Samuel Thernstrom
Sam Thernstrom is the founder and executive director of the Energy Innovation Reform Project (EIRP), a nonprofit organization working to promote the development of advanced energy technologies and practices that will improve the affordability, reliability, safety and security of American energy supplies and our energy economy.
He is also founder and executive director of the Innovation Reform Action Project, a 501c4 nonprofit organization working to advance pragmatic solutions to clean energy challenges. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest.
Previously, he was senior climate policy advisor to the Clean Air Task Force (2010-12), director of communications at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (2001-03), and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (2003-2010), where he co-directed a project exploring the public policy implications of geoengineering. He also served as senior policy advisor to the Bipartisan Policy Commission’s Geoengineering Task Force (2010-11), speechwriter to George E. Pataki, Governor of New York (1999-2000), and press secretary at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (1996-1999).
His writing has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, National Review, Electricity Journal, The Environmental Forum, The New Republic, The American, Bloomberg, and nytimes.com, and he has appeared on ABC News, BBC News, CNN, Fox News, NPR, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Recent Events and Presentations
A Realist Climate Policy: Driving Clean Tech to Price/Performance Parity
Watch now for the release event for the important new report and panel discussion on why P3 must be the new lens governments that governments must use to decide which clean energy technologies to support and how to support them.
Crossing the “Valley of Death”: How to Design and Run Successful Clean-Energy Demonstration Projects
Energy demonstration projects pose many policy and management challenges, and the historical record of the Department of Energy running them is uneven. Join ITIF for the release of a new report assessing recent federal efforts to overcome these challenges and consider how this record might be extended and improved upon in the future.
Energy Innovation 2011
At Energy Innovation 2011, leading energy policy thinkers will address core issues and counter misguided but widely held beliefs about the clean energy innovation.
