Advisory Council
Marilyn Brown
Professor of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of TechnologyMarilyn A. Brown is a Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she created and directs the Climate and Energy Policy Lab. Her research focuses on the design and modeling of energy and climate policies, with an emphasis on the electric utility industry, energy efficiency, and resources on the customer side of the meter. Since 2010, she has been a Presidential appointee to the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority where her efforts have helped put the agency on a track to reduce its CO2 emissions in 2020 by 40% below 2005. She has authored more than 250 publications and six books. Among her honors and awards, she is a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for co-authorship of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on Mitigation of Climate Change. She has served on eight committees of the National Academies and is in her second term on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee.
Wil Burns
Co-Executive Director, The Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy, American UniversityDr. Bruce Dale
University Distinguished Professor, Michigan State University, Dept. of Chemical EngineeringProfessor Dale is Distinguished University Professor of Chemical Engineering and former Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Michigan State University. He also serves as Editor in Chief of the Wiley journal Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining. In 1996 he won the Charles D. Scott Award for contributions to the use of biotechnology to produce fuels, chemical and other industrial products from renewable plant resources. In 2007 he won the Sterling Hendricks award for contributions to the chemical science of agriculture. He was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in 2011 and also in 2011 he won the Award of Excellence of the Fuel Ethanol Workshop. In 2013 he was named University Distinguished Professor, a designation held by approximately 1% of university faculty. Professor Dale is interested in the environmentally sustainable conversion of plant matter to industrial products -- fuels, chemicals and materials -- while still meeting human and animal needs for food and feed. He occupies a leadership role in the DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC). The GLBRC will receive $275million in Federal funding over 10 years to develop cellulosic biofuels.
Robert Grant
Director of International Public Policy and Advocacy, Global Innovation Policy Center, U.S. Chamber of CommerceDavid Hammer
J.C. Ward Jr. Professor of Nuclear Energy Engineering , Cornell UniversityElias Hinckley
Partner, KL GatesDr. Andrew C. Kadak
President, Kadak Associates, Inc.Daniel Kammen
Distinguished Professor of Energy, University of California, BerkeleyNathan S. Lewis
George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry; Director, Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, California Institute of TechnologyMichael S. Lubell
Professor of Physics, City College of the City University of New YorkDavid J. Manning
Director, Stakeholder Relations/External Affairs, Brookhaven National LaboratoryAndrew Revkin
Founding Director, Initiative on Communication and Sustainability, The Earth Institute, Columbia UniversityHerschel Specter
President, Micro-Utilities, Inc.Herschel is a professional engineer with over 50 years of experience in the electric power industry. After graduating from MIT and serving as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army, he started his career in physics, thermal hydraulics, and heat transfer. In 1965, he joined the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) where he established national containment acceptance criteria. Later, as the AEC licensing manager for the Indian Point 3 (IP3) Plant, he completed its safety review, wrote the safety evaluation report, and presented his results before the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS). This led to the licensing of this plant. He was then selected by AEC Commissioner Doub to serve at diplomat rank at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria (1974-1979). He returned in 1979 to the Department of Energy where he worked on the safety of our Defense Nuclear Systems. In 1981 the New York Power Authority (NYPA) offered him the position of Manager of an adjudicatory hearing defending IP3. Later, as Technical Advisor to NYPA’s Executive Vice President, he was asked by the Department of Energy to chair a national committee on emergency planning. The final report was forwarded to Congress. He also chaired NUMARC’s Task Force on Emergency Planning. The NUMARC report (NUMARC/NESP-005) was distributed to all U.S. nuclear utilities. He was a guest lecturer at Harvard for over five years on emergency planning. In 1992 he initiated a national effort on “Risk-Based Regulation” (RBR) and presented this concept to all five NRC Commissioners at a public hearing. Risk based regulation has become the centerpiece for modernizing the nuclear regulatory process at the NRC and within the nuclear industry. He has written fundamental papers on this subject, assisted EPRI in initiating its program on risk-based regulation, appeared before national regulatory and industry groups, been a guest lecturer and invited international speaker, chaired industry committees on this subject and have been an active member on others. In 1993 he wrote the ANS Policy Statement on RBR. In addition to my RBR activities, he has published extensively on other nuclear safety issues, on the environment, and on energy policy matters. He has served on an editorial board of an international energy journal.