Jason Bordoff
Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs
Personal Details
Focus areas: The intersection of economics, energy, environment, and national security
Jason Bordoff is Founding Director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA, where he is a Professor of Professional Practice, and is also Co-Founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School. He is also a Senior Advisor at Macro Advisory Partners. He previously served as Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change on the Staff of the National Security Council, and, prior to that, held senior policy positions on the White House’s National Economic Council and Council on Environmental Quality. One of the world’s leading energy and climate policy experts, Bordoff’s research and policy interests lie at the intersection of economics, energy, environment, and national security. He is a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, a frequent commentator on TV and radio, including NPR, Bloomberg, CNBC and BBC, has appeared on the Colbert Report, and has published in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, the Economist, and other leading outlets. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, a Trustee of The Nature Conservancy in New York, a board member of Winrock International and Foreign Policy 4 America, and serves on the Leadership Council for Sustainable Energy for All at the United Nations. Earlier in his career, he was a scholar at the Brookings Institution, served in the Treasury Department during the Clinton Administration, and was a consultant with McKinsey & Company. Bordoff graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, where he served on the Harvard Law Review, and clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He also holds an MLitt degree from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University.
For all media inquiries please email: [email protected].
Education
- JD, cum laude, Harvard Law School
- MLitt in Politics, Oxford University
- AB, magna cum laude, Brown University
Affiliations
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Association of Marshall Scholars
In The Media
“Davos turned into a climate-change conference this year,” said Jason Bordoff, but the gap between ambition and concrete action remains glaring.
The US became a net exporter of petroleum oil in September for the first time since records were kept in 1949. Jason Bordoff says Trump gets no credit. "The rapid rise in US oil production began before Pres. Trump and would very likely have continued."
In his latest piece for the Wall Street Journal, Jason Bordoff writes how California’s decade of planned blackouts should encourage regulators to boost a resilient electrical system.
Jason Bordoff notes that the modest size of the resource, risk of conflict, and legal obstacles to investment from U.S. sanctions make it unlikely that a U.S. oil major would find it commercially attractive to invest in the Syrian oil sector.
“There’s a combination of factors, but cheap natural gas has been the primary factor that has lowered the competitiveness of coal in the United States,” says Jason Bordoff to Foreign Policy after more coal companies go bankrupt.