Jeffrey Ball

Bio

Jeffrey Ball is an award-winning writer whose work focuses on energy and the environment and bridges journalism and academia. As editor-in-chief at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, he is leading the development of a new global magazine of ideas about approaches to achieve a meaningfully more-sustainable world.

Ball’s stories and essays about the challenges and opportunities spurred by climate change have appeared in WIRED, Fortune, Foreign Affairs, Mother Jones, Texas Monthly, The New Republic, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate, among other publications.

Prior to joining the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability in spring 2024, Ball spent a dozen years as the scholar-in-residence at Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, where his research, writing, and teaching focused on economically efficient ways to achieve meaningful sustainability in the parts of the world where that shift arguably matters most: the emerging markets and developing economies of Asia. He also was a lecturer at Stanford Law School.

Ball came to Stanford in 2011 from The Wall Street Journal, where he was the paper's environment editor and spent more than a decade writing about energy and the environment as a reporter and a columnist. In his approximately 15 years at The Journal, he was based in the paper's Atlanta, Detroit, and Dallas bureaus, and he traveled widely. He has reported from five continents and more than 15 countries.

Ball also is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in Brookings’ Energy Security and Climate Initiative.

Program Affiliations

• Center for East Asian Studies
• Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources

Professional Education

• BA, Yale University, History (1990)

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

Efficacy of global clean-energy investment, focusing on China, the main player.