Sally Benson

Sally Benson  link LinkedIn (Academic administrator)
File:Sally Benson.png
Nationality	US
Alma mater	Columbia University,University of California (Berkeley)
Interests	Net Zero
Stanford academic who sat on the advisory Board of the Bill Gates-founded and funded Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Appointed Chief Strategist for the Energy Transition (technocratic net zero) for the Biden Administration,

Sally M. Benson is director of Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP). In 2014, she was appointed as director of the Precourt Institute for Energy, the university's hub of energy research and education. She sat on the advisory Board of the Bill Gates-founded and funded Breakthrough Energy Ventures. She was given the job of Deputy director for Energy and Chief Strategist for the Energy Transition - working for a technocratic net zero - during the Biden Administration, when she attended the 2023 Bilderberg meeting. After that, she went back to Stanford.

Education

Benson received a B.S. in geology from Barnard College of Columbia University, an M.Sc.and a Ph.D. in materials and mineral engineering from the University of California-Berkeley.

Career

Benson has held several positions with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California. These include 1980–2007, Staff scientist (director 1993–1997), Earth Sciences Division; 2001–2004, deputy director for operations; 1997–2001, Associate laboratory director, Energy Sciences.

Benson started at Stanford University in 2007; she studied technologies for geologic storage of CO2 in deep underground formations and energy systems analysis for a low-carbon future. She was Co-Director of the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage and the Stanford Carbon Removal Initiative. From 2013 to 2020, she was Director and Co-Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy. She also was the Director of the Global Climate and Energy Project from 2009 to 2019.

From 2021 to 2023 she was on leave from the University to be Energy Division Director and Chief Strategist for the Energy Transition at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Regarding California she said that

Reaching net-zero by 2045 is not so much a challenge in cost, but a challenge in getting the necessary technologies available in time and establishing the social, political, and economic environment to deploy these technologies rapidly and broadly.

Benson is a Trustee of the Packard Foundation, member of the Breakthrough Energy Innovation Council and a Board Member of the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute. She sat on the Board of Directors for Climate Central and from 2008 to 2020 on the Board of Directors of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

She sat on the Advisory Board of the Bill Gates-founded and funded Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

She also sat on the Advisory Boards of Argonne National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Princeton's Carbon Mitigation Initiative, Princeton' s Adlinger Center, Japan's Initiative for the Cool Earth Forum, Climate Vault, and the Lahore University of Management Science in Pakistan. She has participated in a number of National Academy of Sciences, Secretary of Energy, and National Petroleum Council assessments related to carbon management. She also is on the Editorial Board for Energy and Environmental Sciences.