THOMAS PETERSON

Founder, President and CEO

Tom Peterson founded CCS in 2004 to help governments and stakeholders understand and formulate responses to climate change. Over the past decade this included developing and implementing a widely recognized template for comprehensive, multi objective, consensus based planning and analysis that led to the development of 22 US state plans, national scale up and integration of subnational climate action plans in the US, the Low Emissions Development System for the six Border States of Mexico, and the Low Carbon Development Planning and Analysis System for the Provinces of China.

He has designed and directed numerous subnational and national policy development and capacity building initiatives and assessments in the US and abroad. He has collaborated with many national and regional philanthropies, government agencies, and other funding institutions to mobilize capacity for subnational, stakeholder based approaches to policy and agreements on progressive actions on climate change. 

His posts over the past 30 years include Senior Advisor to the White House Climate Change Task Force, LEGIS Fellow to the Office of US Senator Joe Lieberman, Economist with the US Environmental Protection Agency, and Vice President of DSL Capital Corporation. Mr. Peterson is an Adjunct Professor and Teaching Fellow at the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies/Global Security Center at Johns Hopkins University, as well as the Energy and Climate Center at Johns Hopkins University. He is known for his expertise and innovations on climate policy development; climate, energy and economic security integration; and stakeholder consensus building. 

Mr. Peterson holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology with a concentration in economics from the College of William and Mary, a Master of Environmental Management with a concentration in Natural Resource Economics and Policy from Duke University, and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin with a concentration in Marketing and Product Development. He is a native and resident of Virginia.