2026 Shultz Energy Fellowships: Western Interstate Energy Board (Undergraduates)

Regional-, state-, and city-level efforts are essential in our fight against climate change, especially in the field of energy. Stanford University is committed to helping by integrating its students into energy and climate ecosystems in the West through the Shultz Energy Fellowships program, an energy-related summer fellowship program for undergraduate and graduate students. You will be one of two Stanford students placed at WIEB in Denver, Colorado.

Named in honor of former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, one of the most widely admired American public servants of the past half-century, the program offers a suite of paid, energy-related public service fellowships for Stanford students in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, and Utah during the summer. 

The fellowships run from Monday, June 22, 2026 to Friday, August 28, 2026.

Western Interstate Energy Board

The Western Interstate Energy Board (WIEB) is an organization of eleven western states and two western Canadian provinces. The governor of each state and the premier of each province appoint a member to the Board. WIEB’s purpose is to “provide the instruments and framework for cooperative state efforts to enhance the economy of the West and contribute to the well-being of the region’s people.” 

WIEB works to achieve this through cooperative efforts among member states, provinces, and the federal government. For these efforts, WIEB staff conduct research in comprehensive areas around the Western Interconnection, including grid reliability, resource adequacy, transmission expansion, energy imbalance markets, and nuclear waste transportation. 

Although WIEB has a primarily remote workforce with employees spread throughout the West, this fellowship will be a hybrid opportunity. Students will be expected to spend part of the summer near WIEB’s headquarters in downtown Denver, Colorado, to collaborate with local staff.

For more information on WIEB, please visit WIEB’s homepage.

Mentorship and Guidance

Laura Rennick, WIEB's Executive Director, will provide overarching leadership to the students.

Eric Baran, WIEB’s Senior Program Manager – Electric System Reliability, will provide daily oversight, strategic direction, technical guidance, and coordination with partners. 

Students will also have access to external subject matter experts in wildfire science, community planning, insurance, and energy policy. 

Other WIEB staff will engage with the students to provide technical and strategic guidance, as necessary.

2026 Fellowship Project – Community Wildfire Risk and Resilience Strategies in the West

Overview

Wildfire risk continues to rise across the Western Interconnection, threatening public safety, housing, insurance markets, and energy system reliability. Utilities have made major investments in mitigation—such as vegetation management, system hardening, and Public Safety Power Shutoffs—but catastrophic losses remain driven largely by community-scale vulnerabilities. Fast-moving urban fires, in particular, account for a disproportionate share of structure loss and reveal gaps that cannot be resolved by utility actions alone but have interconnected and compounding impacts on utilities' risk and liability.

While utilities have invested heavily in wildfire mitigation, the expectation that they alone can eliminate wildfire risk and absorb all associated liability is unrealistic and unsustainable. Much of the residual risk lies outside utility control, such as within community planning, land use, and insurance structures. This project addresses that gap by reframing wildfire resilience as a shared responsibility across sectors. By identifying strategies that complement utility actions, we aim to reduce systemic risk and relieve pressure on utilities as the de facto insurance backstop for catastrophic losses.

This fellowship will build a shared understanding of community wildfire resilience strategies across Western states and provinces and identify actionable approaches that complement utility mitigation efforts. The work will emphasize stakeholder roles, best practices, and policy mechanisms available to state and provincial leaders seeking to reduce community-level wildfire risk.

Project Goals:

These goals are designed not only to catalog best practices but to strengthen the policy and planning interface between community resilience and energy system reliability. By doing so, the fellowship will help regulators, commissions, and energy offices understand how community-scale mitigation can reduce cascading impacts on utilities and ratepayers.

1. Catalog and synthesize existing community wildfire resilience strategies across the West;
2. Identify cross-sector coordination practices involving utilities, insurers, local governments, and fire agencies;
3. Outline a practical framework that helps Western policymakers evaluate and support community-scale wildfire mitigation; and,
4. Provide targeted recommendations for state and provincial energy officials and utility regulators.

