Dean Hari M. Osofsky Brings Energy Innovation Focus to Northwestern

The scholarship, teaching, and leadership of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Dean Hari Michele Osofsky—who is also The Myra and James Bradwell Professor of Law and a Professor of Environmental Policy and Culture—always have been rooted in energy, climate change, and justice issues, which has manifest in a multitude of ways throughout her career. Dean Osofsky’s innovative interdisciplinary work has bridged law and STEM and brought together bipartisan leaders in business, government, and non-profits to find constructive ways to address pressing policy problems. That passion has driven her next career endeavor when she steps down as Dean to launch the new Energy Innovation Lab and lead forward the Rule of Law Global Academic Partnership at Northwestern University. 

During her time at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Dean Osofsky made a transformational impact through faculty hiring, improving student outcomes, interdisciplinary innovation, and fundraising.  Northwestern Provost Kathleen Hagerty expressed: “We are grateful for Dean Osofsky’s dedication to the Law School and to Northwestern, and for her impactful leadership contributions over the past four years. Since joining Northwestern in 2021, Dean Osofsky achieved notable successes, including hiring nearly one-quarter of the research faculty at the Law School, significantly improving student employment outcomes and recruiting the most selective class in the Law School’s 165-year history each year she was dean. Her impressive fundraising totaled over $51 million, including three new endowed chairs, significant expansion of student scholarships and major gifts supporting the Bluhm Legal Clinic.”

Under Dean Osofsky’s leadership, the Law School launched numerous new programs and centers, including the West Coast Initiative, Center for Racial and Disability Justice, Bluhm Legal Clinic’s LGBTQI+ Rights Clinic, Rivkin Law and Public Advocacy Fellows Program, and Writing Lab. It developed innovative programs to support access to education and dialogue across difference, including the First-Generation Pre-Law Conference, Knox Conversations, and the Perspective Project pre-orientation program. The non-partisan Rule of Law Global Academic Partnership that Dean Osofsky established in spring 2025 now includes over 150 law schools from six continents and is moving forward with research, teaching, programming, and civic education on (1) judicial independence and separation of powers; (2) role of lawyers and legal representation; (3) role of universities and academic freedom; and (4) due process.  

Dean Osofsky shared: “It has been an extraordinary honor and privilege to lead and get to know our remarkable Law School community these past four years. I am extremely proud of and grateful for all we have built together. We have recruited exceptional new faculty and students, improved student outcomes and support, launched innovative new interdisciplinary programs and centers, developed efforts to foster a welcoming community and constructive dialogue across difference, and fundraised transformational gifts to support those efforts and our students. And I love that our alumni consistently share that going to our Law School not only changed their lives, but they also made their best friends here. At this time of crisis for the issues that I have spent my career on – and after eight years of being a dean at two outstanding universities – it feels urgent and important to focus my work on the rule of law, energy, and climate change.”

Dean Osofsky’s innovative interdisciplinary leadership is longstanding. In her first deanship at The Pennsylvania State University, of both Penn State Law and the Penn State School of International Affairs, her leadership work included innovative interdisciplinary hiring and initiatives, launching the Center for Energy Law and Policy; playing a leadership role the university’s Energy University initiative; and serving on the executive committees for both the Institutes of Energy and the Environment and Penn State’s strategic priority regarding “Stewarding Our Planet’s Resources.” At the University of Minnesota, where she was the Robins Kaplan Professor at the Law School and had appointments in Geography, Environment and Society, the Conservation Sciences Graduate Program, and the Institute on the Environment, she served as founding director of its Energy Transition Lab and led the Joint Degree Program in Law, Science, and Technology. She double majored in philosophy and environmental studies at Yale University, where she also earned her JD; and she received a PhD in geography from the University of Oregon, where she authored a dissertation titled, “Scales of Law: Rethinking Climate Change Governance.”

We interviewed Dean Osofsky about the array of pressing current issues related to energy and climate change and her vision for energy innovation.

You plan to have energy and AI and energy investment as major focuses of the Energy Innovation Lab. How do new developments in AI interact with energy?

