Nathan Hultman

Nate Hultman is the founder and director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland, and a professor in the School of Public Policy. He is also a nonresident senior fellow with the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings.

His 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 economywide emissions strategies in key countries, with a focus on China and others.

Hultman 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. 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 U.N. climate process for 25 years, starting with the Kyoto meeting. Hultman is also 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 master’s and doctoral degrees in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor’s in physics from Carleton College.