Christopher Hessler
Founding Partner
AJW, Inc.
Moderator at:
- Session 2: Hydrogen Decarbonizing Hard to Abate Sectors
12:15-
Chris is one of the nation’s foremost experts in optimizing market opportunities for cleantech innovation and deployment.
He helps clients refine and sharpen strategic business plans to develop and advance their technology, maximize revenues from environmental market premiums, improve public policy, and secure support and funding from public agencies, regulators, and policymakers. He advises governments seeking to maximize the effectiveness of environmental market programs and attract private sector investment to accelerate decarbonization and energy transition outcomes.
In the two decades since he founded AJW, Inc. in 2003, Chris has supported a global roster of projects for multinational, mid-sized, and startup companies as well as academic, research, and nonprofit organizations. His prior work in the public sector (including his roles as Deputy Staff Director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and as advisor to both former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and Congressman Dick Zimmer) helped Chris identify numerous policy gaps and failures that limited clean tech industry successes despite the best intentions of elected officials. This knowledge helped inform his government work and inspired his vision for establishing AJW when he left public service.
Chris founded AJW to help cleantech leaders maximize the value of government policies and strengthen programs that support RD&D, deployment, and scale-up of groundbreaking climate solutions. He has built a team with deep and diverse expertise to help government implement the market mechanisms, then primes innovators to blow past market barriers and exceed their strategic and profitability goals.
Chris’ specific expertise includes business development and investor relations strategies; decarbonization market development; deployment strategies; legislative and regulatory advocacy; clean fuels and clean energy technology and policy expertise; energy transition strategies; environmental commodity, sustainability and voluntary markets; international regulatory initiatives; and government financial and procurement mechanisms.