Susan F. Tierney

Chair, RFF Board of Directors; Senior Advisor, Analysis Group Inc.

Dr. Tierney is a Senior Advisor at Analysis Group, and is an expert on energy economics, regulation, and policy, particularly in the electric and natural gas industries. She has consulted to businesses, federal and state governments, tribes, environmental groups, foundations, and other organizations on energy markets, economic and environmental regulation and strategy, and energy projects. She has served as an analyst of and an expert witness on a variety of issues, including: industry structure, regulation, and markets; resource planning and procurements; siting of electric and gas infrastructure projects; electric system reliability; ratemaking for electric and gas utilities; clean energy-resource, climate-change and carbon-emission-reduction policies; and other environmental policy and regulation.

Previously, she served as the Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Energy. She was the Secretary of Environmental Affairs in Massachusetts, Commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, Chairman of the Board of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, and Executive Director of the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Council.

Sue has authored numerous articles and speaks frequently at industry conferences. She serves on a number of boards of directors and advisory committees, including chairing the Boards of Resources for the Future and of ClimateWorks Foundation. She is a trustee of the Barr Foundation, and a director of the World Resources Institute, the Energy Foundation, and the Keystone Center. She is a Visiting Fellow in Policy Practice at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute; and a member of the advisory councils at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, , and the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO). She is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Committee on the Modernization of the Electric Grid and of the Advisory Committee of the Academies’ Climate Communications Initiative; she was recently a member of the Academies’ Committee on Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation’s Electric Power Transmission and Distribution System.” She recently chaired the Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee, chaired the External Advisory Council of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, co-chaired the NAESB Gas-Electric Harmonization Committee, and was co-lead author of the energy chapter of the National Climate Assessment. She chaired the Policy Subgroup of the National Petroleum Council’s Prudent Development study of the natural gas and oil resource base in North America, and served on the U.S. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.

She taught at the University of California at Irvine, and has lectured at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Yale University, New York University, Tufts University, Northwestern University, and University of Michigan. She received NARUC’s Mary Kilmarx Award in 2015. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in regional planning at Cornell University and her B.A. at Scripps College.

Susan F. Tierney

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