Session Description: Rollbacks to federal climate policy under the second Trump Administration pose a challenge to meeting the United States' climate targets. This presentation will provide an overview of the U.S. program's work on national climate ambition and how the team models climate policies at a variety of political levels. We will discuss the status of federal climate policy and the implications of recent regulatory and federal rollbacks, and the role that subnational actors, especially states, can play in ensuring that climate mitigation efforts continue.
Speaker Bios:
Alicia Zhao is a research manager at the CGS. Her work focuses on climate mitigation and sustainability, with an emphasis on integrated quantitative analysis and modeling of energy systems, land use and related issues at the center of climate and sustainability debates.Prior to joining CGS, Zhao worked at the sustainability nonprofit Ceres. She then completed her master's degree in environmental management at Duke University, where she became passionate about mitigating climate change through the use of data science, economics and stakeholder engagement. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in environmental science from Cornell University.
Claire Squire is a research associate at CGS. Her work focuses on energy transition and climate mitigation, particularly the land use-climate change-energy nexus and U.S. subnational policy. At CGS, she researches coal phaseout, expansion of biomass utilization, and sustainable development, particularly within an Indonesian context, impacts of subnational policy on the attainment of U.S. climate goals, and conducts integrated assessment modeling. Her prior work focused on understanding county-level barriers to siting of renewable energy, and strategies for overcoming local opposition to accelerate deployment. She holds a master's degree in public policy from the University of Maryland, and a bachelor's degree in environmental management from Indiana University.
Kiara Ordonez Olazabal is a research associate at CGS. Originally from Arequipa, Peru, she received a BA in economics and sustainable development from Columbia University. Before joining the CGS team, Ordonez was a GIS analyst at the Columbia Climate School and worked in various research positions at Global Energy Monitor, Columbia's Department of Economics, and Friends of the Earth.