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. Hultman’s work focuses on developing, setting and achieving ambitious national climate goals, including nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. This work includes diverse analytical and policy approaches to national climate strategies, including climate target setting, assessment, implementation and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement; U.S. NDCs and long-term net-zero strategy; international climate policy; the role of subnational actors to support national and global climate action; U.S.-China bilateral climate engagement; non-CO2 greenhouse gas reductions; and national climate strategies in China, Indonesia, Brazil, India, Korea and others.
Hultman has served in government several times. From June 2024 to January 2025, he was distinguished senior advisor for climate ambition in the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate at the U.S. Department of State, where he contributed to the 2035 U.S. NDC, bilateral country engagements on NDCs and the COP29 Baku climate negotiations. Previously, from 2021-22, Hultman served as 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 and helped negotiate the U.S.-China Joint Glasgow Declaration at COP26. In the Obama White House, he helped develop the 2025 U.S. NDC and participated in the Lima and Paris climate negotiations.
Hultman has also participated in the UN climate negotiations as a non-governmental observer for over 27 years, starting with the Kyoto meeting. He founded CGS in 2016 to support the cycle of ambition and action under the Paris Agreement and has supported its growth to a research organization of over 60 people. He has also been a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC and a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford. He holds a B.A. in Physics from Carleton College and a Ph.D. in Energy & Resources from the University of California, Berkeley.
- National climate strategies and NDCs under the Paris Agreement; energy policy and rapid transitions away from fossil fuels; international climate policy
Designed for students whose academic majors would be enhanced by the complementary study of a widely shared but hard-to-operationalize aspiration: that present choices should preserve or improve future options rather than foreclose or degrade them. How should we understand sustainability? How might we achieve it? How would we know if we had achieved it? And how could sustainability activists of a rising generation lead by example?
Schedule of Classes
This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the science, technology, economics, and politics of energy use in human societies. After an introduction to the scientific principles of transforming energy sources into usable services, we investigate specific technologies and discuss their impact on geopolitics and the environment. In doing so we seek to address these questions, among others: What is the role of energy in national security? What is the future of oil and how do new resources and new demand centers affect energy security? What are the implications of new, long-term supplies of unconventional gas from fracking? What role can nuclear power serve for the next century? Do wind and solar power have the potential to supplant other energy sources? What will climate change policy mean for our energy mix? How might developing countries undertake a low-carbon energy transition? What is the proper balance of regulation and free market operation in energy and electricity markets? What new technologies are on the horizon, and how promising are they? Given extensive current activity on this topic, the course will retain flexibility to take advantage of relevant DC-area academic, government, or agency events, hearings, and/or conferences.
Schedule of Classes
