Dan Sperling is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment.
Daniel Sperling was a visiting scholar in the Energy and Climate Program at the Carnegie Endowment, and is professor of civil engineering and environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis. He is also founding director of the university’s Institute of Transportation Studies. Sperling’s current research focuses on transportation and climate policy, vehicle and energy technologies, and transportation in developing countries.
Sperling also holds the transportation seat on the California Air Resources Board, where he plays a prominent role in designing and adopting climate policies for vehicles, fuels, and urban travel.
In 2010, he received a Heinz Award for his “achievements in the research of alternative transportation fuels and his responsibility for the adoption of cleaner transportation policies in California and across the United States.” Additionally, he was a lead author on the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore.
Sperling is author or editor of more than 200 papers and reports and twelve books. He has been widely published, including op-eds in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.
Plug-in electric vehicles stand to both revolutionize American transportation and to have implications for electric utilities, automakers, and the oil and gas industry as well.
There has arguably never been a more pressing time for advancing the electric vehicle market. New policies are needed to motivate manufacturers, consumers, and states.
Transportation in the United States accounts for roughly two thirds of national oil consumption and one third of national greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation policy is therefore crucial to addressing U.S. energy security and global climate change.
The UN secretary-general’s new five-year action agenda identifies sustainable transport as critical to sustainable development. Yet transport is virtually invisible in the initial framing of the June 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
California is adopting a mix of policies, regulations, and incentives that together provide a coherent and durable framework for creating a more sustainable transportation system.
Emerging countries must decide if they want to follow developed, auto-dependent nations down an unsustainable path or if they will instead transform their national transportation system to encourage environmentally and economically sound choices.