the U.S.

The nine winning organizations of the inaugural World Clean Energy Awards have set new standards for the large-scale use of clean energy solutions. The Intertribal Council On Utility Policy was singled out for the jury's "special award for courage" for their commitment to collectively build utility-scale tribal wind projects on the reservations in the northern Great Plains through the Intertribal COUP/Rosebud Sioux Environmental Justice Revitalization Project: Tribal Wind Power Demonstration Project Plan.

Over a dozen American Indian Tribes across the northern Great Plains are assessing their renewable resources and investing in wind power to meet local energy needs and to export surplus clean power on to the regional transmission grids. In joining together in this collective development effort, the Tribes seek to generate clean energy, create local jobs and build healthy, sustainable economies based upon renewable energy. This is happening in an energy and economic environment that presents many challenges to renewable projects, and especially those coming from Indian reservation communities which are home to America's richest wind resources and poorest Native communities.

Andre Schneider, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the World Economic Forum was one of the distinguished members of the jury which selected the nine winners from among 70 excellent projects nominated from around the world, noted that "the Intertribal COUP project did not fit easily into any one of the initial award categories, but all of the jurors were struck with both the innovations involved with mainstreaming utility scale wind power onto America's western transmission grid and the collective work of American Indian Tribes whose cultural and spiritual values underscore respect for, and the protection of the Earth and her resources."

The Intertribal COUP and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe through its Tribal Utility Commission are the sponsors of this environmental justice wind power development plan, recognized as a environmental justice community revitalization demonstration project by the United States federal government. Since 1995, the Rosebud Sioux and other COUP Tribes have committed to the joint assessment and build out of tribally owned utility-scale wind projects in North and South Dakota and Nebraska and across the American West.

"We are at once deeply honored and humbled by the world's recognition of a project plan that came from American Indian Tribes working together, seeking to build sustainable economies on the abundant clean energy resources found on our reservations, to bring good paying jobs to America's poorest communities, to build healthier futures for our children and grandchildren, and to help reduce the impacts of global warming around the world through a greater use and reliance on renewable energy, allowing us to keep carbon safely in the ground and out of the atmosphere," said Patrick Spears, president of the Intertribal COUP.

"American Indian Tribes can supply clean, inexhaustible power from their rural reservations to help met the growing demands for renewable energy from the many ICLEI and U.S. Conference of Mayors' cities which have pledged to meet their specific green house gas reduction goals under Kyoto," Gough said following the award presentation. "Together, local governments, such as cities and Tribes can reduce the U.S. carbon footprint by recharging the transmission grids with clean wind power from America's rural heartlands to met the energy needs of the urban load centers," Gough added. "Native Wind can make America more energy secure, mitigate our impact on the changing global climate by reducing our nation's giant carbon footprint and build sustainable tribal economies for the generations to come."

Following the award to COUP, the NativeWind 60 second public service announcement calling Americans to join with Tribes to stop global warming by supporting wind power was screened to the assembly of distinguished guests and award winners. The northern Great Plains is America's richest wind regime and could theoretically meet the nation's entire electrical demand with clean power. More information about the COUP Intertribal Wind Plan and the PSA can be found at: www.intertribalcoup.org or at: www.NativeWind.org .

Thousands of tribal members on some 20 reservations may ultimately directly and indirectly benefit from the new, sustainable jobs brought to their high unemployment communities and from the power and health benefits from local clean energy generation. Then there are the untold numbers who will benefit from the greenhouse gas mitigation derived from displacing CO2 intensive fossil generation on the grid with clean wind power.

Over 70 nominees were initially announced on the official website of World Clean Energy Awards at: www.cleanenergyawards.com, which serves as a global online resource for best practice in mainstreaming clean energy. The eight other award winners include:

Construction (new buildings, urban development, renovation): Josefin Wangel, Communications officer with Hammary Sjostad Sustainable City, Sweden. Resource consumption in this new area of Stockholm, which is home to 25,000 people, is at least 50% lower than the current standard for comparable new developments.

Transport and mobility: Bryan Willson, Chief Technical Advisor with the Philippne Two-Stroke Engine Retrofit Project. The Envirofit company has developed a retrofitting kit for two-stroke engines, which are found everywhere in the Philippines. The kit improves fuel-efficiency and thus massively reduces green house gas and toxic emissions.

