U.S. President-elect Joe Biden announced his energy transition team members on November 10. The members will head the U.S. Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other energy-focused organisms.
Joe Biden and DOE’s appointments
Joe Biden, the U.S. President-elect, named on November 10, his team members to head several energy-related agencies. These members include academics, representatives, environmental groups, labor associations, and people who worked under the Obama administration.
The DOE’s team will be headed by Arun Majumdar, who is currently co-director of Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy. He is also founding director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the DOE.
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The energy team will also include Jonathan Elkind, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia uniUniversitylkind worked on international climate and energy programs under the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017.
Noah Deich will also be part of Joe Biden’s energy team. Deich is the Carbon180 executive director, a nonprofit organization that seeks to transform carbon into an asset. The collaborator has experience in carbon capture, utilization, and storage space (CCUS) topics.
Another team member will be Brad Markell. Brad currently works as AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council CEO and chairs the AFL-CIO energy task force. Markell also worked as a union representative in Detroit.
For the EPA
For the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Joe Biden appointed Patrice Simms as head of the agency. Currently, Simms works as vice president for healthy communities at Earthjustice.
Simms also has experience working for EPA in the Office of General Counsel, and as a deputy assistant in the U-S- Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division under the Obama administration.
Joe Goffman and Cynthia Giles are two other noteworthy names to look for in the next administration since they also worked for the Obama administration.
Joe, for instance, now works as executive director for Harvard’s Environmental and Energy Law Program. Under Obama’s, he served as general counsel for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, writing the Clean Power Plan.
That plan set the first federal GHG standards for fossil-fuel power plants. During the Trump administration, it has been repealed and replaced.
Cynthia Giles also works at Harvard’s Environmental and Energy Law Program as a guest fellow. Cynthia previously served in the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance as an assistant administrator.
It is important to note that Giles analyzed EPA enforcement data regarding the first two years of the Trump administration, and she found a substantial decline in civil penalties for polluters.
S&P Global reported the next transition team has significant experience in tribal rights. For instance, Kevin Washburn and Janie Simms will be part of the group, having considerable experience in Indian and Native American communities.
