The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has established a new global institute dedicated to analyzing, speeding and smoothing the transition to sustainable energy worldwide.
The Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis (JISEA) aims to use the best tools and most credible data to guide decisions on energy investment and policy–decisions made by policy makers, energy companies, investors and lawmakers around the world. The Joint Institute partners will use their global networks of experts to build project teams, asking corporations and others to become sponsors in the Institute.
NREL Senior Scientist Doug Arent has been named executive director of the Institute by its institutional partners, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, the University of Colorado, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University and NREL.
“We want to bring breadth and depth of analytical capabilities to conduct seminal studies to help inform the transition of the global energy economy toward one of sustainability,” said Arent, who directed NREL’s Strategic Energy Analysis Center from 2006 to 2010.
The Institute will examine areas where aspirations bump up against pragmatic realities.
For example, many nations aspire to a future in which energy is affordable, non-polluting, uses local renewable resources and has minimal security risk. Those policy considerations might include moving toward low-net-carbon buildings, accelerating the transition to sustainable natural resources and fuels, minimizing local and global impacts, boosting renewable energy jobs and working smoothly across economies and geographies.
“The Institute will try to answer questions to enable a transition at significant speed and scale to achieve sustainability and avoid unintended impacts,” Arent said. “That question goes very much beyond technology. It involves the market structure, law, natural resource use, the impact on local and regional environments, and impacts on local economies and jobs.”
JISEA will sponsor research combining the talents of scientists, financiers and other experts that will be placed in top peer-reviewed journals in various fields. The conclusions will help policy makers decide where to invest money, manpower and resources.
“We will reach out to key stakeholders and decision-makers domestically and globally,” Arent said.
Arent specializes in strategic planning, including financial analysis, in clean energy and water issues. In 2008, he was appointed to serve on the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change.
He is a member of the U.S. Government Review Panel for the International Panel on Climate Change. Among several other leadership roles on committees, Arent is on the executive council of the U.S. Association of Energy Economists and formerly headed the Quantitative Work Group in support of the Clean and Diversified Energy Advisory Council of the Western Governors Association.
Before working with NREL, Arent had leadership roles in private industry, including director of Strategic Marketing and Business development at Network Photonics, Director of Media Gateway Products and strategic planning manager at Lucent Technologies (now Avaya) and vice president of business development for Amonix Inc.
Arent has a Ph.D. from Princeton University, a master’s in business administration from Regis University and a bachelor’s of science from Harvey Mudd College in California.
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