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Kate Abend
Clean Energy Field Coordinator

Statement
“Across the country, a coalition of businesses, farmers, consumers, religious leaders, and others are calling on Congress to cut pollution, save consumers money, and increase our energy security by creating a national renewable electricity standard.”

Expertise
renewable energy policy
energy efficiency policy

Profile
As Clean Energy field coordinator, Kate works with UCS’s state and regional coalition partners to build local coalitions, generate media attention, and mobilize activists in support of clean energy policies. Recently, Kate helped position the renewable electricity standard as a “must-have” provision in national energy legislation by working with groups in key states to demonstrate overwhelming support for the policy.

Prior to joining UCS in June 2002, Kate was the global warming associate at U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), where she worked on campaigns to increase energy efficiency and renewable energy generation, clean up dirty coal-fired power plants, and cut subsidies to polluting industries. Kate was U.S. PIRG’s lead advocate in a national campaign to increase automobile fuel economy standards and testified before the Energy Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives' Science Committee on the Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Technology Program. Prior to joining U.S. PIRG, Kate worked at Redefining Progress, a nonprofit organization working at the intersection of economic, environmental, and social equity issues. Her work supported the group’s Ecological Footprint project, an international effort to monitor the impact of human consumption on Earth.

Kate holds a B.S. in ecology and environmental policy from the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and the Environment. She is the author of U.S. PIRG’s April 2001 report, Flirting with Disaster: Global Warming and the Rising Costs of Extreme Weather, and co-author of Increasing America’s Fuel Economy: The Fastest, Cheapest, Cleanest Way to Reduce Oil Dependence, a comprehensive briefing book developed by the environmental community in February 2002.  She lives in Washington, D.C.