Speakers

Peter C. Balash, Ph.D., is Associate Director of the Strategic Systems Analysis and Engineering Directorate at the United States Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has followed energy markets, energy security, and technology issues for DOE/NETL since 2002, focusing on market and technology interactions across the entire energy value chain. Recent activities include studying reliability and resilience of the electricity system. Current duties include managing the SSAE directorate, an enterprise of 140 professionals forming interdisciplinary teams of engineers, economists, and scientists that produce economic, systems, optimization, regulatory, environmental life cycle, and infrastructure reliability analyses, all to inform strategic planning. In the recent past he has directed studies of the economic impacts of energy and climate change mitigation policy and assessed energy security options in a carbon-constrained world, inclusive of fossil-energy based solutions. From 2018-2022 he served in the leadership of the DOE Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium. From 2017-2023, Mr. Balash served in the leadership of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics, including as President in 2022. Prior to DOE Mr. Balash worked for the Internal Revenue Service in Houston, TX, engaged in multinational corporate audits and transfer pricing issues. Mr. Balash earned his doctorate in economics in 1992 from the University of Texas at Austin. He received a bachelor’s in economics from Xavier University, Cincinnati, in 1987.