- Expertise on national climate strategies and policies, assessments of national ambition in the U.S., China and other major economies, fossil phaseout strategies, and subnational climate action
- Served in the Office of Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in the U.S. State Department; and in the Obama White House. Contributed to U.S. Long Term Strategy, U.S-China Joint Glasgow Declaration, U.S. 2025 NDC
- Founded and directs the Center for Global Sustainability, which links collaborative research with policy engagement to support enhanced global climate ambition and action
Nate Hultman is the Founder and Director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland, and Professor in the School of Public Policy. Prof. Hultman’s work focuses on developing and assessing policy strategies to target and achieve ambitious national climate goals. This includes U.S. emissions mitigation policy, rapid coal phaseout strategies in diverse national contexts, and economy-wide emissions strategies in key countries, with a focus on China and others. He was recently Senior Advisor in the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate at the U.S. Department of State, where he led the writing of the 2021 U.S. Long Term Strategy report and helped negotiate the U.S.-China Joint Glasgow Declaration at COP26. In his academic research, he was also lead author of several recent assessments of U.S. national climate strategies and emissions targets in advance of the announcement of the U.S. 2030 climate target (NDC). From 2014-2016, Hultman worked at the White House on the Obama Administration’s climate and energy policy team. During this time, he helped develop the U.S. 2025 NDC, supported bilateral engagements with China and others, and participated in the international climate negotiations in Paris. He has participated in the UN climate process for 25 years, starting with the Kyoto meeting. Hultman is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and associate director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute, a collaboration between the University of Maryland and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He was formerly a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford and a Fulbright fellow. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Energy & Resources from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in Physics from Carleton College.
- Climate change; energy policy; US federal climate policy
Designed for students whose academic majors would be enhanced by the complementary study of a widely shared but hard-to-operationalize aspiration: that present choices should preserve or improve future options rather than foreclose or degrade them. How should we understand sustainability? How might we achieve it? How would we know if we had achieved it? And how could sustainability activists of a rising generation lead by example?
Schedule of Classes
This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the science, technology, economics, and politics of energy use in human societies. After an introduction to the scientific principles of transforming energy sources into usable services, we investigate specific technologies and discuss their impact on geopolitics and the environment. In doing so we seek to address these questions, among others: What is the role of energy in national security? What is the future of oil and how do new resources and new demand centers affect energy security? What are the implications of new, long-term supplies of unconventional gas from fracking? What role can nuclear power serve for the next century? Do wind and solar power have the potential to supplant other energy sources? What will climate change policy mean for our energy mix? How might developing countries undertake a low-carbon energy transition? What is the proper balance of regulation and free market operation in energy and electricity markets? What new technologies are on the horizon, and how promising are they? Given extensive current activity on this topic, the course will retain flexibility to take advantage of relevant DC-area academic, government, or agency events, hearings, and/or conferences.
Schedule of Classes
After the U.S. withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2017, CGS led the analysis of commitments from the more than 4,000 cities, states, businesses, universities, communities of faith, and more who pledged to support the goals of the Paris Agreement in their own capacity. Since the U.S. officially rejoined the Paris Agreement in March 2021, CGS has continued working with U.S. subnational and international partners to deliver analysis that informs how an "all-of-society" ambitious and achievable U.S. climate strategy can drive actionable and feasible policy. CGS informs U.S. climate policy from the local to global through developing integrated modeling and climate scenarios for the federal government, advising on international discussions to ramp up ambition, and collaborating from the bottom-up to move the resources necessary to set and achieve ambitious climate goals.
Learn More about U.S. ProgramThrough our research on the state of global coal, CGS conducts analysis on the trends of global coal power -- leveraging and building on new global datasets to paint a global and country-specific picture of coal power worldwide.
Learn More about Program to Accelerate the Global Coal TransitionSuccessfully addressing the climate crisis while achieving sustainable development goals will require carefully constructed strategies to enact rapid economic transitions to a cleaner economy—tailored to national circumstances and priorities. The Center for Global Sustainability has deep expertise in country-specific analytical and policy approaches across key sectors and in support of a 1.5°C-pathway.
