Witman to Leave the EPA’s GreenChill Partnership

WASHINGTON — Keilly Witman, who is largely responsible for creating and managing the Environmental Protection Agency’s five-year-old GreenChill Partnership aimed at reducing refrigerant emissions in supermarkets, announced that she is leaving the agency as of April 30.

In an email sent last night to GreenChill participants, Witman said her departure was “due to the sequestration-related pay cuts for EPA employees.” She will be replaced as manager of GreenChill by Tom Land.

Keilly Witman

Witman said she will continue to work with the supermarket industry in her new role at EOS Climate, San Francisco, where she starts May 15.  EOS Climate leverages carbon markets “to ensure the complete life cycle management of refrigerants,” according to its website.

Read more: Weis Rewards Refrigeration Technicians for Cutting Leak Rates

At EOS Climate, Witman “will focus on creating financial incentives to accelerate the transition to advanced refrigeration technologies,” she said in the email. “These projects will be based on the complete lifecycle management of refrigerants as an asset. I’ve spent the past 5 years making the case that refrigerant management must be an environmental priority; now I’d like to concentrate on getting financial rewards for those of you who have made enormous progress in this area.”

Witman, who made SN’s Power 50 list in 2010, launched the free, voluntary GreenChill program in November 2007 and built it up to include more than 8,000 supermarkets operated by a host of food retailers, including Giant Eagle, Food Lion, Supervalu, Target, Meijer, Weis Markets, Price Chopper, Brookshire Grocery, Publix, Whole Foods and others.  

In addition to helping the industry drive down refrigerant leak rates and transition from ozone-depleting HFC refrigerants, GreenChill developed a set of best practices for refrigeration maintenance available to any retailer at www.epa.gov/greenchill. Moreover, the GreenChill program helped to smooth over relations between the industry and the regulatory side of the EPA, as Witman became known as a go-to resource for questions about the agency  and “the friendly face of the EPA.”

“I think we all accomplished something amazing over the past 5 years,” she said in the email. “Let’s not stop now!”

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