Chris Grea­cen has worked on pol­icy and hands-​​on imple­men­ta­tion of renew­able energy from vil­lage to gov­ern­ment lev­els. As co-​​director of the non-​​profit orga­ni­za­tion Palang Thai he helped draft Thailand’s Very Small Power Pro­ducer (VSPP) poli­cies, which account for over 1200 MW of renew­able energy on-​​line and addi­tional 3700 MW with signed PPAs as of March 2012. He con­ducted dozens of stud­ies on renew­able energy and power sec­tor plan­ning and gov­er­nance in Thai­land, includ­ing a government-​​commissioned study that helped shape Thailand’s design of its feed-​​in tar­iff program.

As a World Bank con­sul­tant he has worked since 2008 with the Tan­zan­ian Energy Water Util­i­ties Reg­u­la­tory Author­ity (EWURA) to draft guide­lines and rules for Tanzania’s Small Power Pro­ducer (SPP) pro­gram, which stream­lines deploy­ment of renew­able energy mini-​​grids for rural elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and grid-​​connected renew­able energy to aug­ment Tanzania’s national grid.

With the Bor­der Green Energy Team (BGET) he has led instal­la­tion of 13 pico-​​hydropower projects with remote com­mu­ni­ties in the Thai-​​Burma bor­der area, as well as lead­ing the con­struc­tion of dozens of solar elec­tric sys­tems for remote med­ical clin­ics in east­ern Burma. His PhD dis­ser­ta­tion from the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley focused on micro-​​hydroelectricity in rural Thai­land. He also has a BA in Physics from Reed Col­lege with a the­sis on solar pho­to­voltaic semi­con­duc­tor physics. He has worked on renew­able energy projects in Nepal, India, Burma, Cam­bo­dia, China, Guatemala, Microne­sia, North Korea, Tibet, Van­u­atu, Viet­nam, and on Native Amer­i­can reservations.