Products (agriculture, mining, industry, utilities): Fredrick Ouko, Director with the Simple Solar Assembling Project in Kibera Slum, Kenya. The assembly of solar cells in one of Africa's biggest slums has provided inhabitants not only with work, but also clean energy.

Services, trade and marketing: Srinivasan Padmanaban, Project Manager with the Green Business Center and Water Energy Nexus Activity, New Delhi, India. India's leading center for energy, the environment and climate change supports "green" concepts for improving energy efficiency and sustainable development.

Finance and investment: Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, with the Masdar Initiative, United Arab Emirates. As a first among the world's oil-producing nation's the Unied Arab Emirates launched the Abu Dhabi-based billion-dollar Masdar Initiative to promote renewable energies.

Politics and legislation: Li Zhaoqian, Mayor of Rizhao, with the project: Popularization of Clean Energy in Rizhao, China. Home to more than 3 million, the city of Rizhao, northeast of Beijing, is using a combination of incentives and legislative tools to encourage the large-scale, efficient use of renewable energies. Over 500,000 people have already benefited directly from the scheme. In some areas, solar thermal collectors are installed on almost every single roof.

NGO's and initiatives: Russell de Lucia, CEO of the Small Scale Sustainable Infrastructure Development Fund, Inc. (S3IDF), with the project: "Social Merchant Bank" – Approach to providing efficient lighting services to poor households, communities and SME's in southern India. S 3IDF provides around 5,500 people in southern Indian with light from a clean energy source. More light means that people can work longer and thus generate higher incomes. It also improves health and safety.

A second "special award" went to Anandi Sharan, Project Manager, Women for Sustainable Development, with the Bagepalli CDM Biogas Project, India. The project is introducing biogas cookers as a substitute for India's traditional cooking methods, which use non-renewable sources of energy. Under the Kyoto Protocol, the greenhouse gas emissions that the project saves can then be sold in the form of certificates.

Along with Andre Schneider, the jury of distinguished leaders and experts in various fields of scientific and societal study in energy efficiency and sustainability, also included:

* Christopher Flavin, Director General, Worldwatch Institute (USA)
* Nicky Gavron, Deputy Mayor of London, ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) and Large Cities Initiative for Climate Protection (Great Britain)
* Ashok Khosla, CEO, TARAhaat, New Delhi (India)
* James Leape, Director General, WWF International
* Amory B. Lovins, President Rocky Mountains Institute (RMI), Snowmass, Colorado (USA)
* Klaus Töpfer, former UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) Secretary General (Germany)
* Ernst U. von Weizsäcker, Professor and Author (USA/Germany

Rosebud Sioux & Intertribal COUP

Environmental Justice Wind Development Plan

The Intertribal Council On Utility Policy (COUP) Plan builds tribal capacity in developing the resource assessments, and ultimately tribal ownership, control and benefit of projects. First, it meets local reservation energy needs (10-20 MWs). Then, surplus power (50 to 150 MWs at each site) is exported through the federal grid system to build sustainable reservation based economies, to complement and supplement diminishing federal hydropower generation, and to displace carbon dioxide intensive coal generation.

Tribes collaborating on a large scale, energy generation project across the Great Plains can make the integration of distributed wind supplementing federal hydropower a more compatible resource, and help bring economies of scale to tribal project development.

The Rosebud/COUP Intertribal Wind Plan is designed to:

* Create significant Tribally owned generation to meet Reservation energy needs
* Gain experience, share risk and build Tribal capacity
* Pool Tribal resources for economies of scale for export sales
* Ease initial interconnection into a constrained federal grid system
* Boost overall project capacity from distributed generation of 80 to 240 MWs spread across several Great Plains states to supplement diminished hydropower and displace carbon dioxide intensive coal generation
* Reduce opportunity costs for expansion from 10 or 20 MWs to 150 MWs
* Use "Green Tags" or Carbon Offsets to overcome grid constraints by the sale of green offsets through NativeEnergy.com as a separate commodity from energy
* Meet Green Power goals of U.S. ICLEI Cities for Climate Protection and Federal Agencies from Indian Country