New Sustainability Scholarship Honors ‘Green Cowboy’ Freeman
A new scholarship for University of Tennessee, Knoxville, students majoring in sustainability honors a leader in the field who shaped energy policy while serving US presidents and leading several of the country’s largest utilities.
The S. David Freeman Sustainability Scholarship, to be awarded for the first time in fall 2025, will be available to rising juniors or seniors. “This scholarship will enable us to recognize outstanding students in sustainability—a rapidly growing major—and equip them to become future leaders in Tennessee, the US, and the world,” said Professor Ron Kalafsky, interim head of the Department of Geography and Sustainability. The department offers a bachelor’s degree in sustainability with the option for a public policy concentration or supply chain management concentration.
Freeman was working as a civil engineer at the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1950s when he decided to earn his law degree from UT by going to school at night, graduating at the top of his class in 1956. “He was more interested in law and policy, and that’s where he excelled,” said his son Stan Freeman.
Influenced Energy Policy
S. David “Dave” Freeman led a Ford Foundation project that produced the seminal 1974 report A Time to Choose: America’s Energy Future, calling for conservation to be a key part of America’s energy policy and citing the dangers posed by climate change. He continued advocating for conservation and renewable energy until his death in 2020 at the age of 94.
“Students who dedicate their undergraduate studies to sustainability are more likely to dedicate their careers to the goals of conservation, renewable energy, and environmental protection, so this honors my dad’s life work and his Tennessee roots,” said Stan Freeman, a Washington, D.C.,-based higher education lawyer who, like his two siblings, was born in Knoxville. His father grew up in Chattanooga, the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe who owned and operated an umbrella repair and dry-cleaning shop.
S. David Freeman worked for the Federal Power Commission during the Kennedy administration and went on to work in the Johnson, Nixon and Carter administrations, as well as advise the Senate Commerce Committee. His work influenced policies on vehicle fuel economy, renewable energy and more.
He became one of the first advocates for energy efficiency in 1968, a stance he credited to two women from New Hampshire who showed him it was possible to save more energy than would be provided by building a nuclear power plant they were opposing.
“He realized that energy conservation was equally or more important than energy production, and that renewable energy is also key to environmental protection and energy independence,” said his second son, Roger Freeman, an environmental and renewable energy lawyer based in Denver.
Freeman has been called visionary and a prophet in the energy field.
TVA and Beyond
President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the TVA board in 1977, and he served until 1984, much of that time as chair. Freeman stopped the development of several nuclear power plants, pioneered renewable energy programs, and improved pollution controls on TVA’s coal plants. In 1982, the National Wildlife Federation named him Conservationist of the Year.
After TVA he led other major public utilities, including the New York Power Authority, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. “He achieved widespread recognition for his environmental protection initiatives in California,” his daughter, Anita Hopkins, said of her father.
Dave Freeman’s advocacy continued into his 90s. After several years of advocacy work for Friends of the Earth while in his 80s and 90s, he then became a senior energy advisor for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Freeman became known as the “Green Cowboy” after he started wearing a cowboy hat, a move he said was because a dermatologist told him to protect his head when he was leading the Lower Colorado River Authority in Texas. He titled his 2016 autobiography The Green Cowboy: An Energetic Life and authored two other books on conservation and energy policy.
To support the S. David Freeman Sustainability Scholarship click here. Learn more about Freeman’s life and legacy here.
By Amy Beth Miller