Tim Duane

Tim DuaneTim Duane, Professor of Environmental Studies, University of California Santa Cruz

Tim Duane is Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Stanley Legro Visiting Professor in Environmental Law at the University of San Diego. He was a tenured member of the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley (teaching environmental planning and policy) from 1991-2009 as well as on the faculty at Vermont Law School from 2008-2012 and a visiting professor of law at Seattle University School of Law (2012). Prof. Duane holds a J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, a Ph.D. in Energy and Environmental Planning from the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, and M.S. and A.B. degrees from Stanford. He teaches, consults, and conducts research on a wide range of energy, climate, land use, water, environmental, and natural resources policy, planning, law, and management problems. He has been an independent policy and planning consultant since 1985 and is an expert on “greening the grid” and rural land use. Duane is a licensed attorney and is admitted to all state and federal courts in California as well as the 9th and 10th Circuits in the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Prof. Duane has extensive consulting experience in the electric utility sector, with a client list that includes utilities, independent power producers, environmental advocacy groups, and public agencies. His particular expertise is renewable energy generation regulatory policy. He worked as a generation planning engineer for PG&E in 1980s, testified to the Little Hoover Commission on electricity regulation in the early 1990s, and served as senior policy consultant to the California Public Utilities Commission on electricity restructuring issues in the early 2000s during the California energy crisis (focusing on the environmental assessment of the proposed divestiture of Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s entire hydroelectric generating portfolio). He was a member of the board of directors of SkyFuel, Inc. from 2007-2009 (which successfully raised a $17-million Series B round of financing in 2008 and holds IP in ReflecTech film). He has also served on the board of directors of an affordable housing non-profit (Common Ground Communities) and a leading local environmental organization (the Marin Conservation League).

Prof. Duane is also one of the world’s leading experts on land use and ecosystem management in the west, working with both private land use and public resource management. He is the author of SHAPING THE SIERRA: NATURE, CULTURE, AND CONFLICT IN THE CHANGING WEST (University of California Press, 1999; paperback edition 2000), served as a special consultant to the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project (SNEP) in 1993-1996, and he was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to the California Spotted Owl Federal Advisory Committee in 1997. He has previous experience as an assistant fire dispatcher for the USDA Forest Service, has conducted research on recreational use for the Inyo National Forest, and published on the Quincy Library Group. Prof. Duane has taught environmental law and policy (Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and San Diego), land use law and policy (Berkeley, Vermont, and San Diego); energy policy and politics (Santa Cruz), and renewable energy law and policy (Santa Cruz, Seattle, and China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing). He was on the executive committee of the Environmental Section of the Association of American Law Schools and is currently on the executive committee of the Environmental and Land Use section of the San Diego County Bar Association.