Vermillion Institute

Bill Becker (Golden, CO)

Bill's journey began in 1976 when he proposed and helped implement a pioneering project to relocate a rural Wisconsin village from a floodplain and build the country's first solar village. This is the granddaddy of sustainable community development in the U.S.A.

Today, Bill leads a series of national and international programs. He co-directs The Future We Want, a UN initiative designed to expand public literacy about how sustainable development improves our lives and communities; he is Executive Director of the bi-partisan U.S. Presidential Climate Action Project, which develops consensus recommendations on how the President can lead against climate change; and he is Executive Director of the National Sustainable Communities Coalition, which helps link communities with sustainable development experts. Bill is also a Senior Associate at Natural Capitalism Solutions and at E3G, the international environmental think tank headquartered in London—specializing in energy and climate policy with both organizations. He is a member of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Climate Change Task Force in Geneva, and an advisor to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute in Washington. Prior to all this, Bill spent 15 years at the U.S. Department of Energy and founded its Center of Excellence on Sustainable Development.

Throughout his career, Bill has specialized in helping communities and companies understand and practice sustainability, including their recovery from natural disasters. He has led or participated on expert teams deployed to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Thailand after the 2004 tsunami, and to Beijing to help “green” the Olympic Village at the 2008 Olympic Games.