AI both drives demand for energy and assists with energy innovation. The need for data centers to power AI, cryptocurrency, cloud computing, and other emerging technology is leading to new energy investment and impacting sources of energy. Major technology companies – including Google, Meta, Amazon –  are investing in nuclear and geothermal energy, and private equity firms are financing data centers, emerging technology, and the energy generation that powers them. The expansion of nuclear energy will potentially have an important impact on both our energy mix and on climate change. Nuclear energy has a very low carbon footprint, but we continue to struggle around the question of how we will store nuclear waste.

There’s a second issue, which is how AI is going to be used in all the various energy innovations. AI is increasingly being used in our energy system, from the way we locate and extract fossil fuels and forecast renewable energy to optimizing our data centers and grid and transmission to spurring innovative start-up companies aiming at the next breakthrough. AI is being used to increase energy efficiency, helping with the question: How do you make buildings or vehicles more energy efficient? And one of the technological breakthroughs that could make a big difference in our energy system is if we were to develop grid-scale energy storage at a much more significant level—because grid-scale energy storage is important for how we integrate renewable energy into the grid. To the extent that AI can help accelerate breakthroughs in energy technologies, it could play an important positive role.

I think that with the intersection of this rapid growth of generative AI, with our rapidly transitioning energy system—that AI has a very important role to play, both in potentially what our energy mix is, and in how our energy innovation and energy systems continue to evolve. These developments bring many risks and there is controversy over how to address them. But given AI’s already massive impact on our energy system and the expansion of both investment and its role, we have an important opportunity in this moment to collaborate and find win-wins. The Energy Innovation Lab will bring together interdisciplinary researchers with bipartisan leaders in business, government, and nonprofits to partner on the path forward.

These important developments in technology and investment are occurring against a backdrop of regulatory turbulence. What have been the main regulatory changes this winter and spring affecting energy and climate change?

There’s been significant executive and legislative action this spring and summer aimed at shifting the energy mix in the United States and changing the direction of our energy future. Some of the key steps include withdrawing from the Paris Agreement—our second withdrawal—revoking President Biden’s executive orders on climate and energy and creating a regulatory freeze; taking steps to encourage rapid fossil fuel development, including offshore, and to limit wind development; and energy measures in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The Trump administration has defunded climate change and renewable energy research and programs; eliminated environmental justice offices, programs and research; and ordered the EPA to reexamine the “endangerment finding” that provides the basis for a lot of climate regulation in the United States—the federal government finding that greenhouse gasses are a dangerous pollutant. Its executive order reviewing state and local climate laws and preventing enforcement of those deemed illegal ones is already being used in actions against states, intervening in their regulatory efforts and trying to stop them from suing fossil fuel companies.

Among the many ways in which the Trump administration has been making funding decisions that have an impact on climate science research and reporting, it dismissed nearly 400 scientists who work on the “National Climate Assessment,” a report that the U.S. government produces on climate change science. When that happened, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society announced that they would invite those climate scientists to submit their work. There’s both action around defunding climate change science and efforts to ensure that research may continue in other contexts.

How do the new federal regulations aim to change the energy mix? And do you think private-sector markets, including auto manufacturing and electric power generation, have moved in the renewable direction far enough that the regulations won’t necessarily prompt them to reverse course?

The aim of these regulations is to try to interrupt a transition toward more renewable energy and to push us back toward greater dependency on fossil fuels. While there has been some slowing down from the federal regulatory changes and the elimination of clean energy tax credits and incentives in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is significant, there’s already a lot in motion. It’s important to understand that the U.S. regulatory changes are happening in a global context, and that many businesses and investors are operating not just in U.S. markets but also in European markets, in which the regulatory environment – despite some recent rollbacks – remains very different.

There was a February 2025 U.S. Energy Information Administration report that indicated solar and battery storage are going to lead new U.S. generating capacity additions in 2025. They expect 63 gigawatts of new, utility-scale electric generating capacity to be added to the U.S. power grid in 2025, an almost 30% increase from 2024. Solar and battery storage account for 81% of the expected total capacity additions, with solar making up over 50% of the increase. These projects were committed to and in motion before the regulatory change, and even though some will be impacted moving forward due to regulatory changes, those capacity changes will continue to have impacts.

