Spencer Nelson
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Biography
Spencer Nelson is Managing Director of Research and New Initiatives at ClearPath. He leads ClearPath’s research on the cheapest path to energy system decarbonization. Spencer works with industry, national labs and other stakeholders to develop insights that guide both ClearPath’s work and broader carbon mitigation advocacy efforts.
Prior to this role, Spencer worked for Chairman Lisa Murkowski on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where he was the lead on all the Committee’s clean energy and climate activities. He was a lead architect of the Energy Act of 2020, which is the first comprehensive energy legislation enacted in over a decade and comprises over 40 different clean energy bills.
Before his stint on the Hill, Spencer worked at ClearPath for four years during which he held multiple roles. Most significantly, he managed ClearPath’s work on nuclear energy, energy innovation, and international engagement as a Policy Program Director.
Before that, Spencer worked on state-level solar policy and conducted environmental genetics research at both UNC Chapel Hill and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Education
B.S. in Energy and Sustainability from UNC Chapel Hill, B.S. in Quantitative Biology from UNC Chapel Hill
Area of Expertise
Energy Innovation, Decarbonization, Energy Analysis
Featured Content from Spencer
Hundreds of gigawatts of energy projects spend years in the interconnection process, where projects undergo evaluation by transmission providers, regional grid operators or utilities, to determine their impact on the broader transmission system. The interconnection queue, the list of projects under evaluation for grid connection, has become so dysfunctional that some transmission providers are freezing their process to work through the project backlog and pausing the acceptance of new applicants.
Geothermal provides emissions-free heat and power with the highest capacity factor of any renewable energy source. It also has a small land footprint, which is an increasingly valuable trait as large-scale renewable energy siting runs into headwinds. States, utilities, and investors are all beginning to realize that geothermal is a no-brainer – all that’s left is getting the regulations in order.
On September 22, 2022, ClearPath Managing Director for Research and New Initiatives Spencer Nelson testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the role of energy storage on the grid today, the long-term limits of lithium and the importance of alternatives, advancing alternative energy storage technology solutions, and building on federal policy wins in the Energy Act of 2020 and bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
A Case Study of Local Opposition and Siting Challenges for More Wind Energy in Iowa Overview Reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 will require a massive infrastructure build-out over the next 28 years, involving deploying enough clean electricity generation to meet all our needs while building the infrastructure necessary to electrify industry and transport along…
Over the past three years, more than 70 electric utilities, serving roughly 81 percent of American customers, have launched significant carbon emissions pledges. Concurrently, many have made clear in those pledges that they need firm, flexible clean energy. Thankfully, clean energy innovation and huge investment in sectors like nuclear energy, carbon capture, and geothermal is turning goals into reality.
As the world moves toward a clean energy future, every clean technology tool in the toolbox will be needed. One new area of innovation that has gained popularity in recent years is hydrogen. As many countries begin to include hydrogen in their decarbonization efforts, a global race to supply clean hydrogen has begun.
