CFR Welcomes Varun Sivaram Back as Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is pleased to welcome back Varun Sivaram as senior fellow for energy and climate. He will work with CFR President Michael Froman to launch a cross-cutting initiative on climate change and run a roundtable series on climate change. Sivaram was previously fellow and director of the energy and climate program at CFR from 2015 to 2018.

“We are very pleased to welcome Varun back to the Council to support our cross-cutting initiative on climate change. Varun has done innovative and impactful work in energy, technology, and climate affairs in the private sector, in academia, and in government at the federal, state, and local levels, and will bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the role,” said President Froman.

Sivaram recently stepped down as chief strategy and innovation officer at Ørsted, the world’s largest producer of offshore wind energy. At Ørsted, he served on the top executive leadership team and led an organization of 180 that executed several billion dollars in clean energy asset acquisitions, divestments, joint ventures, and structured financing products; developed the company’s strategic approach to build renewable energy across three continents; and launched Ørsted Ventures to invest in next-generation companies.

Sivaram served for the first two years of President Joe Biden’s administration in the White House and State Department as the managing director for clean energy and senior advisor to U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John F. Kerry. He created and led the First Movers Coalition, which President Biden called the flagship U.S. public-private partnership on climate. Sivaram also created and coordinated the U.S.-India Climate Action and Finance Mobilization Dialogue and the U.S.-Germany Climate and Energy Partnership. 

In addition to his service in the federal government, Sivaram has served in state and local government as senior advisor to the mayor of Los Angeles and to the governor of New York. Earlier in his career, he served as chief technology officer at ReNew Power, a publicly listed company that is India’s largest producer of renewable energy, and as a consultant at McKinsey & Co.
 
TIME Magazine included Sivaram in its TIME 100 Next list of the next hundred most influential people in the world, MIT Technology Review named him one of the top 35 innovators under 35, and the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader. Sivaram serves on the boards of the Atlantic Council, Breakthrough Institute, and Aventurine Partners.
 
Sivaram has served on the faculty of Columbia University and Georgetown University, where he created the course “Clean Energy Innovation” to train the next generation of energy leaders. His books include Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet, Energizing America: A Roadmap to Launch a National Energy Innovation Mission, and Digital Decarbonization: Promoting Digital Innovations to Advance Clean Energy Systems.

A Rhodes and Truman Scholar, Sivaram holds a PhD in condensed matter physics from Oxford University and a BS in engineering physics and a BA in international relations from Stanford University.