Many major companies and investors in markets beyond the United States face different regulatory requirements, for example with ESG regulations, which require companies to report on their environmental work, including their climate change work. Although the EU has also taken steps at deregulation that limit, simplify, and delay some its ESG and broader environmental policy approaches this spring, those regulations remain stronger than those in the United States and companies in multiple markets have compliance obligations. Reuters reported this spring that European investors have seen seven times as much capital and sustainable fund investment. There are currently political efforts in the United States to address the extraterritorial reach of EU laws and a divide within the United States, where some states have much stronger regulation than the federal government. These divisions play out in pending litigation, where states are on both sides of litigation between the federal government and states.

What are the implications of these differences in energy regulatory approaches among U.S. states?

The U.S. state and local picture is complicated in ways that have existed for a long time. There are significant differences among states in whether they have tended to be pro- or anti-regulatory regarding climate change. Some states and local governments remain committed to a transition to more renewable energy, and you see those states and cities—and businesses—taking a lot of action. There’s a coalition called America is All In that provides some coordination among that work, working to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2050, while also building resiliency in the face of increasing climate impacts. As has been the case since the early days of climate change litigation, states are on both sides of this. You see states joining the Trump administration, that agree with the federal regulatory change.

In Illinois, Governor Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity announced 88 awards in March totaling $57 million under the state’s landmark Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. The goal of these investments is to spur greater energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. And sometimes, you see states interact with national governments of other countries. In April, Governor Pritzker signed a memorandum of understanding with British officials building on a decades-long trade relationship, which focuses on the advanced manufacturing, energy technology, and life sciences sectors.

Similarly, here in Chicago, just before President Trump took office, Mayor Brandon Johnson, together with our Department of Environment and Department of Fleet and Facility Management, announced that the City of Chicago has achieved its goal of transitioning all city facilities and operations to 100% renewable energy. Chicago is one of the largest cities in the United States that is sourcing the power for its operations with renewable energy.

Part of what’s interesting about what we’re observing in state action is since the Treaty of Westphalia, there’s been this idea that international law is made between nation-states. What we’re increasingly seeing in the context of energy and climate change is the ways in which we’re developing agreements is much more multi-scalar. While certainly treaties among nation-states like the Paris Agreement are critically important, and federal action is important, these other actions by states, cities, and private actors are also important in understanding the picture of this and will play a significant role in how we move forward.

What are the implications of the U.S. withdrawing from the Paris Agreement for global efforts to address climate change?

The foundational agreement that’s framed international negotiations is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. One of the key negotiation points was over the recognition that all countries contribute to the problem and need to be part of solving it, but also that some countries are responsible for a much higher percentage of emissions and so have more responsibility. This was complicated by the fact that the United States often is very involved in international negotiations but then doesn’t ultimately ratify the treaties involved. The Paris Agreement represented a very important step forward, in which almost all the countries of the world have joined it and all of them have obligations, but there are greater obligations for major emitters like the United States.

The core commitment of the Paris Agreement is an attempt to hold the increase in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Now, there was a recognition that the goal is not going to stop a lot of harm from climate change, so they also put in the agreement pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. When the agreement was created, the United States, under President Obama, was not only among the parties to adopt the agreement, in December 2015, but a member of what was known at the time as the High Ambition Coalition. As soon as Trump began his first term, he announced that he was going to withdraw from the agreement. President Biden rejoined but President Trump ordered a withdrawal at the beginning of his second term on January 20, 2025, which will be effective on January 27, 2026.

Here’s the real difficulty: If you look at what it would take to hit the 2-degree goal, this was not on track even before President Trump withdrew from Paris Agreement. There would have needed to be a significant increase in ambition. A European Commission report found that China, the United States, India, the European Union, Russia, and Brazil were collectively responsible for 62.7% of global emissions in 2023. Even if actions by states, cities, and businesses limit the impact of federal regulatory changes, for us, as the second-biggest emitter in the world, we would have had to be ramping up ambition. I think this decision to withdraw paired with the executive orders and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act makes it very difficult for the United States to ramp up ambition, and that has very serious implications for efforts to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Another focus of the Energy Innovation Lab will be on energy litigation. As a leading expert on the regulatory role of strategic litigation, how do you see litigation playing out in the current regulatory environment, whether pro- or anti-regulatory?

