Greg Kats Keynote Speaker

Founder and CEO of Smart Surfaces Coalition
Renowned thought leader in clean energy, green building and economy, and decarbonisation
Advisor to various government entities on building sustainable, cost and energy efficient smart cities

Greg Kats's Biography

Greg Kats is the Founder and CEO of the Smart Surfaces Coalition.

He is a renowned thought leader in the clean energy, green building and decarbonisation industries.

Smart Surfaces Coalition comprises of 40 partners, and was established in 2019 to slow global warming, redress social inequity and build urban resilience. The company helped transform many US and Indian city surfaces to slow climate change, cool cities and address key environmental justice issues.

Greg served for 6 years as the Director of Financing for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the US Department of Energy and then as Managing Director of Good Energies, a multi-billion-dollar global clean energy PE/VC fund.

He is the founder of both the American Council on Renewable Energy and the country’s first green bank. Kats is the President of Capital E, a company which invests in clean energy startups and helps institutions design, scale and implement clean energy and decarbonisation.

Greg Kats played a large role in designing and developing LEED, the most widely used green building rating system in the world and received the first US Green Building Council Lifetime Achievement Award for his work. His other accolades include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alliance to Save Energy and being recognised as an American Institute of Architects Honorary Member for his contributions to the field.

Greg has chaired a congressionally established advisory board which guides the greening and energy efficiency of 430,000 federal buildings and served on a National Academy of Sciences board on strengthening US global competitiveness. He serves as Chair of CarbonStar, and helped develop the first international standard on carbon in concrete. Kats regularly consults and testifies before various government entities, such as the US Congress, the World Bank, the Knesset and the UN, on topics related to clean energy, green cities and financing issues.

In 2003, Greg wrote the world’s first in-depth study on the long-term economic benefits of green buildings, The Costs and Financial Benefits of Green Building. His book, Greening our Built World: Costs, Benefits and Strategies (Island Press, 2009), “could jump-start a national revolution toward the use of renewable energy sources,” says Don Kennedy, President Emeritus of Stanford University.

Greg Kats received an MBA from Stanford University and was a Morehead Scholar.

He has shaped the built-environment decarbonisation agenda from both government and industry, including senior leadership at the U.S. Department of Energy and a global clean energy investment fund.
He brings practical, field-tested insight on how cities and organisations can cut emissions and heat risk through high-impact interventions across roofs, pavements and public space.
He helps leaders connect climate goals to capital strategy, drawing on decades of work in energy-efficiency and renewable-energy financing and advising public institutions at scale.
He translates green building and urban resilience best practice into clear decisions teams can execute, informed by his role in developing LEED and his long-standing work on the economics of green buildings.