NETL Taps WVU's Brian Anderson As New Leader

The U.S. Department of Energy named a new director of the agency’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. The new director, Brian Anderson, comes from West Virginia University’s Energy Institute.

Anderson founded and directed the Energy Institute at WVU. He’s been with the university since 2006. He was heavily involved in negotiating the $83 billion investment from China Energy, announced a year ago this week. He’s been a major advocate for turning the region into a natural gas storage hub, potentially attracting petrochemical and plastics industries to the Ohio Valley.

Anderson will now direct the only national lab that the Department of Energy fully owns, with offices in West Virginia, Oregon and Pennsylvania. The lab is focused on researching a variety of energy-related subjects, such as carbon capture and sequestration, coal, oil and gas technologies, and rare earth elements.

“I am honored and humbled at the opportunity to serve as the director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory,” Anderson said in a press release from NETL. “The work that is being conducted at NETL is critical to advancing technologies that will transform the use and production of our nation’s vast coal, natural gas, and oil resources to protect our environment and enhance our nation’s energy security. I look forward to working with the talented and dedicated team at NETL to continue the lab’s efforts as the gold standard in advancing energy research and development.”

Anderson was born and raised in West Virginia, studied chemical engineering at WVU and went on to get master’s and doctorate degrees in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.