Nidhi Thakar

Nidhi Thakar is the Clean Energy Buyers Association’s senior vice president for policy. An accomplished policymaker, strategist, and lawyer, Nidhi brings over 20 years of experience across the private and public sectors to her work to attain a cleaner, more secure, and more reliable energy system. Her success in advancing innovative, decarbonized reliability solutions is guided by her hands-on experience working for state and federal regulators and lawmakers, utilities, start-ups, and NGOs, and with the broad range of stakeholders engaged in the complex policy and regulatory environments she regularly navigates.

Nidhi was most recently vice president for policy and regulatory at Form Energy, where she built and led the company’s global policy, government affairs, and regulatory team. Nidhi previously served as senior director for Portland General Electric, where she led cross-functional efforts to advance rapid decarbonization and electrification, resiliency and reliability, business model innovation, and customer solutions.

Nidhi has been at the center of many state and federal groundbreaking policies and efforts, including serving as chief of strategy and external affairs to the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, leading its Customer Choice Initiative to enable customers to play a larger role in the retail electric system and expanding the California direct access market. Nidhi also served in the Obama administration as senior advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, where she played a leading role in funding innovative, clean energy and advanced vehicle technologies and managing a $32 billion portfolio.

Nidhi serves on the boards of Clean Energy for America, Greentown Labs, Overture Investments, and Gridworks. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, and received her juris doctor degree with a certificate in environmental law from Lewis & Clark Law School, where she was a member of the Law Review.