Douglas J. Arent is a Senior Fellow of the WRI Polsky Center for the Global Energy Transition. Dr. Arent brings more than three decades of experience and expertise in energy systems, electric power, and international energy policy.

Dr. Arent is Emeritus Executive Director at the NREL Foundation and holds emeritus status at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (previously the National Renewable Energy Laboratory), where he served for nearly thirty years. During his term, he was a member of the laboratory’s senior leadership team and helped guide its growth to an annual budget exceeding $1 billion. He has served on numerous national and international advisory and study bodies, including committees of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Petroleum Council, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He has authored more than 150 peer reviewed articles and is the author of Our Renewable Energy Future: The Remarkable Story of How Renewable Energy Will Become the Basis for Our Lives (World Scientific, 2024), which examines the technological, economic and policy forces driving the global transition to renewable energy. His work has been published in Science, Nature Energy, Joule and Energy Policy, among others. 

Dr. Arent is also a Fellow of the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy and a Distinguished Fellow of the World Economic Forum where he is co-chair of the Global Futures Council on Emerging Energy Technologies and a member of the Advisory Board for Future of Power Systems.

He holds a BA from Harvey Mudd College, an MBA from Regis University, and a PhD from Princeton University.