Gregory Kats

Gregory H. Kats (born July 14, 1959) is an American businessman, environmentalist and writer. He is President of Capital E, a national clean energy advisory and venture capital firm. He previously served as a Managing Director at Good Energies a billion-dollar global clean energy investor and served for 5 years as the Director of Financing for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Kats earned an MBA from Stanford University and, concurrently, an MPA from Princeton University on an Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, and a BA from the University of North Carolina with highest honors as a Morehead Scholar.

Kats has played substantial roles in developing the energy efficiency and green building industries, and is a long-time thought leader, innovator and investor in the transition to a low carbon economy. He is President of Capital E, which works with cities, corporations and financial institutions to design, scale and implement clean energy and low carbon strategies. Capital E invests in early stage cleantech and green firms, and Kats is a partner in Clean Feet, which funds innovative green energy and agricultural projects.

Kats previously served as Managing Director of Good Energies, a multi-billion dollar global clean energy PE/VC fund, where he led investments in smart grid, energy efficiency, green materials and green buildings. He served for 5 years as the Director of Financing for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. Kats played important roles in developing LEED, the national green building standard. He is a founder of the country’s first green bank.

Kats Chairs the Congressionally established committee guiding the greening of 430,000 federal buildings, serves on the Mayor’s Green Ribbon Committee guiding the greening of the District of Columbia, and served on a National Academy of Sciences board on strengthening U.S. global competitiveness. He is the author of Greening Our Built World, which was recently translated into Portuguese. He serves on a half dozen boards and regularly testifies on clean energy, green, and financing issues. Kats recently spoke to the Israeli Cabinet about the costs and benefits of green infrastructure.

In response to Congressional investigations in 2011 and 2012, Kats testified three times to the U.S. House Oversight Committee on issues related directly to controversial political issues, including Green Jobs, Federal clean energy strategy and the DOE loan guarantee controversies, which became issues for candidates in the 2012 United States Presidential Election. His congressional testimony highlighted the cost-effectiveness of clean energy stimulus funding and noted that the final loan default rate of the US clean energy loan program would be less than half what the Office of Management and Budget had projected and budgeted for.

His analysis indicated that the default rate on the $16.1 billion Energy Department loan portfolio is less than 3.6 percent, well below the Office of Management and Budget forecast of 12.85 percent, and he determined that the actual default rate will not get out of single digits. Citing the financial objectives and successes of the program to date, as well as the related employment and national security benefits, Kats concluded that the largest risk is that the DOE slows its loan guarantee program.

While at the U.S. Department of Energy, Kats was the Founding Chair of IPMVP and built it into the international energy and water efficiency design and verification standard for more than $50 billion in building efficiency upgrades. He was a founder of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE). Kats was the Principal Advisor in designing and establishing Enterprise Green Communities, the national low-income green design standard that has served as the design basis for 150,000 housing units to date. He recently helped design the World Bank’s large new green building financing program. In 2011, Kats was the first recipient of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Kats lives with his wife and two of his three children in Washington, DC. A solar PV system powers his home and an electric hybrid car.

• "Greening Our Built World: Costs, Benefits and Strategies"
• "Greening America’s Schools: Costs and Benefits"
• "The Costs and Financial Benefits of Green Buildings"
• "Greenhouse warming: Comparative analysis of nuclear and efficiency abatement strategies" Energy Policy Volume 16, Issue 6, December 1988, Pages 538–561
• "The efficiency-renewable synergism" Energy Policy Volume 17, Issue 6, December 1989, Pages 614–616
• "Slowing global warming and sustaining development: The promise of energy efficiency" Energy Policy Volume 18, Issue 1, January–February 1990, Pages 25–33
• "Energy options for hungary a model for Eastern Europe" Energy Policy Volume 19, Issue 9, November 1991, Pages 855–868
• "The Earth Summit" Energy Policy Volume 20, Issue 6, June 1992, Pages 546–558
• "International greenhouse gas trading programs: a discussion of measurement and accounting issues" Energy Policy Volume 31, Issue 3, February 2003, Pages 211–224
• "Secondary Markets for Energy Efficiency", Energy Efficiency News and Views, May 1995.
• "Energy Efficiency as a Commodity: The Emergence of an Efficiency Secondary Market for Savings in Commercial Buildings”, ACEEE Summer Study Proceedings 1997.