Biography

Dr. Gillenwater is a co-founder, Executive Director, and Dean of the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute, a non-profit organization with the unique mission to train and professionalize a global community of experts for measuring, verifying, and managing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Michael is a thought leader on GHG measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), carbon offsets, additionality, green power, international capacity building, and environmental accounting. He has dedicated his career to professional and international development, focusing on the infrastructure needed to produce highly credible environmental information that can serve as the basis of effective climate policies. Beyond guiding the Institute’s strategy and programming, Michael also directs its research program and curriculum development.

He is a four time lead author for the IPCC and contributor to its 2007 Nobel Peace Price. He has been actively engaged in the work of the UNFCCC process for 25 years, including the training of compliance experts for the Kyoto Protocol. He has been a core advisor and contributing author to the WRI/WBCSD GHG Protocol. At the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Michael was lead author of the official U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory for its first 7 years. He also served on the U.S. negotiating team to the UNFCCC Conference of Parties.

Michael founded and serves as a co-Editor in Chief for the peer reviewed journal Carbon Management published by Tyler & Francis. He is also an active research scholar on GHG accounting and climate policy topics, having been widely published in peer-reviewed journals and quoted by the media. Dr. Gillenwater completed his PhD at the Science, Technology, & Environmental Policy Program at Princeton University, where his research was on the economics of renewable energy and emission markets and design of environmental commodities. He has three master’s degrees: i) environmental engineering, ii) technology policy, both from MIT, and iii) evolutionary systems from the University of Sussex where he was a Fulbright scholar. His bachelors is in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University.