Kate Anderson is the strategy lead at NREL. In this role, she aligns and integrates strategic and business planning, ensures lab investments support critical objectives, and measures progress toward lab goals. Prior to this role, Anderson was chief of staff for NREL's Energy Systems Integration directorate, where she supported operations and strategic planning activities focused on power systems, energy security and resilience, systems analysis, and decision science. She coordinated energy justice activities across NREL to embed equity in all phases of NREL's work from research through deployment and led the LA100 Equity Strategies project to develop strategies to achieve a just transition to 100% clean energy in Los Angeles. 

Anderson served as senior engineer and manager of the NREL Modeling and Analysis Group for 13 years. Her team developed tools and provided techno-economic modeling and analysis to support energy deployment decisions for federal, state, and local governments, tribes, universities, and industry partners. She served as the program lead for the development of NREL's REopt model, employed by more than 50,000 users to evaluate cost-optimal selection and sizing of energy systems and inform clean energy deployment worldwide. In 2019, Anderson was an R&D 100 Award nominee for REopt Lite, and in 2021, she was recognized by the U.S. Clean Energy Education and Empowerment Initiative with the Social, Economic, and Policy Innovation Award. In 2022, she was a U.S. Department of Energy Oppenheimer fellow and a Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute fellow.

Prior to joining NREL, Anderson launched satellites as a captain in the U.S. Air Force.

Energy equity and justice

Energy optimization

Techno-economic modeling

Value of resilience