Dr. Michael Wara

Biography

Michael Wara is a lawyer scholar focused on climate and energy policy. He serves as the Director of the Climate Energy Policy Program and is a senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. In addition, Wara is the Senior Director of Policy for the Sustainability Accelerator at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He organizes and manages cross-functional teams of postdocs, legal fellows, and graduate students to provide fact-based, bipartisan technical legal assistance to policymakers, environmental justice advocates, and tribes involved in the development of innovative climate and energy law regulation. Wara facilitates connections between Stanford faculty and key policy debates, leveraging the university’s expertise in energy, climate, and natural resources to craft real-world solutions to existing challenges. His legal and policy scholarship is focused on wildfire, climate mitigation, energy innovation, and regulated industries. Wara collaborates with economists, engineers, and scientists to research and evaluate technical regulatory solutions to society's climate and energy challenges. He has served as a Wildfire Commissioner for California and has been involved with the California Catastrophe Council and the California Wildfire Fund. He has also played a consulting role regarding wildfire issues for the Senate pro Tem and CPUC. Wara holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a Ph.D. in Ocean Sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Research Interests

Courses