Associate Director, Climate and Environment
Hannah Safford
she/her

Hannah Safford is Associate Director of Climate and Environment at the Federation of American Scientists. She most recently served as Director for Transportation & Resilience at the White House Climate Policy Office, where she managed key pillars of the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic climate agenda. Hannah’s work and commentary has been featured on MSNBC and Al Jazeera, as well as in NaturePNAS, and others. Hannah holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Davis, as well as an MPA in Public and International Affairs, an M.Eng in Environmental Engineering and Water Resources, and a B.S.E. in Chemical and Biological Engineering, all from Princeton University.

publications
Environment
Policy Memo
2025 Heat Policy Agenda

Extreme heat has become a national economic crisis: lowering productivity, shrinking business revenue, destroying crops, and pushing power grids to the brink. The impacts of extreme heat cost our Nation an estimated $162 billion in 2024 – equivalent to nearly 1% of the U.S. GDP.

01.13.25 | 16 min read
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Emerging Technology
Blog
The FAS-OMB Evidence Forum: Thinking Back and Looking Forward

Until a month ago, I was an event skeptic. When it’s as easy as a Zoom link to connect with colleagues, I found it hard to believe that getting a bunch of people together around an agenda was ever really worth the time and effort. Point one for my colleagues at FAS and the White […]

11.07.22 | 5 min read
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Environment
Blog
Assessing Agency-Reported Progress on the Justice40 Initiative

Question: What do family game nights and federal government initiatives have in common? Answer: They’re both much easier to successfully start than to successfully finish. Coordinating multiple stakeholders—each with their unique interests and perspectives—around a common goal is simply difficult. At FAS, we have yet to figure out how to best tackle family game nights. But we […]

11.03.22 | 4 min read
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Emerging Technology
day one project
Policy Memo
Strengthening Policy by Bringing Evidence to Life

With millions of new scientific papers published every year, acting on research insights presents a formidable challenge. But what if evidence could “live”?

08.22.22 | 13 min read
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Clean Energy
Blog
Environmental Data in the Inflation Reduction Act

The hundreds of millions of dollars that the IRA invests in environmental-data collection and analysis will serve as critical scaffolding to efficiently guide federal spending on environmental initiatives in the near future.

08.16.22 | 6 min read
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