Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Energy and Climate Justice
Daniel Kammen (he/him) is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Energy and Climate Justice in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering (CASE), and the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He plays a leadership role in the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI).
Kammen’s work is focused on energy innovation, decarbonization, energy access, and climate justice. He most recently served as Senior Advisor for Energy and Innovation at the US Agency for International Development (USAID: 2021 – 2022).
Kammen was appointed the first Environment and Climate Partnership for the Americas (ECPA) Fellow by Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton in April 2010 and served as Science Envoy for Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama (2016- 2017).
His research is focused on the science and policy of decarbonized energy systems, energy access, and environmental justice. He has published more than 500 papers, which are available on his laboratory website, the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL, http://rael.berkeley.edu). His research is currently focused on: decarbonization of power systems around the world; energy access and social justice; materials science for low-carbon economies; big-data approaches to clean transportation, and on the electrification of health facilities across Africa.
Kammen serves on the board of the Tetiaroa Society, dedicated to marine conservation and cultural survival in French Polynesia. He is also part of the blueClimate Initiative, dedicated to accelerating ocean-based strategies to combat climate change. He is working towards opening a unique Johns Hopkins University campus on the Kenyan coast where a core research and teaching faculty will be based around a sustainable Blue Economy. Kammen works closely with NTNU (Trondheim, Norway) at the University Centre in Svalbard on arctic sustainability and concerns over polar deep-seabed mining.
Kammen has founded or is on the board of over 10 companies, and has served the State of California and US federal government in expert and advisory capacities. Kammen was the First Chief Technical Specialist for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency at the World Bank (2010–2011).
Kammen was educated in physics at Cornell and Harvard and held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and Harvard. Before moving to the University of California, Berkeley, he was Assistant Professor and Chair of the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Program at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
Dr. Kammen has served as a contributing or coordinating lead author on various reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1999. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Kammen serves on the Advisory Committee for Energy & Environment for the X-Prize Foundation. He is on the board of Native Renewables (Flagstaff, AZ); the Chabot Space and Science Center (Oakland, CA), The Human Needs Project/Kibera Town Center (Nairobi, Kenya).
Kammen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.
Kammen was elected to the U. S. National Academy of Sciences in 2025.
He is a member of the Diversity Scholars Network, https://lsa.umich.edu/ncid/engagement-opportunities/diversity-scholars-network.html
Dan Kammen & Claire Broido host the Energy Matters podcast, available on streaming services and directly at https://energymatters.world
Email: kammen@jhu.edu
BlueSky (@dankammen.bsky.social)
