Summer 2025 California Climate & Energy Fellow (Stanford Students Only)

Overview

NRDC is a non-profit environmental advocacy organization. We use law, science, and the support of 3.1 million members and online activists to protect the planet's wildlife and wild places and to ensure the rights of all people to clean air, clean water, and healthy communities. NRDC was founded in 1970 and our people helped write some of America's bedrock environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act and many of the implementing regulations. Today, our team of more than 600 lawyers, scientists, economists, policy advocates, communications experts, and others work across the United States and the globe from our offices in Beijing; Chicago; New Delhi; New York; San Francisco; Santa Monica; and Washington, D.C. 

NRDC is seeking a Schneider Fellow to work with the Climate & Energy Team in our San Francisco office.

Position summary:

NRDC's California Climate and Energy (CE) team is seeking a Fellow to assist with ongoing California regulatory and legislative work associated with advancing the state’s power and industrial sector decarbonization goals. The fellow will primarily work alongside the California CE team, with opportunities to collaborate with other teams depending on interest. 

NRDC’s California CE team works with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the California Energy Commission (CEC), the California Air Resources Board (CARB), and the Legislature to advance and implement policy that equitably and cost-effectively helps transition the state to a net-zero greenhouse gas emission economy. The Schneider Fellow will be an integral part of our team, developing technical resources, shaping public comments, researching electric sector or industrial sector decarbonization pathways, and more, that will contribute to our climate advocacy at the state level. 

Fellows typically work on one to two long-term projects over the course of their fellowship, with opportunities to assist with shorter-term assignments complementary to their in-depth work product. Project scopes are developed in consultation with the fellow to gauge interest and skill set. 

Responsibilities

Potential long-term fellow projects include: 

• Developing comments for CPUC proceedings on electricity system planning;
• Tracking and analyzing cement/concrete decarbonization pathways to help meet the goals of California’s law requiring all cement used in California to be net-zero by 2045;
• Developing public communications materials like blogs or maps;
• Research related to electrification of industrial facilities in California, including analysis on load profiles and electricity rates, as well as barriers and opportunities in different industrial subsectors.

Shorter-term projects may include assisting with the development and review of other CE advocacy products, such as blogs, public comments, testimony to the legislature, and consultant reports.  

Qualifications

Must be a Stanford student to apply.

NRDC is committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, both in our work and in our workplace. We believe that celebrating and actively welcoming diverse voices and perspectives is essential to solving the planet's most pressing environmental problems, and we encourage applications from candidates whose identities have been historically underrepresented in the environmental movement. 

We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate in hiring or employment on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, marital status, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.  

Our offices are open and we are operating in a hybrid model. We offer NRDCers flexibility, and we ask them to come into the office and spend meaningful time there in collaboration with their colleagues. We call this purposeful presence. 

As a science-based organization, NRDC aims to do our part to help contain the COVID-19 public health crisis. For the sake of health, safety, and equity, we ask that people be vaccinated unless they have an approved medical or religious accommodation or other exemption in accordance with state and local law. We consider a person to be vaccinated two weeks after receiving one full course of a CDC-approved vaccine. In accordance with state or local law, new hires will be asked to attest to vaccination, those wishing to do so may request medical or religious accommodations or other exemptions via NRDC Employee Relations. NRDC treats all vaccine-related data confidentially, in keeping with local, state, and federal laws. 

If you experience technical problems while applying or if you are a person with a disability and need assistance applying online, please reach out to iCIMS Customer Care at 1-800-889-4422. 

For more about NRDC, visit www.nrdc.org.