Louise Dunlap biographical information

Louise Dunlap was the first woman to become chief executive of a major U.S. national environmental organization. From 1976 until 1986, she was President of the Environmental Policy Institute and Environmental Policy Center, groups she co-founded in 1972 and which under her leadership grew into the largest public-interest environmental lobbying organization in Washington. She created and led one of most effective campaigns in the history of the US environmental movement: the seven-year national citizens' effort to enact federal legislation, the Surface Mine Control & Reclamation Act of 1977, requiring the coal industry to protect valuable farmlands, streams and wetlands and to reclaim all surface mined lands. Louise continues to be a principal strategist and advocate for community groups throughout the U.S. working for reclamation of abandoned mines and enforcement of surface mining laws.

Louise Dunlap has been instrumental in the development of US national strategies and federal policies for cleaner and more efficient automotive transportation technologies and fuels. She plays a key role in developing and advancing the federal tax incentive programs for energy efficient commercial buildings, schools, homes, and equipment included in the Energy Act of 2005: programs which will significantly reduce US greenhouse gas emissions, reduce the risk of electric power blackouts, and reduce price increases for natural gas.

From 1987 through 2002, Louise Dunlap was the California Energy Commission's Washington, DC advisor on energy efficiency and transportation technologies and fuels. She was the principal lobbyist and strategist working in behalf of the Alternative Motor Fuels Act of 1988, an advisor to the Chair of the California Air Resources Board and to the California Energy Commission Chairman regarding the Clean Air Act of 1990, and active in development of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and subsequent federal energy and environmental policy.

Louise Dunlap began working on environmental and energy issues in 1969, when she became legislative assistant to the President of the National Parks and Conservation Association. From 1971 until 1972, she was Assistant Legislative Director of Friends of the Earth. She helped coordinate FOE's legislative strategy in the first national environmental campaign to raise energy efficiency and climate protection issues against a wasteful and polluting industrial proposal: federal funding subsidies for a proposed US commercial fleet of SST passenger planes.

Louise Dunlap has been a member of the Board of Visitors of the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment, was a founding member of Duke University's Women's Studies Council, was a founding member of Senator Jay Rockefeller's National Alternative Fuels Task Force and of the Democratic Women's Leadership Forum, and was Chair of the WLF Environment and Energy Task Force. In 1984 she was elected an Alternate Delegate from Maryland to the Democratic National Convention. She has served on the boards of the League of Conservation Voters, Clean Water Fund, Scenic America, Environmental Policy Institute, and National Clean Air Coalition. In 1987 she was honored by citizens from across America at a ceremony on the National Mall in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the federal surface mine reclamation law, and by the Friends of the United Nations Environment Programme for global environmental leadership. Louise Dunlap was recognized by the Sierra Club for her contributions to the 1990 reauthorization of the Clean Air Act, and in 1994 by Friends of the Earth for twenty-five years of environmental activism.

Louise Dunlap's first policy work in Washington, in 1968, was in the Office of the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, conducting a review of the effectiveness of federal housing programs in Chicago. She is a 1968 graduate of Duke University, was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and lives with her husband and partner Joe Browder in Fairhaven, Maryland.