Ralph Cavanagh was the Co-Director of the Energy Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. He has been a Visiting Professor of law at Stanford and UC Berkeley, a lecturer on law at the Harvard Law School, and a faculty member for the University of Idaho’s Public Utility Executives Course.

From 1993 to 2003, Cavanagh served on the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board. His current board memberships include the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, the California Clean Energy Fund, the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, and the Renewable Northwest Project. He is a member of the National Commission on Energy Policy, established by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation in 2002. He received the Heinz Award for Public Policy, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Mary Kilmarx Award, Yale Law School’s Preiskel-Silverman Fellowship, the Lifetime Achievement in Energy Efficiency Award from California’s Flex Your Power Campaign, and the Charles H. Percy Award. Cavanagh is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.