Learn More about National Climate StrategiesThe China Program at CGS integrates scientific research, education, policy analysis, and stakeholder engagement to help understand and inform the development and deployment of China’s climate, energy, and environment strategies across international, national, and local contexts.
Learn More about China ProgramSchool Authors: Alicia Zhao, Matthew Binsted, Haewon McJeon, Claire Squire, Steven J. Smith, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Gokul Iyer, Shannon Kennedy, Nathan Hultman, Camryn Dahl
Other Authors: Kowan O'Keefe, Adriana Bryant, Mengqi Zhang, Yang Ou
School Authors: Mengye Zhu, Steven J. Smith, Meredydd Evans, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Jiehong Lou, Jenna Behrendt, Nathan Hultman, Sha Yu
Other Authors: Minpeng Chen, Qimin Chai, Fei Teng, Pu Wang, Xinzhao Cheng, Wenli Li, Sha Fu, Haiwen Zhang, Manjyot Ahluwalia, Yi Wang
School Authors: Jiehong Lou, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Xingchi Shen, Deb A. Niemeier
School Authors: Jiehong Lou, Nathan Hultman, Xingchi Shen
Other Authors: Deb A. Niemeier
School Authors: Maria Borrero, Claire Squire, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Jiehong Lou, Camryn Dahl, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Molly Schreier, Akbar Bagaskara, Deon Arinaldo, Raditya Wiranegara, Fabby Tumiwa
School Authors: Kathleen Kennedy, Kavita Surana, Nathan Hultman, Maria Borrero
Other Authors: Morgan R. Edwards, Claudia Doblinger, Zachary H. Thomas, Ellen D. Williams
School Authors: Nathan Hultman
School Authors: Shannon Kennedy, Alicia Zhao, Nathan Hultman, Camryn Dahl
Other Authors: Lei Ma, Shawn Edelstein, Aishwary Trivedi, Aldana Joel Canton, Haley Leslie-Bole, Christopher Wade, Alice Favero, Kevin Kennedy, Audrey Denvir, Kyle Clark-Sutton, Shannon Wood, George Hurtt
School Authors: Kathleen Kennedy, Alicia Zhao, Steven J. Smith, Shannon Kennedy, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Camryn Dahl, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Kowan O’Keefe, Bradley Phelps, George Hurtt, Lei Ma, Patrick O’Rourke, Yang Ou, Camille Wejnert-Depue
School Authors: Nathan Hultman, Leon Clarke, Haewon McJeon
School Authors: Kathleen Kennedy, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Juan Pablo Martínez Guzmán, Philip G. Joyce
School Authors: Alicia Zhao, Shannon Kennedy, Gokul Iyer, Haewon McJeon, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Wei Peng, Xinyuan Huang, Yang Ou
School Authors: Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Camryn Dahl, Michael I. Westphal, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Camille Wejnert-Depue
School Authors: Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Jenna Behrendt, Andy Miller, Matthew Zwerling, Christoph Bertram, Mel George, Shannon Kennedy, Michael I. Westphal, Maria Borrero, Alicia Zhao, Gokul Iyer, Kathleen Kennedy, Jiehong Lou, Haewon McJeon, Mengye Zhu, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Alexandra Kreis, Dillon Walton, Aldana Joel Canton, Shiqi Chen, Yingtong Li, Kowan O’Keefe
School Authors: Christoph Bertram, Steven J. Smith, Shannon Kennedy, Jenna Behrendt, Haewon McJeon, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Henry Liu
School Authors: Sha Yu, Jenna Behrendt, Andy Miller, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Yang Liu, Jacqueline Adams, Wenli Li, Haiwen Zhang, Jing Cheng, Dan Tong, Jiawei Song, Qiang Zhang
School Authors: Mengye Zhu, Jiehong Lou, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Xinzhao Cheng, Siman Li, Danqing Li, Fabby Tumiwa, Deon Arinaldo, Wenli Li
School Authors: Jiehong Lou, Nathan Hultman, Anand Patwardhan
Other Authors: Irving Mintzer
School Authors: Nathan Hultman, Jenna Behrendt, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Matthew Zwerling
Other Authors: Bradley Phelps
School Authors: Mengye Zhu, Leon Clarke, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Vaibhav Chaturvedi, Kathryn Hochstetler, Adrien Vogt-Schilb, Pu Wang