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Entrepreneur.
Investor.
Policymaker.
Lawyer.
Educator Focused on Energy and Climate.
Speaker at the inaugural Clean Currents Conference + Tradeshow in Atlanta October 20-22.
These are all the roles that describe Dan Reicher, Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University’s Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
The National Hydropower Association (NHA) is pleased to announce Reicher’s participation in a Clean Currents’ special session on the “Uncommon Dialogue,” a process in which Reicher worked with the hydropower industry and river and environmental communities to discuss and agree upon ways to maximize hydropower’s climate benefits, while also mitigating the environmental impact of dams and supporting environmental restoration. Together, the groups reached consensus on the increased role that hydropower can play in decarbonizing the grid, and how it can be accomplished in a way that bolsters the health and vitality of our nation’s rivers.
Reicher will be joined by Tom Kiernan, President and COE, American Rivers; Lori Spragens, Executive Director, Association of State Dam Safety Officials; and Malcolm Woolf, President and CEO, National Hydropower Association, in a 1-hour dialogue on how the groups worked together to find common group to expand hydroelectricity, river restoration, and dam safety.
This discussion will be followed by a panel of industry business leaders discussing how the outcomes of the Uncommon Dialogue process will drive business growth and reinvestment for asset owners, developers, and the supply chain.
During Clean Currents, Reicher also will address waterpower executives who are members of NHA’s CEO Council.
Reicher is one of more than 150 speakers featured at the event.
About Dan Reicher
Reicher has served three U.S. presidents, testified before the U.S. Congress more than 50 times, led the launch of Google’s pathbreaking climate and clean energy work, oversaw a $1.2 billion annual clean energy R&D budget as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy, and co-founded the nation’s first investment firm focused exclusively on renewable energy project finance.
His leadership on the Uncommon Dialogue has resulted in a fundamental rethinking of the potential of dams and hydropower.
Reicher served from 2011 to 2018 as founding executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, a joint center of the Stanford Law School and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Reicher came to Stanford from Google, where he served since 2007 as Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives.
Reicher’s federal roles include: Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy; Department of Energy Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff; Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy; a member of the Obama and Clinton presidential transition teams; a member of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board; a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Energy and Environmental Systems; a staff member of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island; a law clerk to a federal district court judge; and a paralegal in the U.S. Department of Justice.
Before his position at Google, Reicher was President and Co-founder of New Energy Capital, the nation’s first investment firm focused exclusively on renewable energy project finance, and Executive Vice President of Northern Power Systems, one of the nation’s oldest renewable energy companies. Earlier in his career Reicher was as an Assistant Attorney General in Massachusetts and an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He was also an adjunct professor at Yale University, Vermont Law School and the University of Maryland.
Reicher holds a BA in biology from Dartmouth College and a JD from Stanford Law School. He also studied at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and MIT.
An avid kayaker, Reicher was a member of the first expedition on record to navigate the entire 1888-mile Rio Grande (with support from the National Geographic Society) and to kayak the Yangtze River in China.
