Nate Hultman joins the U.S. State Department as Distinguished Senior Advisor for Climate Ambition, a six-month role that will conclude in January 2025. Ryna Cui serves as acting director of the Center for Global Sustainability in the interim.
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. He is currently on leave from the University of Maryland, serving as distinguished senior advisor for climate ambition in the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate at the U.S. Department of State. Hultman’s work focuses on developing, setting and achieving ambitious national climate goals, including nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. This work includes U.S. climate policy, rapid coal phaseout strategies in diverse national contexts and economy-wide emissions reduction strategies in major economies, including in the United States, China and others.
Previously, from 2021–22, Hultman served as senior advisor for 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 and helped negotiate the U.S.-China Joint Glasgow Declaration at COP26. He has led or contributed to several recent assessments of U.S. national climate strategies and emissions targets. In the Obama White House, he helped develop the 2025 U.S. NDC and participated in the Lima and Paris climate negotiations.
When not in government, Hultman has participated in the UN climate negotiations as a non-governmental observer for over 25 years, starting with the Kyoto meeting. Hultman has also been a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. He holds a B.A. in Physics from Carleton College and a Ph.D. in Energy & Resources from the University of California, Berkeley.
- 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
Successfully 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 ProgramAfter 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 TransitionSchool Authors: Alicia Zhao, Kowan O’Keefe, Matthew Binsted, Camryn Dahl, Claire Squire, Kiara Ordonez Olazabal , Steven J. Smith, Nathan Hultman, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui
Other Authors: Shannon Kennedy, Adriana Bryant, Jordan Snarski, Dmitry Churlyaev
School Authors: Jenna Behrendt, Steven J. Smith, Mengye Zhu, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Xinzhao Cheng, Shiqi Chen, Anom Ashok Dule, Haiwen Zhang
School Authors: Jiehong Lou, Audrey Rader, Thomas C. Hilde, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Yohanna M.L. Gultom
School Authors: Kowan O’Keefe, Gokul Iyer, Kathleen Kennedy, Alicia Zhao, Haewon McJeon, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Yang Ou
School Authors: Mengye Zhu, Jenna Behrendt, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Xinzhao Cheng, Wenli Li, Yingtong Li, Chengcheng Mei, Lingyan Chen, Sha Fu
School Authors: Christoph Bertram, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Nathan Hultman, Gokul Iyer
Other Authors: Elina Brutschin, Laurent Drouet , Gunnar Luderer , Bas van Ruijven, Lara Aleluia Reis , Luiz Bernardo Baptista, Harmen-Sytze de Boer, Vassilis Daioglou, Florian Fosse , Dimitris Fragkiadakis 8 , Oliver Fricko, Shinichiro Fujimori , Kimon Keramidas, Volker Krey, Elmar Kriegler, Robin D Lamboll, Rahel Mandaroux , Pedro Rochedo, Joeri Rogelj, Roberto Schaeffer, Diego Silva, Isabela Tagomori, Detlef van Vuuren, Zoi Vrontisi, Keywan Riahi
School Authors: Yueming 'Lucy' Qiu, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Nana Deng, Bo Wang, Xingchi Shen, Zhaohua Wang, Han Shi, Jie Liu, Yi David Wang
School Authors: Alicia Zhao, Matthew Binsted, Haewon McJeon, Claire Squire, Steven J. Smith, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Gokul Iyer, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Kowan T.V. O’Keefe, Adriana Bryant, Mengqi Zhang, Yang Ou
School Authors: Alicia Zhao, Matthew Binsted, Haewon McJeon, Claire Squire, Steven J. Smith, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Gokul Iyer, Nathan Hultman, Camryn Dahl
Other Authors: Kowan O'Keefe, Adriana Bryant, Mengqi Zhang, Yang Ou, Shannon Kennedy
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, 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: 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, Shannon Kennedy
School Authors: Kathleen Kennedy, Alicia Zhao, Steven J. Smith, 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, Shannon Kennedy
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, Gokul Iyer, Haewon McJeon, Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Wei Peng, Xinyuan Huang, Yang Ou, Shannon Kennedy
School Authors: Yiyun 'Ryna' Cui, Camryn Dahl, Nathan Hultman
Other Authors: Michael Westphal , Camille Wejnert-Depue