Heather House

Heather House

Manager
  • Carbon-Free Transportation

Heather is a manager with RMI’s Carbon-Free Transportation Program. She has a decade of experience working closely with cities, utilities, and the private sector to accelerate decarbonization of the sector through avoid, shift, and improve strategies. Her experience includes providing technical assistance to local governments to achieve climate commitments, working on utility EV programs, developing resources and policy blueprints for states for land-use reform, designing and running mobility pilots, working with private companies on strategies to electrify their fleet, creating commuting solutions for low-income workers, and designing and deploying urban design pilots to increase accessibility for low-income neighborhoods.

Heather also worked closely with cities and counties to provide guidance and technical variety assistance on various climate, energy, and transportation commitments. Heather managed RMI’s Resilient Texas Communities Initiative, enhancing the resilience of Texas cities and counties, inclusive of resilience hubs, power sector transformation, municipal fleet electrification, and residential weatherization. Heather also worked on Bloomberg Philanthropies’ American Cities Climate Challenge, where she built coalitions of cities and counties and provided them strategic guidance and technical assistance to advance their climate goals in critical decisions made at regulatory agencies, utilities, regional transmission operators, and state legislatures. She also managed a statewide process in North Carolina, convening key stakeholders, culminating in the creation of key regulatory reform policies for the state.
From June 2022 to March 2023, Heather seconded to the United Nations Climate Change High Level Champions team, where she worked globally to mobilize nonstate actors around ambitious targets for cities, transport, resilience, and nature.

Heather has been with RMI since October 2016.

Background

Heather came to RMI with a diverse background in the cleantech industry. Before RMI, she worked at Austin Energy as part of the Electric Vehicle and Emerging Technologies team, where she worked on the Department of Energy’s grant-funded SunShot Initiative, Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV (SHINES) project, and EV programs. She also worked at Meridian Solar, CleanTech Open, and CleanTX, where she ran the first-ever EV group-buy in Texas.

Heather completed a graduate degree program in Japan and Germany with a focus on International Material Flow Management and International Cooperation Policy. While studying, Heather interned at the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality and the German Institute for Applied Material Flow Management. She also worked at Chesapeake Energy and Access Midstream for a year in their GIS department.

Education

B.A., Environmental Sustainability: Planning and Management, Political Science (minor), Spanish (minor), University of Oklahoma

M.Sci., International Cooperation Policy, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University

Location

Boulder, CO