Home | Print Page

E2 Member Login
Enter email to login:
Password:

Remember me on this computer



Forgot your password?
Become a Member

Joining E2 is the most effective way to stay informed about cutting-edge environmental issues, leverage your professional network, and use your skills to influence important environmental policy issues.

Join Now E2 is a partner of NRDC
Business Voice for the Environment
photo Laura Shenkar
Principal
The Artemis Project
Laura’s firm, the Artemis Project, focuses on the emergence of innovative water technology. As Principal at Artemis, Laura divides her time between helping advanced water technologies go to market and working with a limited group of leading corporations to apply advanced water technology. 

In February 2007, Laura met E2 Co-founder Bob Epstein at a Cleantech Investor Forum in San Francisco (hosted each year by the Cleantech Group), where she asked him how she could contribute to E2’s efforts to improve water management. Bob forwarded her inquiry to E2 Northern California member Rick DeGolia, who was just starting a study for E2 that estimates the impact of basic conservation with existing approaches and technologies in addressing the requirements of California’s climate change legislation, AB 32. (See “Reducing Greenhouse Gases through Improved Water Policies.”) Laura was happy to sign on.

Having spent most of her career outside the U.S. in places where water scarcity has been a more significant issue, Laura was the perfect co-author for E2’s water study project. She brought an understanding of the potential of cutting-edge technologies that consumers, industry and agriculture could use to help remediate local water availability problems. For example, drip irrigation is well-established as a general approach in water-scarce regions similar to California, like Israel, Australia and Spain, but it is viewed as a niche solution here in the U.S., both for homes and for agriculture.

Being involved in the project also increased her base of knowledge. “This project helped broaden my understanding of the big picture for water management. The water policy paper looked at water management challenges from a policy perspective, rather than a market perspective. I gained an understanding of how advanced technologies fit in the overall potential for improved water efficiency. Low-flow toilets aren’t advanced technology, but they are an important part of California’s water efficiency strategy.”

The water policy paper has also served to prepare Laura to support other E2 initiatives. She has been working on researching and producing profiles of three water technology companies that will soon be added to the E2 Climate Campaign website’s Innovative Companies section. Over the longer term, Laura hopes to identify technologies that address the applications which offer the most energy savings: onsite water recycling, cooling towers using water rather than air, and drip irrigation.

Laura feels her time working on E2 projects has been well spent. “Usually when you provide your time pro-bono, you don’t get a lot of bang for your buck. What’s exciting and rewarding about my work with E2 is that is has been listened to – it has had the opportunity to influence policy. E2 has a very shrewd, agile approach to implementing that which is possible and most important. It is also extraordinarily effective at answering questions and understanding what conditions need to be in place to expedite the implementation of environmental solutions.”


World Clock