Varun Sivaram Email & Phone Number

Dr. Varun Sivaram is senior fellow for energy and climate at the Council on Foreign Relations and brings experience as a C-suite executive at two publicly listed companies, as a senior U.S. diplomat, and as a physicist with expertise in clean energy technologies. Dr. Sivaram served as chief strategy and innovation officer at Ørsted, a $25 billion Fortune Global 500 company that is the world’s largest producer of offshore wind energy. His teams executed several billion dollars in clean energy asset acquisitions, divestments, joint ventures, and structured financing products; developed the company’s strategic approach to build renewable energy across three continents; and launched Ørsted Ventures to invest in next-generation technologies. Earlier in his career, he served as chief technology Officer at ReNew Power, a publicly listed multibillion-dollar company that is India’s largest producer of renewable energy, and as a consultant at McKinsey & Co.Dr. Sivaram served for the first two years of President Joe Biden’s administration in the White House and State Department as the managing director for clean energy and senior advisor to Secretary John Kerry, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. He created and led the First Movers Coalition, which President Biden called the flagship U.S. public-private partnership on climate. Dr. Sivaram has also served in state and local government as senior advisor to the mayor of Los Angeles and to the governor of New York.A widely published scientist and innovation scholar, Sivaram has served on the faculty of Columbia University and Georgetown University and was also previously fellow and director of the energy and climate program at the Council on Foreign Relations. His books include Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet, Energizing America: A Roadmap to Launch a National Energy Innovation Mission, and Digital Decarbonization: Promoting Digital Innovations to Advance Clean Energy Systems.TIME Magazine named Sivaram to its TIME 100 Next list of the next hundred most influential people in the world, MIT Technology Review named him one of the top 35 innovators under 35, and the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader. His TED Talk on India's clean energy transition has been viewed more than one million times. Sivaram serves on the boards of the Atlantic Council, the Breakthrough Institute, and Aventurine Partners. A Rhodes and Truman Scholar, he holds a PhD in condensed matter physics from Oxford University, and undergraduate degrees from Stanford University.

Listed skills include Research, Physics, Public Speaking, Statistics, and 21 others.