The Stanford Energy Seminar has been a mainstay of energy engagement at Stanford for nearly 20 years and is one of the flagship programs of the Precourt Institute for Energy. We aim to bring a wide variety of perspectives to the Stanford community – academics, entrepreneurs, utilities, non-profits, and more. 

About the talk

Tribal Nations across California and the U.S. are increasingly asserting leadership in clean energy development—pursuing projects that advance energy resiliency, economic opportunity, and tribal sovereignty. Since many Tribes face unduly high energy costs, long outages and have long borne the brunt of fossil fuel extraction, such projects can have an outsized impact. In a dual role at the California Energy Commission (CEC) and Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy, Kelsey Freeman has been helping launch a landmark state policymaking effort to ensure that California Native American Tribes can benefit from the clean energy transition. Freeman will discuss how Tribes are leading the way to harness clean energy for the benefit of their people amidst legal, policy and practical challenges—and how the CEC is working to support.

Kelsey Freeman is an award-winning writer, policy researcher, and advocate focused on rural community development, Indigenous rights, migration and climate change.

She is currently a Social Science Research Scholar at Stanford University's Precourt Energy Institute, where her work focuses on supporting Native American tribes in their clean energy goals. Through this role, she is also seconded to the Tribal Affairs program at the California Energy Commission (CEC), where she is helping launch a landmark policy-making process in collaboration with California tribes to ensure they can participate in and benefit from the clean energy transition.

Kelsey draws on 10 years focused on tribal sovereignty and has a strong track record of building programming to support tribes. She previously worked at Central Oregon Community College, where she collaborated with tribes across Oregon to start a college-readiness program for Native American high school students. She also facilitated workshops on equity, advised the college’s Dreamers’ Club, and served on the City of Bend Accessibility Advisory Committee.

Her debut book No Option but North (IG Publishing) was published in 2020 and is based on her year on a Fulbright Fellowship in Mexico interviewing Central American migrants. It interweaves their stories with research into the policies that reveal the fundamental tensions involved in contemporary migration. It won the 2021 Colorado Book Award in creative nonfiction and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. It also received acclaim in Publisher’s Weekly, The New York Journal of Books, Choice Reviews of the Association of College and Research Libraries, and many others. She has since spoken and interviewed across the U.S. on immigration policy. Kelsey has written for Stanford International Policy Review, UCLA’s Journal of Law and Environmental Policy, The Mantle, Complex(ion) Magazine, and is the recipient of a Steinberg Reporting Award.

From 2022-2025, Kelsey was a Knight Hennessy Scholar at Stanford studying international policy and environment and resources. During this time, she worked with Nevada’s green bank to help develop their tribal clean energy program, conducted research on international climate displacement and organized a course and conference on climate migration. She is the author of the report "Understanding Federal Indian Law for Renewable Energy," published by Stanford Law School.

Kelsey holds an MA in international policy and an MS in environment and resources from Stanford University and a BA in government and legal studies from Bowdoin College.

Anyone with an interest in energy is welcome to join! You can enjoy seminars in the following ways:

• Attend live. The auditorium may change quarter by quarter, so check each seminar event to confirm the location. Explore the current quarter's schedule.
• Watch live in a browser livestream if available. Check each seminar event for its unique livestream URL.
• Watch recordings of past seminars 
  • Available on the Past Energy Seminars page and the Energy Seminars playlist of the Stanford Energy YouTube channel
• (For students) Take the seminar as a 1-unit class (CEE 301/ENERGY 301/MS&E 494)

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