Bio

Alicia Seiger is a lecturer at Stanford Law School and leads sustainability and energy finance initiatives at Stanford Law, Graduate School of Business, and the Doerr School for Sustainability. Alicia has served as an advisor to the Governors of California and New York, the New York State Comptroller, and numerous pension fund, endowment, and family office CIOs on the topics of climate risk, opportunity, and resiliency. A student of sustainability since the early 1990s, Alicia has designed and executed climate and energy strategies for businesses, foundations, investors, and NGOs for over two decades. She has led on the management teams of multiple startups, including at TerraPass, a pioneer of the US voluntary carbon offset market, and Flycast Communications, one of the world’s first web advertising networks. She serves on the boards of Ceres and PRIME Coalition, the G7 Impact Taskforce Advisory Panel, PG&E’s Sustainability Advisory Council, and co-founded Stanford Professionals in Energy (SPIE).

Her first book, "Settling Climate Accounts: Navigating the Road to Net Zero" considers the rise of carbon accounting in the context of the last three decades of global climate action, examines the rough edges of Net Zero in practice, and makes recommendations for the road ahead. Alicia received her BA from Duke University in a self-designed curriculum focused on environmental science and policy and cultural anthropology, and earned her MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Current Role at Stanford

Lecturer, Stanford Law School; Deputy Director Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance; Managing Director, Precourt Institute Sustainable Finance Initiative.

Institute Affiliations

Contact

  • Work
    aseiger@stanford.edu
    University - Staff Department: Precourt Institute for Energy Position: Managing Director, Sustainable Finance Initiative

Additional Info

  • Mail Code: 4240

2022-23 Courses

All Publications

  • Derisking Decarbonization: Making Green Energy Investments Blue Chip Richer, D., Fedor, D., Carl, J. C., Seiger, A., Brown, J., Ball, J., Shrimali, G. Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy, Steyer-Taylor Center, Hoover Institution. Stanford. 2017
  • Impact Investing in the Energy Sector: How Federal Action Can Galvanize Private Support for Energy Innovation and Deployment Seiger, A., Kearny, S., et al Steyer-Taylor Center. 2015

    Abstract

    Economic and social imperatives require that energy innovation and deployment become an integral part of the impact investing movement. While the overall market for impact-oriented capital is large and growing, energy has remained on the margins of impact investing in practice. Earlier in 2014, the federal government hosted a series of conversations to stimulate high-level action. We believe the federal government must now take specific actions to help put impact investment in the energy sector into play at scale and and to provide strategic coordination among a diverse set of impact-interested capital providers. This paper covers the motivations and approaches for two types of investors: those who wish to achieve specific impact objectives, and mission-interested capital providers for whom impact investing is an extension of traditional portfolio management.

  • Energizing The US Resource Innovation Ecosystem: The Case for an Aligned Intermediary to Accelerate GHG Emissions Reduction Monk, A., Seiger, A., Kearney, S. Stanford Steyer-Taylor Center & Global Projects Center. Stanford University. 2015

    Abstract

    By 2050, the world population is forecasted to reach 10 billion people, and consumption of natural resources is expected to increase four-fold above current rates. Radical resource innovation – across energy, agriculture, water, and waste – is required to prepare the world for this future. Without it, we risk irreversible climate change, military conflict over resource access, and deepening inequity in the developing world. Paradoxically, there are no shortages of breakthrough technologies being developed in universities, national labs, and garages that could be as transformative today as the steam turbine in the 19th century or the solar cell in the 20th. What there is a shortage of, however, is patient, early-stage capital to support the transformation of these projects into lasting, profitable companies. Even growth-stage companies in this space sometimes lack access to project capital to execute first-of-a-kind demonstrations and deployments, and to achieve price competitiveness at commercial scale. In short, preventing a climate catastrophe demands that we create a new investment toolkit that can help bridge the “valleys of death” faced by these companies. We thus believe that the resource innovation ecosystem could benefit from the creation of a new aligned intermediary (“AI”). The purpose of this document is to propose the AI as a uniquely aligned financial services organization whose mission would be to specifically help Long-Term Investors (“LTIs”) – such as pensions, endowments, sovereign funds, family offices, and foundations – identify, screen, assess, and invest in high-potential companies that are producing the most impactful, and indeed profitable, solutions to climate change.

  • The State Clean Energy Cookbook: A Dozen Recipes for State Action on Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Bingaman, J., Shultz, G. P., Carl, J., Seiger, A., Reicher, D., Systrom, N. Steyer-Taylor Center, Hoover Institution. 2014 ; Jeff Bingaman

    Abstract

    With growing gridlock in Washington, states are increasingly the locus of real progress in policymaking to advance energy efficiency and renewable energy. Like chefs in a kitchen, state governors, legislators, and public utility commissioners have been testing an array of recipes, to increase the deployment of solar, wind, and other renewables, to cut energy use in homes and businesses, to improve the operation of the grid, to expand financing, and, overall, to improve the efficacy—and economics—of clean energy. Our team, from Stanford’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance and the Hoover Institution’s Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy, has reviewed many of these recipes. In this report—our State Clean Energy Cookbook—we present a baker’s dozen of some of the best.