Dan Kammen
Professor, Energy and Resources Group
University of California at Berkeley

Daniel M. Kammen is the Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds appointments in the Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the department of Nuclear Engineering. After postdoctoral work at Caltech and Harvard, Kammen was professor and Chair of the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at Princeton University, before moving to Berkeley. He is the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) as well Co-Director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment (http://bie.berkeley.edu).

Kammen received his undergraduate (Cornell A., B. ’84) and graduate (Harvard M. A. ’86, Ph.D. ’88) training is in physics.

Through RAEL (http://rael.berkeley.edu) Kammen works with faculty colleagues, several postdoctoral fellows, and roughly 20 doctoral students on a wide range of science, engineering, economics and policy projects related to energy science, engineering and the environment. The focus of Kammen’s work is on the science and policy of clean, renewable energy systems, energy efficiency, the role of energy in national energy policy, international climate debates, and the use and impacts of energy sources and technologies on development, particularly in Africa and Latin America. Kammen has published five books, over 180 journal articles and 30 research reports. He serves on the board of The Utility Reform Network, the National Advisory Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists, on the Technical Review Board of the Global Environment Facility is on the advisory board of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and is a Permanent Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.

Recently Kammen has:

• Published papers on the energy and environmental consequences of ethanol production and use (http://rael.berkeley.edu/EBAMM) that have been widely used and cited, and covered by 60 Minutes, PBS Nova, CNN and CBS national news, NPR, and other outlets.
• Become the Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Research Letters Environmental Research Letters (http://erl.iop.org), an open-access online and print journal that will cover all facets of environmental studies, and will become an online nexus of environmental research and action.
• Published of a series of papers on the health effects of indoor air pollution in developing nations, including the first ever analysis of the exposure-response relationship between smoke from biomass cooking and acute respiratory infection, a leading cause of illness worldwide. This work has now expanded to include regional and global analyses of the importance and impact of charcoal combustion as a global pollutant.
• Conducted a series of research projects on the economic and environmental impact of a greatly expanded focus on clean energy policies for the United States. These research papers and reports formed the basis for a series of testimonies that Kammen presented before U. S. House of Representatives and Senate Committees. A central goal of this work is to examine the potential for ‘deep cuts’ in greenhouse gas emissions while strengthening the economy.
• Continued an analysis of the trends and impacts of energy research and development on energy technologies both in the U. S. and abroad. This work has become central to work on R&D effectiveness by the U. S. Senate Energy Committee, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Academy of Sciences, the Third World Academy of Sciences, and the International Energy Agency.
• Worked with his students and colleagues in Kenya, Mexico and Sri Lanka to examine the growth, opportunities, and the obstacles, in clean energy markets in developing nations.
• Worked with Federal agencies to research and inform energy and environmental policy. Most recently, RAEL became the first university partner of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency on the Healthy Homes initiative, and he served on the Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee (NERAC) for the U. S. Department of Energy’s examination of the next generation of nuclear power options (‘Generation IV’).
• Conducted a series of studies of the economics of hydrogen production for use in fuel-cell power plants and vehicles. A key aspect of this work is to examine the opportunities for a dramatically new, distributed energy future. This work includes the potential for vehicles to serve as mobile power plants. A goal of this work is the development of a new Center for Distributed Energy Research to be based at U. C. Berkeley, but with ties to organizations across the country.
• Examined the potential for biomass to play a significant role in meeting energy needs with improved human and environmental health in Africa, and studied the potential for ethanol to become a major source of environmentally beneficial fuel.
• Worked with the print, radio, and TV media to bring awareness of energy issues to the public and to elected officials. Recently these appearances have been on PBS radio and TV, along with techTV, CNN, ABC, CBS, and in a number of foreign media. He debated Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, about which Kammen was more than a little skeptical.

Kammen’s students have moved into a wide range of positions, including work at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, and CleanEdge, as well as in commercial energy firms such as Constellation Energy and GE Wind. He has former students now working at the United Nations (the Development Programme as well as at the Global Environment Facility) and at the U. S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. His students hold faculty positions at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, the Harvard School of Public Health, The Schatz Energy Laboratory/Humbolt State University, the Energy and Environment Program at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, in Geography at both Florida State University and Wisconsin, Madison, and in Public Policy at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.