ISUW 2025 Speaker

As executive director of the NREL Foundation, Doug Arent focuses strategic issues and transformative programs to transform energy economies at speed and scale across the globe. Arent has worked in research on energy and sustainability for more than 40 years, publishing extensively on topics including clean energy, renewable energy, power systems, natural gas, and the intersection of science and public policy. Arent is a recognized global leader for clean energy including serving as a distinguished fellow of the World Economic Forum and a senior visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is a member of the Keystone Energy Board and the Global Advisory Board for the Yale Emerging Climate Leaders Fellowship. Arent also is an external fellow at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs’ Center on Global Energy Policy and was also a Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University from 2022-2024. He is the editor-in-chief of Renewable Energy Focus and is on the editorial board for the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. Arent most recent served as Executive Director for Strategic Public Private Partnerships at NREL. At NREL, he previously served as the deputy associate laboratory director for the Scientific Computing and Energy Analysis directorate, the founding executive director of the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis, and the director for the Strategic Energy Analysis Center and the Integrated Applications Center. Arent was a coordinating lead author for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has been a member of the Policy Subcommittee of the National Petroleum Council Study on Prudent Development of North America Natural Gas and Oil Resources, the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change (2008–2010), and the Executive Council of the U.S. Association of Energy Economists. Previously, Arent served on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Steering Committee on Social Science and the Alternative Energy Future, and the National Research Council Committee to Advise to U.S. Global Change Research Program. He also served on advisory boards for the Post-Carbon Transition Project at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford University, U.K., and the Energy Academy of Europe, Netherlands. Arent has a doctorate from Princeton University, a Masters of Business Administration from Regis University, and a Bachelor of Science from Harvey Mudd College in California