Charles McConnell
Energy Center Officer, CCME, University of Houston
Charles “Chuck” McConnell is the Energy Center Officer of the Center for Carbon Management in Energy (CCME) at the University of Houston. Prior to joining the CCME, McConnell was the Executive Director of the Energy and Environment Initiative at Rice University. McConnell served as the Assistant Secretary of Energy in the U.S. Department of Energy from 2011-13 and was responsible for the Office of Fossil Energy’s strategic policy leadership, research and development of the department’s coal, oil and gas, and advanced technologies programs. He also managed operations of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the National Energy Technologies Laboratories. He previously worked at Praxair for 32 years managing domestic and global businesses in hydrogen, CCUS and energy and has worked in countries around the world including Singapore, China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, and Malaysia.