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Laura is a Senior Energy Analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where she works on state and regional policies related to clean energy, air quality, and global warming. As part of her work on renewable energy issues, Laura provides technical and policy analysis to legislative and regulatory agencies that develop and implement several clean energy laws, including California’s Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS). She is the author of a recent report - “The Clean Energy Race: How do California’s Public Utilities Measure Up?” – which analyzed the degree to which California’s largest publicly-owned utilities have been promoting the development of new clean energy resources.
Prior to coming to UCS, Laura was the Director of the California Hydropower Reform Coalition where she helped design several state and federal policies to reduce the environmental impacts of California’s existing network of hydropower dams.
Laura has a masters degree from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, and was a Morehead-Cain scholar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where she received a bachelor’s degree in public policy.