William A. Nitze, Director

William A. Nitze has been working on energy and environmental issues for most of his career.Mr. Nitze currently serves as Chairman of Oceana Energy Company, a company that is developing a new technology for converting tidal energy into electricity and is co-founder of GridPoint, Inc., a company that designs and manufactures intelligent energy management systems for the home and small business.“He also chairs a small non-profit, the Galapagos Conservancy, and serves on the Board of the Alliance to Save Energy.”Mr. Nitze served as Assistant Administrator for International Activities at the Environmental Protection Agency (1994-2001), where he made environmental security a focus of the agency’s international work, establishing a formal working relationship among the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and EPA on environmental security issues.

As President of the Alliance to Save Energy (1990-94), Mr. Nitze led a broad coalition of business, government, labor and consumer interests in supporting and implementing policies and programs to promote energy efficiency ranging from energy efficient building codes to efficiency standards for appliances to energy efficiency incentives in mortgages and commercial leases.As Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment in the Reagan and Bush Administrations (1987-1990), Mr. Nitze was the principal working level negotiator on multilateral environmental issues ranging from trade in endangered species to climate change.In 1988, Mr. Nitze played a key role in creating and organizing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

After leaving the State Department in early 1990, Mr. Nitze was Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute, where he wrote a monograph entitled The Greenhouse Effect:Formulating a Convention.Many of the elements discussed in the monograph were subsequently incorporated into the Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed in 1992.Prior to entering the public policy arena, Mr. Nitze spent fourteen years at the Mobil Oil Corporation (1974-1987), where he served as Assistant General Counsel, Exploration & Producing Division and General Counsel, Mobil Japan.Mr. Nitze holds B.A. degrees from Harvard College and Wadham College, Oxford and a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.