Meet the Board of Directors
With expertise spanning decades of cutting edge work in the fields of sustainability, law, environmental planning and renewable energy, our Board of Directors has the experience and vision necessary to create the innovative solutions of tomorrow
Kevin Daehnke, Founder and Chair of the Board
Kevin Daehnke is the Founder and President of the Center for Strategic Policy Innovation. He is also an environmental lawyer, first at large law firms in the Los Angeles area, and then for more than 25 years at Daehnke Cruz Law Group, a law firm he founded.
In law school at the University of Southern California (USC), Kevin co-founded the USC Journal of Law and the Environment, served as the Journal’s first Editor-in-Chief, and wrote a law school dissertation on “The Legal Implications of Ocean Energy Farms”. After law school, Mr. Daehnke became one of the pioneers in the “Brownfields” movement that began in the 1990s. Kevin founded and served as President of the Center for Year 2000 Community Action Plans (CYTCAP), a national think-tank to help protect critical local infrastructure from the potentially catastrophic impacts of multi-day electric power grid failures. Mr. Daehnke is also credited with the creation of, and passage of California Senate Bill 989, legislation that created the Bona Fide Ground Tenant tool to revitalize landfills and other Brownfield sites for renewable energy and other productive uses. As an adjunct to this California effort, Kevin has served in an advisory capacity to the U.S. EPA, the United States Attorney’s office and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control in their efforts to encourage the siting of renewable energy facilities at old landfills and other contaminated sites.
In 2018, Mr. Daehnke founded the Center for Strategic Policy Innovation (CSPI) and soon thereafter created the Clean Growth Incubator, designed to jumpstart the direct buildout of clean, renewable energy projects and microgrids throughout the country, with special focus on disadvantaged communities and disadvantaged populations. As part of the Clean Growth Incubator work, Kevin developed a well-received private sector social impact business/financing model to fund renewable energy and microgrid projects. Beginning in 2021, CSPI teamed up with Arizona State University’s Laboratory for Energy And Power Solutions (LEAPS) and with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to conduct a Pilot Project in Lansing Michigan, with the purpose of demonstrating how best to utilize the publicly available clean energy modeling tools (developed by NREL) known as the Renewable Energy Optimization Tool (REopt) and the System Advisor Model (SAM). CSPI has taken its strategy for building local solar energy-anchored microgrids and the Lansing Pilot project and, in May of 2023, conducted its first (24 hours of instruction) nationwide real-time training, using NREL’s SAM and REopt modeling tools as the backdrop for the training. Based on the huge success of this training initiative, CSPI has just launched a nationwide 12-month outreach to train one thousand local champions across the country on how to seek out, identify, vision and model (both technically and financially) solar PV-anchored battery storage/microgrid projects to benefit communities across the country.
Charles B Howland
Charles Howland is a Partner and Chair of the Environmental Group at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, LLP. Through his practice, Mr. Howland helps clients address cutting edge issues associated with environmental remediation under federal and state clean up programs, and the potential intersection of these projects with renewable energy and other forms of sustainable development. Prior to joining Curtis, Mr. Howland served as a Senior Assistant Regional Counsel at the EPA's Mid-Atlantic Regional office, where he worked on some of the region’s most complex site clean-ups and enforcement actions, as well as on several workgroups which wrote national EPA enforcement guidance on municipal solid waste, tenant liability and former defense sites. Before joining the firm in 2018, he served as Senior Advisor to the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance as lead or participating attorney on several workgroups implementing Superfund Task Force reforms on enforcement, environmental liability transfer mechanisms and groundwater policy. In 2017, Mr. Howland was appointed to the U.S. State Department Fulbright Fellow Specialist roster (environmental and energy law) for a three-year term. Mr. Howland began his involvement with the Center for Strategic Policy Innovation as a member of the Expert Advisory Panel for the Smart Grid Buildout Initiative in 2018, and recently joined the Board of Directors.
Bill Wilson
Bill Wilson is President of Bill Wilson Environmental Planning, LLC, an international sustainable planning and environmental consulting firm. Mr. Wilson specializes in environmental engineering, wastewater, renewable energy and water quality planning.
Wilson is a Co-Founder and President Emeritus of Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF), which is credited with discovery of the prevalence of plastics in the World’s oceans. Wilson is a Founding Partner of FOP Development Group LLC, an international leader in developing financial resources for municipalities in the upgrade of vital water and energy infrastructure, renewables, and decentralized recycled water. Mr. Wilson is a US EPA Registered Wastewater Consultant and a founding member of both the California Onsite Wastewater Association (COWA) and the USGBC LEED Water Efficiency Technical Advisory Committee. He has degrees in Biology and Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a post-graduate certification from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.