History
National Clean Cities, a nonprofit organization, formed in 1999 to support Clean Cities coalitions and their work. Renamed Transportation Energy Partnership (TEP) in 2006, the group included representatives from industry, the nonprofit arena and Clean Cities coalitions. TEP launched an annual event in 2001, first called Washington Days, which convened Clean Cities coordinators and stakeholders on Capitol Hill to raise awareness of the program and its mission.
When TEP suspended operations due to funding constraints in 2005, a core group of Clean Cities Coordinators chose to revive the Washington event, renaming it Energy Independence Days (EID). Since the changeover in late 2006, this bottom-up volunteer planning group is now on its third straight national event, all without the aid of staff or contractors. Last September, the TEP Board of Directors came out of hiatus to enable the same grass-roots nucleus of Clean Cities Coordinators to assume a definite shape. The match proved felicitous: TEP was an organization in search of an animating force, and the EID Planning Group was an ad hoc (geographically motley but motivated) crew in search of a mission-aligned existing organization.
