Rebecca O'Neil
Rebecca O'Neil
Biography
Ms. Rebecca O’Neil is an advisor for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. In her career at the Laboratory, she has served as the lab relationship manager for the US DOE EERE Renewable Energy portfolio, served a rotation into the U.S. Department of Energy's Water Power Technologies Office to develop a hydropower-grid research program, and led the regulatory area for energy storage. Her research interests relate to energy justice, energy storage, community-scale innovation, sustainable hydropower and marine energy development.
She joined PNNL in 2015 from the Oregon Department of Energy, where she represented the agency on water power development, oversaw the state renewable portfolio standard, and ran a multi-million-dollar portfolio of federal grants ranging from renewable energy feasibility studies, agricultural efficiency measures, energy assurance, and woodstove replacement programs. Before her state service, she managed the multifamily energy efficiency program for the Energy Trust of Oregon, administering incentives to drive upgrades in multifamily dwellings. For years, Rebecca represented a coalition of river conservation and recreation organizations in federal hydropower dam licensing, becoming a recognized and published expert in the regulatory process and the relationship between hydropower operations and environmental effects. She serves on multiple organizational boards and advisory groups related to renewable energy.
Unrelated to energy, Rebecca has served as an AmeriCorps-VISTA teaching childhood literacy in rural Kentucky. As a Wagoner Scholar, she conducted Honors work in Cape Town, South Africa, producing a thesis on the role of literacy in manumission. She is a civilian advisory graduate of the National Security Seminar at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She earned a B.A. from Rice University in Houston.