July 5, 2006

Biographical Sketch

Susan J. Brown

Susan Brown currently serves as a Senior Policy Analyst for the California Energy Commission.  She is responsible for developing and recommending legislative policy and climate change policy, and recently assumed responsibility for coordinating a state level Bio-Energy Interagency Working Group.  She is overseeing the development of a Bio-Energy Action Plan intended to stimulate near-term state actions to encourage biomass and bio-fuels development in California.

For the past two years, Susan was responsible for the development of climate change policy options for the Energy Commission’s 2005 Integrated Energy Policy Report, and staffed a high level Climate Change Advisory Committee for the Commission.  Susan is also the staff lead for the West Coast Governors’ Global Warming Initiative.

Susan participates as senior staff in the Climate Action Team, which is charged with carrying out the Governor’s Greenhouse Gas Leadership Initiative.  Susan served as a member of the cap-and-trade working group led by Cal EPA.  Susan was recently selected by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency for a 2006 Climate Protection Award for individual achievement on climate change policy.

Over her thirty-year long state government career, Susan has held a variety of policy and management positions at the Energy Commission and at the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.  For ten years, she has served as a Special Advisor to Commissioners Karen Edson, Robert Mussetter and Geoffrey Commons, advising the Commissioners on a broad range of energy policy and technical issues. 

Susan has testified as an expert witness on numerous occasions before the California Legislature, the Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission, the Air Resources Board and the California Transportation Commission on fuels and transportation issues. She also lead an interdivision team under the direction of Commissioner Richard A. Bilas to develop the state’s 1988 Energy Shortage Contingency Plan.  Susan earned the Energy Commission’s Outstanding Manager Award in 1989 for her work on a nationally recognized Energy Shortage Contingency Plan. 

Susan graduated Magma Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the University of Vienna in Austria.  She earned a Bachelor of Arts, a Master of Arts, and a California teaching credential from the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.