Project Tasks

• Conduct a literature and policy review of community wildfire mitigation programs. Areas of focus may include:
  • Building codes, standards, and retrofit programs that enhance structural resistance to wildfire;
  • Defensible space recommendations and requirements, vegetation management guidelines, and landscape-scale fuel treatment coordination;
  • Community wildfire protection planning processes and their effectiveness;
  • Cross-sector coordination models involving utilities, local governments, fire agencies, land management entities, and property owners; and,
  • Financing mechanisms for property- and community-level mitigation investments.
• Conduct stakeholder interviews
  • For example: state or provincial wildfire offices, insurers, local governments, etc.
• Develop a comparative matrix of resilience strategies.
  • Identify Western jurisdictions to compare
• Identify policy tools, financing mechanisms, and program structures
• Draft recommendations for Western state and provincial policymakers

Project Deliverables:

Framework Summary & Matrix (Primary Technical Deliverable)

• Comparison of community wildfire resilience strategies in selected Western states and provinces
• Roles/responsibilities of key actors
• Incentive and verification mechanisms

Presentation to WIEB/WIRAB/CREPC Leadership and Stakeholders

• Slide deck summarizing findings
• Short briefing with discussion

Policy Brief for Western State and Provincial Leaders

• 4–6 pages
• Key findings
• Priority actions for state and provincial governments and regulators

Partnership and Coordination

This project will be conducted in close collaboration with key state and provincial agencies and other wildfire and resilience stakeholders across the Western Interconnection. WIEB will identify project partners and subject matter experts over the winter, with anticipated contributors including state and provincial wildfire offices, academic researchers, insurance market analysts, fire protection agencies, and utility wildfire mitigation teams.

Students will engage with these partners through structured interviews, coordination meetings, and periodic briefings. These interactions will help ensure that the fellowship aligns with ongoing regional initiatives, leverages current scientific understanding, and reflects practical challenges facing Western communities. Regular check-ins with WIEB mentors will support project progress, provide technical guidance, and create opportunities for cross-sector knowledge sharing.

The collaborative structure of this project will allow students to develop a nuanced understanding of wildfire risk from multiple perspectives and contribute directly to regional conversations about wildfire mitigation strategies in the West.

Conclusion

This fellowship offers a unique opportunity to contribute to the growing body of work on community wildfire resilience in the Western Interconnection. As wildfire events increase in frequency and severity, the need for cross-sector strategies that complement utility mitigation efforts has never been greater.

By developing a clear framework for understanding community wildfire risk, documenting best practices, and identifying actionable policy mechanisms, the students’ work will help Western states and provinces better prepare for and reduce catastrophic wildfire impacts. The insights generated through this project will support state and provincial officials, regulators, utilities, and community leaders as they work to strengthen resilience and reduce residual risk that cannot be addressed through utility actions alone.

Students will gain valuable interdisciplinary experience spanning climate resilience, public policy, energy systems, and risk management. Their work will serve as a practical resource for stakeholders across the West and help inform future regional coordination on wildfire mitigation.

Ultimately, this work advances a critical conversation for the electricity sector: shifting from an unrealistic expectation of utilities mitigating all wildfire risks toward a collaborative model where community resilience strategies reduce exposure and liability across the entire ecosystem. By equipping policymakers and regulators with actionable frameworks, the fellowship will help ensure that energy reliability and wildfire resilience are pursued together, rather than in isolation.

Work Environment

Although WIEB has a primarily remote workforce with employees spread out throughout the West, this fellowship will be a hybrid opportunity. Students should expect to spend the summer living in the Denver area and working hybrid between WIEB’s headquarters in downtown Denver, Colorado to engage with staff, and working remotely. As the selected fellow will be part of a collaborative, two-person Stanford team, both fellows will need to coordinate schedules to fully benefit from the team dynamics.