Roland Hwang is the director of the Climate and Clean Energy program at the Heising-Simons Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2021, Roland was the director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate & Clean Energy Program. He has also worked for seven years at the Union of Concerned Scientists directing their Transportation program. He is an expert on clean vehicle and fuels technologies and policies, energy demand forecasting, and air pollution regulation.

Roland currently serves on the U.C. Davis Institute of Transportation Board of Advisors, the Pacific Gas & Electric Sustainability Advisory Board, and the 50×50 Transportation Initiative Commissioner. Previously he has served on numerous advisory panels and committees, most recently for the California Plug-in Electric Vehicle Collaborative, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Fuel Economy, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Barriers to Electric Vehicle Deployment and the U.S. EPA Mobile Source Technical Review Subcommittee. Roland was also part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

He holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Davis, and a master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of California at Berkeley.