We are pleased to announce the appointment of the new Energy and Resources Group Chair, Professor Daniel M. Kammen. His appointment began July 1, 2017.
Daniel Kammen is a Professor of Energy with appointments in the Energy and Resources Group, The Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL; http://rael.berkeley.edu), and was Director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center from 2007-2015. He has served the State of California and U.S. federal government in expert and advisory capacities, including time at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Energy, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. He was appointed by then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in April 2010 as the first energy fellow of the new Environment and Climate Partnership for the Americas (ECPA) initiative. In 2016 he began service as the Science Envoy for Secretary of State John Kerry.
Kammen received his undergraduate (Cornell A., B. ’84) and graduate (Harvard M. A. ’86, Ph.D. ’88) training is in physics. After postdoctoral work at Caltech and Harvard, Kammen was professor and Chair of Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at Princeton University in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs from 1993-1998. He then moved to the University of California, Berkeley.
Kammen directs research programs on energy supply, transmission, smart grid and low-carbon energy systems, life-cycle impacts of transportation options including electrified vehicles and land-use planning, and on energy for community development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Daniel Kammen served as a coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He is co-developer of the Property Assessed Clean Energy [PACE] Financing Model, an energy efficiency and solar energy financing plan that permits installation of clean energy systems on residences with no up-front costs. PACE was named by Scientific American as the #1 World Changing Idea of 2009 (co-developed with Cisco DeVries). Kammen served on the National Technical Advisory Board of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. He hosted the Discovery Channel series Ecopolis, and has appeared on Frontline, NOVA, and 60 Minutes.
Dr. Kammen has authored or co-authored 12 books, written more than 300 peer-reviewed journal publications, and has testified more than 40 times to U.S. state and federal congressional briefings, and has provided various governments with more than 50 technical reports.
He looks forward to sharing his goals as ERG Chair and hearing about your vision for ERG over the coming months at the All-ERG Town Hall on August 23 (full invitation to follow) and at other opportunities that will be arranged.
We would also like to express our gratitude to outgoing ERG Chair Harrison Fraker for providing committed leadership to ERG for the past four years. He has led ERG though several major projects and transitions, including ERG’s external review, renovations, two successful faculty recruitments, strategic planning, and increased revenue generation and fundraising. We are delighted that he will continue to contribute to ERG as an active affiliate.