Dr. Jennifer Sklarew brings 25 years of energy and environmental policymaking and analysis to her research and teaching. Dr. Sklarew coordinates the department's MS Concentration in Energy and Sustainability Policy and Science, which she developed. She also teaches graduate and undergraduate energy policy and food-energy-water nexus courses she developed for ESP.  Her published and funded work examines how institutional relationships and catastrophic events drive energy and environmental policymaking and change. Specific focal areas for her qualitative research include sustainability and resilience challenges in the energy-water nexus, solutions that leverage food-energy-water interdependencies, and energy system transitions in Japan, India, and China. NPR has quoted Dr. Sklarew as an expert on Japanese energy policymaking change. 

Dr. Sklarew currently leads two research projects. The first is to design, build and deploy hydropower micro-turbines on Mason’s Fairfax campus and analyze technological, ecological, geographical, socio-economic and institutional challenges. Her faculty-student team will use this data to develop potential solutions and lessons learned, to which they will add as they conduct additional pilots in overseas communities facing severe energy and water insecurity. The second project, a collaboration with faculty in food/nutrition and engineering, involves research on food, energy, water and climate challenges facing low income, rural communities. Through needs assessments, the project enables collaboration with communities to determine their food, energy and water needs and develop potential solutions. 

Dr. Sklarew’s prior professional experience spans the public and private sectors.  She has served as the sector expert for a FEMA-funded project on protection of U.S. electricity infrastructure, and she represented Mason on Arlington County’s Community Energy Plan Implementation Review Committee. Prior to entering academia, Dr. Sklarew served in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Japan, where she led her office’s work on Japanese electricity and gas deregulation, as well as the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.  She also served as a Mike Mansfield Fellow in various Japanese government agencies. Prior to entering the government, Dr. Sklarew worked as a DC-based energy policy consultant to Japanese utility companies, and as a policy analyst for the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute. 

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former rapporteur for the Council’s Energy Security Group, Dr. Sklarew received her Ph.D. in public policy from George Mason University, her MA from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and her BA from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Dr. Sklarew’s published work includes “Flint and the Impact of Institutional Relationships on Policy Change during Focusing Events,” published in Managing Challenges for the Flint Water Crisis by Westphalia Press. She also co-authored “Accelerating Sustainable Land Use Practices in the U.S.,” in the Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s (SDSN) America's Zero Carbon Action Plan: Roadmap to Achieving Net Zero Emissions by 2050.  Dr. Sklarew’s articles have appeared in Energy Research & Social Science, Foresight and STI Governance, Renewable Energy Law and Policy Review, The CIP Report, and The Washington Post.  Forthcoming publications include Building Resilient Energy Systems: Lessons from Japan, a book to be published by Routledge.