From 2007-2014, he held a variety of roles in the U.S. Congress, most recently serving as the senior policy advisor to Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. He supported many notable legislative efforts, including serving as one of the lead authors of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that passed the House in 2009. He also served on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming as well as the House Natural Resources Committee.

Phillips was a business and economic development volunteer with the Peace Corps in Mongolia. He received a bachelor’s degree from the Milwaukee School of Engineering and a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Recent work by Phillips includes:

• Blog: Climate Finance Myth Busting
• Op-ed: JETPs and other ways to shift climate finance toward low-income countries
• Policy Brief: Can Time-of-Use Tariffs Increase the Financial Viability of Mini-Grids?
• Policy Brief: Climate Finance for Just Transitions
• Policy Brief: Barriers and Policy Solutions for Off-Grid Energy Development
• In the news: How to Transition to a Clean Energy Future
• Policy Brief: Improving Rural Livelihoods, Energy Access, and Resilience Where It’s Needed Most: The Case for Solar Mini-Grid Irrigation in Ethiopia
• Working Paper: Barriers to off-grid energy development: Evidence from a comparative survey of private sector energy service providers in East Africa
• Report: Catalysing Climate Finance for Low-Carbon Agriculture Enterprises
• Report: COVID-19 and Distributed Renewables: How the Crisis Has Affected the Sector and What It Means for People, the Planet, and the Future of Energy Access
• Blog: How finance, ag-tech and more can speed the energy transition – 4 experts explain
• Blog: Climate finance meets low-carbon agtech
• Blog: Net Zero may be coming. But America is a fossil fuel bank to the developing world today.
• Policy Brief: Modernizing Energy Access Finance, Part 2—Balancing Competition and Subsidy: Assessing Mini-Grid Incentive Programs in sub-Saharan Africa
• Blog: Lessons from the proliferating mini-grid incentive programs in Africa
• Report: Business model innovations for utility and mini-grid integration: Insights from the Utilities 2.0 initiative in Uganda
• Policy Brief: Lessons for Modernizing Energy Access Finance, Part 1: What the Electrification Experiences of Seven Countries Tell Us about the Future of Connection Costs, Subsidies, and Integrated Planning
• Blog: An off-grid energy future requires learning from the past
• Report: The Energy Access Dividend: Accelerating off-grid solutions and bolstering reliability can generate big gains in Honduras and Haiti
• Report: The Energy Access Dividend in Honduras and Haiti
• In the News: The Powerlessness of Nigeria’s Tech Startups
• Publication: New Data and Technologies are Transforming Energy Access – Public Policy Must Catch Up
• Policy Brief: Profits and Productivity: Stimulating Electricity Demand in Low-Income Settings
• Publication: Research Agenda on Electricity Access and Productive Use
• Publication: The True Cost of Solar Tariffs in East Africa
• Publication: Harnessing the Power of Data: Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative Conference
• Publication: Can a Modernized U.S. Development Finance Institution Help Close the Energy Financing Gap?
• Essay: Seven Takeaways from the Energy Access Launch
• Op-ed: Opinion: Solar tariffs to affect world’s poorest