Litigation is a tool. Even before the current Trump administration, we’ve seen a massive growth in litigation over energy and climate change in the United States and globally. When I first started studying climate change litigation and its regulatory impact, just before Massachusetts v. EPA reached the Supreme Court, there were a handful of cases across the United States and around the world. But as of May 2025, if you look at Columbia University’s Sabin Center’s database, there’s climate change litigation in 50 countries, plus the European Union, and other regional and international tribunals across six continents. There have been 1,981 cases filed in the United States, and 1,183 filed in other jurisdictions.

The vast majority of lawsuits, both in the United States and around the world, tends to be statutory litigation, trying to push for or against regulations that have been created, and about how regulation should be interpreted. There have been emerging cases that use human rights, constitutional rights, or common-law arguments. The primary focus has been on governmental action, but there’s an increasing interest in suits against corporate actors. One of the places of conflict right now between the Trump administration and states is about whether states can bring lawsuits against corporate actors; and most of these cases are focused on climate change mitigation. Over time, the litigation has been largely pro-regulatory, but there are also anti-regulatory cases, varying based on whether the underlying government is pro- or anti-regulatory.

Massachusetts v. EPA is probably the most important landmark case, followed by the endangerment finding that has served as the basis for a lot of climate-change regulation in the United States. The Trump administration is asking the EPA to reexamine this. In this context, a substantial portion of the executive action by the Trump administration relevant to energy and climate change has been legally challenged. At the same time as you’ve seen legal challenges by states to the federal government action and by other entities, you have seen the federal government bring actions against states to challenge either environmental actions that they’re taking—regulatory action by states—or their lawsuits.

As mentioned, the Trump administration has filed complaints recently that they said were part of moving forward Executive Order 14-260, titled, “Protecting American Energy from State Overreach.” One of the sets of complaints were against Hawaii and Michigan, seeking to stop them from suing fossil fuel companies to seek damages for alleged climate change harms. The federal government is saying that those actions are preempted by the Clean Air Act and violate the constitution. They also filed complaints against New York and Vermont to challenge climate laws that impose strict liability on energy companies. It’s part of a broader pattern regarding the role of lawsuits and legal representation.

You’ve written in the past about energy partisanship and when bipartisan collaboration is possible. Is there any hope for that right now?

I remain hopeful, even though we’ve seen increasing levels of partisanship. As University of Melbourne professor Jackie Peel and I have written about, one of the difficulties in how we tend to approach partisan divides is, we often use what social scientists call the “information deficit model.” We operate under the assumption that if we simply share the information that we have, that will convince the other side. In a highly polarized environment, those strategies often aren’t very effective, partly because people are often not listening to the same sources of information.

Part of moving forward and finding places where there can be constructive progress is about understanding where people’s values and interests align. You typically see the strongest alignment when there’s true economic interest. In states that have high wind-energy capacity, you tend to see Republican leaders supportive of the wind industry, even though we’ve seen some stepping back from that in the highly polarized environment this spring. The other situations in which you tend to see more bipartisan alignment are when you scale down to the local level. People are living and working together and often addressing very practical problems about their economy and about land use. I’m not trying to suggest that you don’t see partisanship in a local context. But people know each other and have stronger relationships.

How we frame things really matters. I was in Minnesota building a bipartisan collaboration among local leaders, and I got feedback that the words “climate change” might be something that someone couldn’t sign onto. But when I said, “Energy efficiency often costs out very quickly,” the leader said: “Yes, I love and support energy efficiency.” We need to think about where are the places that people can agree and move things forward. I also think there are times where it’s important to challenge things; if our federal government takes actions that are unconstitutional, it may not be that we’re going to get bipartisan alignment. But even in the current context of deep polarization, there are still opportunities for us to create a more constructive path forward. I see particular promise for innovation that leads to win-wins at the energy and AI interface, while recognizing the importance of managing the many risks.

I am excited to partner with interdisciplinary researchers and bipartisan leaders in business, government, and nonprofits on advancing needed energy innovation in our new Lab. We are already building these collaborations and I welcome hearing from people about their efforts and how we might work together at this critical time.