Varun Sivaram


Varun Srinivasan Sivaram is the Chief Technology Officer of ReNew Power, India's largest renewable energy company. He was previously the Philip D. Reed fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan foreign-policy think tank and membership organization, and director of its Program on Energy Security and Climate Change. He is an expert on clean energy technology, climate change, and sustainable urbanization.

Education

Dr. Sivaram holds a B.S. in engineering physics and a B.A. in international relations from Stanford University, where he was awarded a Truman Scholarship. He also holds a PhD in condensed matter physics from the University of Oxford, St. John's College, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. While at Oxford, his research investigated the use of perovskite solar cells and was supervised by Henry Snaith.

Career and research

Sivaram was previously the senior advisor for energy and water policy to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, a strategic advisor to the office of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on energy policy, an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and a consultant for McKinsey & Co. Sivaram is currently a fellow at Columbia University's Center for Global Energy Policy, and an advisory board member for the Stanford University Woods Institute for the Environment and Precourt Institute for Energy.

Books

Sivaram is the author of Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet. Taming the Sun explores the potential of solar energy, the world's cheapest and fastest-growing power source, to one day supply most of the world's energy needs. Sivaram argues, however, that solar's current surge is on track to stall, dimming prospects for averting catastrophic climate change. Brightening those prospects, he concludes, will require innovation—creative financing, revolutionary technologies, and flexible energy systems.
Sivaram is the editor of Digital Decarbonization: Promoting Digital Innovations to Advance Clean Energy Systems The volume brings together fourteen expert authors who lay out a wide range of areas in which digital technologies are promoting clean energy systems; caution about serious risks of digitalization to cybersecurity and privacy; and articulate actionable recommendations for policymakers in the United States and abroad to ensure that digital innovations help advance the fight against climate change.
Sivaram is a co-author with Sagatom Saha of a chapter in The Geopolitics of Renewables In it, Sivaram and Saha argue that a future in which clean energy substantially displaces fossil fuels could substantially affect the economic and national security interests of the United States by fostering both international cooperation and discord.

Other

has called Sivaram's 2016 essay on clean energy innovation in Foreign Affairs magazine "One of the best arguments I've read for why the U.S. should invest in an energy revolution." The Financial Times called his book Taming the Sun "the best available overview of where the industry finds itself today, and a road map for how it can reach that brighter future," and The Economist called it "prescient...and readable." TIME Magazine named him to its inaugural TIME 100 Next list of the next hundred most influential people in the world; Forbes named him to its 30 under 30 in Law and Policy; Grist named him one of its top 50 leaders in sustainability; and PV Magazine called him "The Hamilton of the Solar Industry."

Publications