Secretary Ian A. Bowles oversees the Commonwealth’s six environmental, natural resource and energy regulatory agencies: the Departments of Environmental Protection, Public Utilities, Energy Resources, Conservation & Recreation, Agriculture, and Fish & Game. He also serves as Chairman of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, the Energy Facilities Siting Board, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a new agency charged with promoting R&D, workforce training and economic incentives for the Commonwealth’s rapidly growing clean energy industry.

Under Governor Deval Patrick, Massachusetts is the first state in the nation to combine energy and environmental agencies under one Cabinet secretary with the shared mission of bringing clean energy technology to market, curbing greenhouse gas emissions and cutting energy costs.  In the 2007-08 session, Secretary Bowles worked with legislative leaders to enact six major energy and environmental laws, encompassing broad energy reform, economy-wide greenhouse gas reduction, comprehensive oceans management, and biofuels. He also oversees Governor Patrick’s land conservation initiative, the largest in the Commonwealth’s history.

Bowles has more than 20 years of experience in energy and the environment. He was a Director or Advisor to three early stage clean energy technology companies. In the Clinton Administration, Bowles served as Associate Director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and as Senior Director of the Global Environmental Affairs directorate at the National Security Council, where he coordinated American foreign policy on global climate change, the Kyoto Protocol, international trade and environment standards, and related aspects of energy and security policy.

Following his service in the Clinton Administration, Bowles held appointments as a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and as Senior Advisor at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a multibillion dollar charitable foundation established by Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore. Bowles also served as President & CEO of MassINC, a Boston-based research institute, and as Publisher of CommonWealth magazine.

Earlier in his career, Bowles was Vice President of Conservation International, a leading international conservation organization. Bowles played a key role in the creation of one of the world’s largest tropical forest national parks: the 4 million acre Central Suriname Nature Reserve. Bowles began his career as a Legislative Assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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