Energy Seminar: Hydropower: Climate Solution and Conservation Challenge, Dan Reicher, Stanford

Abstract:

Hydropower, the nation’s largest renewable electricity generation source and storage capacity, is both a significant climate solution and conservation challenge.  Stanford’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance and Woods Institute for the Environment are jointly leading a project focused on how to better use this major energy resource and, at the same time, reduce its environmental impacts. The work includes: a Stanford-led dialogue between the hydropower industry and the river conservation community; a law-school-based “policy lab” pursuing key research; a decision support tool launched under Stanford’s Big Earth Hackathon; and recent efforts facilitated by Stanford and the U.S. Department of Energy. Key issues that will be addressed in the seminar include the changing economics of hydropower, the safety and environmental impacts of U.S. powered and non-powered dams, and river basin-scale decision-making regarding U.S. dam retrofits and removals.

Speaker Bio:

Dan Reicher is a Research Fellow for the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, a joint center of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Law School, where he also holds a lecturer position. Reicher came to Stanford in 2011 from Google, where he served since 2007 as Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives. From 2011 to 2018 Reicher served as Executive Director of the Steyer-Taylor Center. He has served three Presidents including in the Clinton administration as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Department of Energy Chief of Staff, as a member of President Obama’s Transition Team and Co-chair of the Energy and Environment Team for Obama, and as a staff member of President Carter’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island.

Reicher is a member of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the National Academy of Sciences Board on Energy and Environmental Systems, a senior fellow (non-resident) of the Brookings Institution, and board chair and interim President and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy. He also serves on the boards of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy and American Rivers, the Vermont Law School Environmental Advisory Committee, and is an advisor to Renewable Funding LLC, Sighten, and Spark Fund.

In 2012 Reicher was named one of the five most influential figures in U.S. clean energy by Oilprice.Com.

Before his position at Google, Reicher was President and Co-founder of New Energy Capital Corp., a private equity firm funded by the California State Teachers Retirement System and Vantage Point Venture Partners to invest in clean energy projects. He also was Executive Vice President of Northern Power Systems, one of the nation’s oldest renewable energy companies and a recipient of significant venture capital investment. Reicher was also an adjunct professor at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Vermont Law School.

Earlier in his career Reicher was as an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, Assistant Attorney General in Massachusetts, a law clerk to a federal district court judge in Boston, and a legal assistant in the Hazardous Waste Section of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Reicher holds a BA in biology from Dartmouth College and a JD from Stanford Law School. He also studied at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and MIT.

https://energy.stanford.edu/energy-seminar/upcoming-energy-seminars