Summer 2025 Fossil Fuels and Industry Schneider Fellow (Stanford Students Only)

NRDC is a non-profit environmental advocacy organization. We use law, science, and the support of 3.1 million members and online activists to protect the planet's wildlife and wild places and to ensure the rights of all people to clean air, clean water, and healthy communities. NRDC was founded in 1970 and our people helped write some of America's bedrock environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act and many of the implementing regulations. Today, our team of more than 600 lawyers, scientists, economists, policy advocates, communications experts, and others work across the United States and the globe from our offices in Beijing; Chicago; New Delhi; New York; San Francisco; Santa Monica; and Washington, D.C.

NRDC is seeking a Schneider Fellow to work with the Climate & Energy Team in our Washington D.C. office.

Position summary:

NRDC's Fossil Fuels and Industry Climate and Energy teams are seeking a Fellow to assist with research and policy recommendations encompassing issues related to design, deployment, and safety of the infrastructure needed for geologic storage of carbon dioxide (whether from carbon capture and storage (CCS) or direct air capture (DAC)). The scope of work will cover, among other things, investigative research into Class II and Class VI injection well regulation, potential safety concerns related to well design and/or material choices, and monitoring and safety techniques in use or proposed to better ensure infrastructure integrity.

NRDC's Fossil Fuels team focuses on several issues related to energy and energy production, primarily, but not limited to, federal public lands. Core work involves advocating for the phase out of fossil fuel leasing, development, and production on federal public lands; advancing renewable energy siting, development, and production on federal public lands; advancing a Just Energy Transition in fossil energy reliant regions; and advocating for responsible mining practices in support of the clean energy transition. As CCS and DAC deployment begins to expand, we are seeing several proposals that would use federal lands to construct Class VI injection wells for permanent geologic storage of captured carbon dioxide.

NRDC's Industry team works to decarbonize and otherwise transform to healthier production methods some of our economy's heaviest industries, including steelmaking, aluminum production, and cement manufacturing. Core work includes designing policies and supporting deployment of next-generation industrial technologies, advocating for targeted use of hydrogen to decarbonize the most difficult sectors of our economy, championing innovation through research and development at U.S. labs and agencies and otherwise supported by the U.S. government, and advocacy to reduce emissions of climate super pollutants such as HFCs and nitrous oxide (N2O).

Fellows typically work on several longer-term projects over the course of their fellowship, with opportunities to assist with shorter-term assignments complementary to their in-depth work product. Project scopes are developed in consultation between managers and the fellow to gauge interest and skill set.

Prospective projects for this fellowship include:

Quantifying drinking water risks for CO2 migration from Class VI injection (literature review + review of advocacy claims)
• Enhanced Oil Recovery well management and oversight investigation, including any issues operators have experienced with injection well casing corrosion and common materials used in well design (including current design standards and changes to those standards over time)
• Investigation into recent Class VI and Class II well issues in Illinois and Texas, including an exploration of the range of issues experienced by those wells and an exploration of the range of known or suspected causes
• Exploration of surface infrastructure needs of Class VI injection wells, including long-term monitoring
• Research into subsurface regulatory issues such as unitization and other topics, especially those facing CA Dept of Natural Resources as it implements state legislation related to geologic storage

Must be a Stanford Student to apply.

NRDC is committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, both in our work and in our workplace. We believe that celebrating and actively welcoming diverse voices and perspectives is essential to solving the planet's most pressing environmental problems, and we encourage applications from candidates whose identities have been historically underrepresented in the environmental movement.

We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate in hiring or employment on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, marital status, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Our offices are open and we are operating in a hybrid model. We offer NRDCers flexibility, and we ask them to come into the office and spend meaningful time there in collaboration with their colleagues. We call this purposeful presence.

As a science-based organization, NRDC aims to do our part to help contain the COVID-19 public health crisis. For the sake of health, safety, and equity, we ask that people be vaccinated unless they have an approved medical or religious accommodation or other exemption in accordance with state and local law. We consider a person to be vaccinated two weeks after receiving one full course of a CDC-approved vaccine. In accordance with state or local law, new hires will be asked to attest to vaccination, those wishing to do so may request medical or religious accommodations or other exemptions via NRDC Employee Relations. NRDC treats all vaccine-related data confidentially, in keeping with local, state, and federal laws.

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For more about NRDC, visit www.nrdc.org.