Jeffrey Rissman
Senior Director, Industry
Jeffrey Rissman is Senior Director, Industry at Energy Innovation, leading the company’s work on technologies and policies to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from the industry sector. He is also the originator and developer of the Energy Policy Simulator, an open-source computer model that quantifies the effects of various energy and environmental policies in combination, predicting outputs such as fuel use, pollutant emissions, financial cost or savings, electric vehicle deployment, power sector structure, and more. Versions of the simulator have been developed for an ever-growing list of countries and regions, in partnership with in-country government agencies or NGOs, accounting for more than 50 percent of the world’s emissions.
Prior to this project, Jeff worked on policies supporting R&D for clean energy and efficiency technologies for the American Energy Innovation Council, at which time he co-authored several papers in a series of case studies on the role of government in energy technology innovation. He led a survey of 17 R&D leaders investigating trends, opportunities, and challenges to unleashing private sector energy R&D.
Jeff holds an M.S. in environmental sciences and engineering and a Masters in City and Regional Planning, both from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was a Research Fellow for the University of North Carolina Institute for the Environment, where he studied aircraft emissions for the Federal Aviation Administration. Jeff also holds a B.A. in international relations with honors from Stanford University.