Faculty Directory

Nate Hultman is the Founder and Director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland, and Professor in the School of Public Policy. Prof. Hultman’s work focuses on developing and assessing policy strategies to target and achieve ambitious national climate goals. This includes U.S. emissions mitigation policy, rapid coal phaseout strategies in diverse national contexts, and economy-wide emissions strategies in key countries, with a focus on China and others. He was recently Senior Advisor in the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate at the U.S. Department of State, where he led the writing of the 2021 U.S. Long Term Strategy report and helped negotiate the U.S.-China Joint Glasgow Declaration at COP26. In his academic research, he was also lead author of several recent assessments of U.S. national climate strategies and emissions targets in advance of the announcement of the U.S. 2030 climate target (NDC). From 2014-2016, Hultman worked at the White House on the Obama Administration’s climate and energy policy team. During this time, he helped develop the U.S. 2025 NDC, supported bilateral engagements with China and others, and participated in the international climate negotiations in Paris. He has participated in the UN climate process for 25 years, starting with the Kyoto meeting. Hultman is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and associate director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute, a collaboration between the University of Maryland and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He was formerly a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford and a Fulbright fellow. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Energy & Resources from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in Physics from Carleton College.

• Expertise on national climate strategies and policies, assessments of national ambition in the U.S., China and other major economies, fossil phaseout strategies, and subnational climate action
• Served in the Office of Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in the U.S. State Department; and in the Obama White House. Contributed to U.S. Long Term Strategy, U.S-China Joint Glasgow Declaration, U.S. 2025 NDC
• Founded and directs the Center for Global Sustainability, which links collaborative research with policy engagement to support enhanced global climate ambition and action