Session: Influencing from the top

Sally M. Benson was appointed the deputy director for energy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in September 2021 to start a new Energy Division, focused on developing a national strategy for achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, along with the interim targets laid out by the administration.

Benson is on leave from Stanford University where she is the Precourt Family Professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. She studies technologies and pathways to reducing greenhouse gas emissions including geologic storage of CO2 in deep underground formations and energy systems analysis for a low-carbon future. She is the co-director of the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage.  Benson was the director and co-director of the Precourt Institute for Energy from 2013 to 2020. She also was the director of the Global Climate & Energy Project from 2009 to 2019. She has fostered cross-campus collaborations on energy and guided the growth and development of a diverse research portfolio in energy at Stanford.

Before joining Stanford in 2007, Benson was at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for 29 years, where she held a variety of key positions, including deputy director of operations and director of the Earth Sciences Division.

A groundwater hydrologist and reservoir engineer, Benson is regarded as a leading authority on carbon capture and storage, as well as emerging energy technologies. She and her colleagues conducted a groundbreaking series of net energy analyses calculating the energetic costs of wind turbines, solar photovoltaics, and grid-scale renewable energy storage. She also leads a research laboratory that studies geologic CO2 sequestration in saline aquifers. In 2005, she served as a coordinating lead author of a special report on CCS published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2007, she was one of thousands of IPCC scientists to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to inform the public on the science of climate change.

Benson is the author of more than 160 journal papers and book chapters, and she has delivered more than 200 invited talks and has testified at U.S. Congressional hearings on climate-change technology and CO2 sequestration. Her honors include the 2012 Greenman Award and the ARCS 2009 American Pacesetter Award. She also serves on the boards of directors of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Climate Central.

Benson holds a BS in geology from Barnard College at Columbia University, and an MS and PhD in materials science and mineral engineering from the UC–Berkeley.