Allen Fawcett is the director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) – a partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the University of Maryland College Park – and is jointly appointed as a research professor in the UMD School of Public Policy’s Center for Global Sustainability. JGCRI brings together expertise in research, modeling and analysis to advance scientific understanding of the ways in which human, energy and environmental systems interact. Since its formation, JGCRI has provided input to the White House, Congress, United Nations and other national and international governing and advising bodies.
Fawcett previously served as chief of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Economics Branch. He collaborated with the U.S. State Department and White House on analysis ahead of the Paris negotiations leading to the influential 2015 paper, “Can Paris pledges avert severe climate change?”, and the U.S. Midcentury Strategy, and he renewed those collaboration in the lead up to COP26 in Glasgow resulting in the paper, “Can updated climate pledges limit warming well below 2°C?”, and the Long-Term Strategy of the United States in 2021. Allen was a member of the U.S. delegation to the IPCC for the approvals of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ºC and the WGIII contribution to AR6. Fawcett served as deputy associate director for Energy & Climate at the White House Council on Environmental Quality from 2010-2011 during the Obama Administration. Fawcett was also responsible for EPA’s analyses of Waxman-Markey and other cap-and-trade bills in the 110th and 111th U.S. Congress. Fawcett has been extensively involved with the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum (EMF), co-chairing the EMF 24, 32, and 37 model intercomparison projects on cap-and-trade vs. regulatory policies, carbon taxes and deep decarbonization scenarios respectively. He also served as a member of the Advisory Council for the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium, and is a member of the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s Climate-related Financial Risk Advisory Committee. Fawcett joined the Environmental Protection Agency in 2003 after receiving his PhD in economics from the University of Texas. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the College of William & Mary. A list of publications is available on Allen’s Google Scholar profile.