National Renewable Energy Laboratory launches strategic energy analysis institute

Mar 22, 2010 - hydroworld.com

The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has established a new global institute dedicated to analyzing, speeding and smoothing the transition to sustainable energy worldwide.

NREL Senior Scientist Doug Arent has been named executive director of the new Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis (JISEA) by its institutional partners, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, the University of Colorado, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University and NREL.

The Institute aims to use the best tools and most credible data to guide decisions on energy investment and policy – decisions made by policy makers, energy companies, investors and lawmakers around the world. The Joint Institute partners will use their global networks of experts to build project teams, asking corporations and others to become sponsors in the Institute.

“We want to bring breadth and depth of analytical capabilities to conduct seminal studies to help inform the transition of the global energy economy toward one of sustainability,” said Arent, who directed NREL’s Strategic Energy Analysis Center from 2006 to 2010.

JISEA will sponsor research combining the talents of scientists, financiers and other experts that will be placed in top peer-reviewed journals in various fields. The conclusions will help policy makers decide where to invest money, manpower and resources.

Arent specializes in strategic planning, including financial analysis, in clean energy and water issues. His scope is worldwide. In 2008, he was appointed to serve on the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change.

Before working with NREL, Arent had leadership roles in private industry, including director of Strategic Marketing and Business development at Network Photonics, Director of Media Gateway Products and strategic planning manager at Lucent Technologies (now Avaya) and vice president of business development for Amonix Inc.

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