Robbie Orvis
Director of Energy Policy Design
Robbie Orvis is the Director of Energy Policy Design at Energy Innovation, where he leads the Energy Policy Solutions program. For this program, Robbie manages EI’s research analyzing which policies can best meet climate and energy goals using EI’s in-house model, the Energy Policy Simulator, as well as other energy and climate policy models. He has helped develop and deploy EPS models in more than a dozen countries, including Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. He has advised governments, research institutes, and advocacy organizations on which climate and energy policies are most effective as well as how to design those policies.
Robbie is a co-author of Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide for Low-Carbon Energy, and is also an expert on wholesale electricity markets, where his research focuses on market designs and practices that help enable a high renewable energy future.
Prior to joining EI in 2014, Robbie received his Master of Environmental Management from Yale University. While there, he worked on a variety of energy issues, from evaluating utility rate decoupling to designing city-wide energy efficiency policy. Robbie also spent a summer consulting for the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee on energy efficiency programs. From 2010 to 2012, he was a Research Analyst at the Environmental Integrity Project in Washington, D.C. researching regulatory, monitoring, and enforcement issues at power plants and refineries across the U.S to help hold large polluters accountable for their emissions.
Robbie graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.S. in Society and Environment. Between his junior and senior years, he interned at the Natural Resources Defense Council in D.C., working to help pass the cap-and-trade climate bill in the House of Representatives.