SANTA BARBARA ENVIRONMENTAL HERO AWARD: Here's a report from Michael Chiacos, Energy
Program Senior Associate at the Community Environmental Council, Santa Barbara, CA:

CalCars receives the "Environmental Hero Award" at Earth Day in Santa Barbara: Perfect weather, 200 vendors, and a genuine buzz around environmental solutions greeted 12,000 attendees of Santa Barbara's Earth Day on Sunday, April 20th. Congresswoman Lois Capps of the 23rd District awarded Community Environmental Council's "Environmental Hero Award" to CalCars for its work to develop and promote the use of PHEVs. Congresswoman Capps explained to the crowd about PHEVs and presented the award stating that "CalCars' work reflects the best part of America -- a group of creative people who saw a problem, saw that the auto industry and government weren't getting to it fast enough, and got to work developing a solution. Imagine what we could achieve if America took this approach toward all our energy-related problems." Accepting the award on behalf of CalCars were Seth Seaberg from EDrive and Kim Adelman from Plug-in Conversions. Both demonstrated their conversion kits to the crowd and took orders. Rep. Capps said she wanted to get a PHEV, and spent the next 20 minutes visiting the two PHEVs at the Green Car Show, and talking with Seth, Kim, and others about PHEV related technology, policy and legislation.