Daniel Esty

Dan Esty is the Hillhouse Professor at Yale University with appointments in both the Environment and Law Schools. He also serves as the Director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and serves on the Board of the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale, which he founded in 2006.

Professor Esty is the author or editor of ten books and dozens of articles on environmental protection, energy, and sustainability - and their connections to policy, corporate strategy, competitiveness, trade, and economic success. His prize-winning volume, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage, has recently been named the top-selling “green business” book of the past decade.

From 2011 to early 2014, Professor Esty served as Commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection where he earned a reputation for bringing fresh thinking to both energy and environmental policymaking, including such innovations as the launch of Connecticut’s first-in-the-nation Green Bank and “LEAN” restructuring of all of Connecticut’s environmental permitting programs to make the state’s regulatory framework lighter, faster, and more efficient and effective. Prior to taking up his Yale Professorship in 1994, he served in a variety of senior positions at the US Environmental Protection Agency and was a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC.