jon creyts

Jon Creyts

CEO
  • Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Jon Creyts is the Chief Executive Officer of RMI. He is an internationally recognized leader on global energy issues and climate change.

Since joining the organization in 2012, he has managed the strategy and execution of RMI’s global activities in multiple senior positions, becoming CEO in 2022. Under his leadership, RMI has advanced market-based solutions to transform the global energy system to secure a clean, prosperous, and zero-carbon future for all. An independent, nonpartisan nonprofit, RMI works with businesses, communities, governments, and other NGOs to accelerate and scale solutions that drive the cost-effective shift from fossil fuels to renewable and efficient energy use.

Background

Jon served as a senior leader at RMI for nearly a decade before assuming the role of CEO. While chief program officer, he helped grow the institution more than tenfold in size. He has extensive knowledge and practical experience applying market forces like finance, policy, data, and technology to support the rapid decarbonization of infrastructure and industries globally. He oversees and steers all RMI’s global programs and operations and advises the organization’s global network of market affiliates.

Jon helped found RMI’s China Program and set up RMI’s office in Beijing. He has worked on electricity transition issues, helping found e-Lab, researching technology disruption, and stewarding RMI’s Business Renewables Center to eventually spin out and become the Clean Energy Buyer’s Alliance. He conceived and built RMI’s breakthrough technology accelerator, Third Derivative. Between 2017 and 2019, he helped build and spin out the Energy Web Foundation (now Energy Web), a partnership that established the world’s largest consortium focused on using decentralized computing to manage a decentralized grid. Jon is passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion across RMI’s staff and champions equity and environmental resilience across RMI’s portfolio of work.

Prior to joining RMI, Jon was a partner with McKinsey & Company where he spent 11 years in the global energy practice. There he also helped found the sustainability practice and co-authored the US  cost-curve on carbon abatement. He was trained as an engineer in the energy and aviation industries and is an alumnus of Lockheed Martin’s renowned Skunk Works prototyping facility. He earned a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in mechanical engineering for research on industrial circularity.

Jon earned a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in mechanical engineering for research focused on creating a circular industrial economy, using thermodynamics to evaluate the material and energy efficiency of processes in the design of closed loop systems.

Jon currently serves on the board of the Mission Possible Partnership, is a member of the distinguished advisory group for the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, a trustee for the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust, commissioner for the Energy Transitions Commission, and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on the Future of Responsible Resource Use.

Education

PhD in Mechanical Engineering, University of California – Berkeley
BS in Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Picture

Jon Creyts’ Downloadable Picture