Beach Boy Mike Love will be named “Energy Czar for the Day” on Labor Day when the Beach Boys perform in concert and Mike launches Fairfield’s initiative to become “America’s model sustainable city.”

Fairfield, IA (RPRN) 8/13/2009–One of America’s greenest small towns is about to get a lot greener. Iconic rocker Beach Boy Mike Love will be named “Energy Czar for the Day” during the Beach Boys Labor Day benefit concert on Monday, September 7, in Fairfield (pop. 9,650), Iowa.

Love will launch Fairfield’s initiative to become “America’s Model Sustainable City.”
The Beach Boys, the all-time best-selling U.S. rock group known for decades as “America’s Band,” are promoting a national campaign for national energy independence.

Love and Fairfield Mayor Ed Malloy will hold a news conference on Friday, August 14, 12 Noon, to announce their plans to turn Fairfield into a model city of sustainability. The news conference will be held at the Fairfield Art & Convention Center, 200 Main Street.

Mayor Malloy is a national leader in the drive towards green. The oil broker was recently named one of the “15 Greenest Mayors in America”—along with the big-city mayors of New York, San Francisco, and Seattle—by the MSN.com website for the creation of Fairfield’s “Green Strategic Plan.”

The plan, funded by an $80,000 grant from Iowa’s Office of Energy Independence, calls for everything from conserving energy, to supporting local farms, to creating educational materials for residents. Malloy said he hopes Fairfield’s ideas will catch on: “We want to create a model community, a virtual template that other small towns can adopt to create the same results.”

Love and Malloy are also working to make the Beach Boys concert “green.” The event will feature a “bike to the concert” initiative to cut car usage, demonstrations of clean energy projects and sustainable practices, and educational booths. Malloy said he is also working with Alliant Energy to try to turn the event into a “green powered concert.”

Love makes regular visits to the Maharishi University of Management campus, which is also the home of the Transcendental Meditation program in the U.S. A 40-year meditator, Love recently headlined with Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr as well as Jerry Seinfeld, Donovan, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, and Ben Harper at the “Change Begins Within” benefit concert in New York City on April 4. The concert raised over $1 million for the David Lynch Foundation to help teach one million at-risk youth to meditate.
“Sustainable practices like clean energy and meditation are essential if we are going to become a truly independent nation,” Love said.

ABOUT IOWA’S OFFICE OF ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

Iowa opened its Office of Energy Independence in 2007 resolving that over the next two decades Iowa will achieve energy independence as a state. The Iowa state legislature then created the “Iowa Power Fund,” a $100 million pool to support new technology and programs to create energy independence. Fairfield was awarded an $80,000 grant from the Iowa Power Fund to create a ten-year “Green Strategic Plan” to turn Fairfield into a model sustainable city for the state.

CONCERT INFORMATION & CONTACTS

• Ticket, directions and parking information: 641-472-2787
• Michael Sternfeld, event producer, David Lynch Foundation
  641-919-9778; ram1@lisco.com
• Rustin Lippincott, executive director, Fairfield Arts & Convention Center
  641-472-2828; rlippincott@travelfairfieldiowa.com

NEWS CONFERENCE
Beach Boy Mike Love
Fairfield Mayor Ed Malloy
Friday, August 14 • 12 Noon • Fairfield Arts & Convention Center

Media Contact:
Ken Chawkin
641-470-1314
kchawkin@mum.edu