Steve Kahl

Background

About Steve Kahl

Steve Kahl is an entrepreneurial educator and researcher, as well as a leading proponent and frequent speaker on sustainability initiatives including alternative energy, energy conservation, net zero-energy buildings, LID stormwater methods, stormwater utilities, local food production, targeted land conservation, and water/forest resources protection. Steve has hosted 'Power for the People', a monthly call-in public affairs energy program on WERU-FM, a community public radio station in Orland, Maine, since 2015. He brokered a solar Power Purchase Agreement in 2020 to make the station 100% solar powered. He is the former Director of Sustainability at Unity College, where he developed a renewable energy plan with no upfront costs to allow the college to 'walk the talk' of net zero energy, earned the college the prestigious AASHE STARS Gold ranking for sustainability, initiated zero sort recycling that increased the recycling rate, and incorporated a private greenhouse complex into campus programs. He believes that academia must model a fossil-fuel free future. He advocates that new public schools should be net zero energy, a very practical and cost-effective solution based on current technologies. Steve was Director of Environmental & Energy Strategies at Sewall Engineering (2011-14), focusing on solutions such as Stormwater Utilities, BMP stormwater management, and renewable energy policy. He led a Maine Technology Institute research effort while at Sewall with Revision Energy that used LIDAR imagery to determine that 56% of Maine's electrical needs could be met just with rooftop solar installed on all suitable roofs in the state. Given that this study assumed 240W solar panels, today's 420W panels could produce 98% of the state's electrical needs! We are underestimated the potential for rooftop solar while avoiding the environmental impacts of industrial scale solar. He was the founding director of the Center for the Environment at Plymouth State University (2004-08), the USGS Water Center Director at UMaine (1993-2003), President of NIWR (National Institutes of USGS Water Resource Centers) in Washington DC in 2003-04, and the founding Director of the Senator George Mitchell Center for Environmental Research at UMaine (1989-04). He has been awarded over $26 million in research grants and contracts from agencies including NSF, EPA, NOAA, and the Park Service. His dozens of graduate students are employed in academia, government, and the private and NGO sectors. Steve has a PhD in Geological Sciences from the University of Maine.