Environmental Advisory Council - Member Biographies
C. Lindsay Anderson
C. Lindsay Anderson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biological & Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. Her research focuses on energy system decarbonization at the interface of environmental and systems engineering, electric power systems, applied optimization and decision science.
Lindsay previously served as the interim Director of the Cornell Energy Systems Institute and the Kathy Dwyer Marble and Curt Marble Faculty Director for Energy with the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. Prof. Anderson received her B.Sc. (Engineering) and M.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Guelph (Canada) and a Ph.D in Applied Mathematics from the University of Western Ontario (Canada).
Julie Tighe
Ms. Tighe is the President of the New York League of Conservation Voters (NYLCV) and the NYLCV Education Fund and has served in that capacity since 2018. Due in part to the League’s and her advocacy, the New York State Legislature passed the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act, the Accelerated Renewable Energy Growth and Community Benefits Act, the $4.2 billion Environmental Bond Act, and additional bills designed to reduce emissions. Prior to joining NYLCV, Ms. Tighe served for more than a decade at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, most recently as Chief of Staff. Ms. Tighe also currently serves as the Treasurer for the Alliance for Clean Energy New York.
Dr. Burçin Ünel
Dr. Burçin is the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law and is an expert in utility regulation and environmental and energy policy. She has authored over 100 papers, policy briefs, public comments, and reports on numerous energy and environmental policy issues. Her articles on how to design policies for the future of the grid have been selected by the Environmental Law Institute as one of the year’s top five environmental law articles, each year from 2017 to 2019.
Daniel Zarrilli
Mr. Zarrilli is the Special Advisor for Climate and Sustainability at Columbia University where he is supporting the creation of its new, world-leading climate school and advising on pathways to achieve the university’s deep decarbonization goals. He joined Columbia University from the New York City Mayor’s Office, where he served most recently in the role of Chief Climate Policy Advisor. He is currently an author on the Fifth National Climate Assessment and serves on the New York City Water Board.
Erik Ela
Erik is the Principal Technical Leader at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). In his role, he provides technical leadership in several areas including electricity market design, electricity market operations, renewable energy integration, emerging technology integration, bulk power system operations, frequency control and essential reliability services, and generation planning. At EPRI, Erik facilitates the R&D collaborative group of technical experts of North America’s Independent System Operators (ISOs) and Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) to discuss research needs in technical areas facing the industry and leads innovative projects on how utilities and ISOs can operate the power system more efficiently and reliably. He has led several high profile research projects for government organizations and utilities across the world and spoke on these topics in over 100 venues/conferences across the world. Prior to joining EPRI in 2014, Erik worked for several years with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) as a senior research engineer and before that for the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO). He has been involved in several working groups as a senior member of the IEEE Power and Energy Society, CIGRE, NERC, and elsewhere, including as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and currently secretary of the Power System Economics Subcommittee. Erik received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering.
Rich Cowart
Richard Cowart is a Director of The Regulatory Assistance Project. One of the nation’s most experienced regulatory commissioners, he served as Commissioner and Chair of the Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) for thirteen years (1986-1999). He was elected President of the New England Conference of Public Utility Commissioners, and Chair of the NARUC Committee on Energy Resources and the Environment. He also served for four years as Chair of the National Council on Competition and the Electric Industry, an association of state and federal officials and legislators responsible for power sector reform in the U.S.
Francis J. Murray, Jr.
Mr. Murray is nationally recognized for his expertise in energy and environmental policy matters with nearly forty years of experience in this arena. Most recently, Mr. Murray served as the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), a quasi‐governmental public authority with an annual budget of $830 million. Mr. Murray also chaired the State Energy Planning Board and was a founding board member of both the New York State Smart Grid Consortium and the New York State Battery and Energy Storage Consortium (NY‐BEST). Prior to his appointment at NYSERDA, Mr. Murray served in various capacities including Senior Advisor at the international environmental consulting firm Ecology and Environment, Inc., policy advisor to the United States Secretary of Energy, assisting in the development of the Clinton Administration's national energy policy, New York State Commissioner of Energy and Chairman of the NYSERDA Board of Directors,and as the principal energy and environmental policy advisor to New York Governor Mario M. Cuomo, initially as Assistant Secretary and later as Deputy Secretary to the Governor for Energy and the Environment. Mr. Murray received his Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service cum laude from the Edward A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and his Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center.
Karen Palmer
Karen Palmer is a senior fellow at RFF and an expert on the economics of environmental, climate and public utility regulation of the electric power sector. Her work seeks to improve the design of environmental and technology regulations in the sector and the development of new institutions to help guide the ongoing transition of the electricity sector. To these ends, she explores climate policy design, analyzes efficient ways to promote use of renewable and other clean sources of electricity, and investigates new market designs, new approaches to electricity pricing and regulatory reforms to pave the way for long-term decarbonization of electricity supply and electrification of the energy economy.
In the 1990s, Palmer spent six months as a visiting economist in the Office of Economic Policy at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission where she worked on wholesale market design in the nascent ISO markets. She has served on three National Academies study panels, including one on the future of electricity from renewables and one on the future of electric power in the US. She is immediate past President of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) and serves on the Environmental Advisory Council to the New York ISO and on the Future Power Market Forum Advisory Group. She is the recipient of the Public Utility Research Center’s 2015 Distinguished Service Award and was elected as an AERE Fellow in 2018. Her published papers have appeared in many academic journals including the American Economic Review, the RAND Journal of Economics, The Journal of Political Economy and The Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.