Executive Director
Jennifer Layke is the Executive Director of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. She is a global energy expert with over 30 years of experience delivering innovation and action to advance clean affordable energy solutions. Jennifer has designed private sector energy efficiency and sustainability programs, corporate partnerships to scale clean energy technology, and driving capacity building and energy policy analysis in the United States and around the world.
Jennifer focuses on the market experience for consumers, and how smarter energy use can unlock emissions reductions, improve air quality, and drive sustainable economic opportunity. Jennifer works across sectors - with governments, businesses, and utilities - to adopt energy measures that deliver real, scalable impact for all people.
Jennifer has championed energy efficiency as a cornerstone of climate action and economic development throughout her career. She directed large-scale initiatives that advance building efficiency, industrial decarbonization, and urban energy planning. At Johnson Controls, Jennifer launched the Institute for Building Efficiency, bringing a practitioners’ perspective to accelerate action on energy efficiency and high-performance buildings. This partnership included recruiting and supporting over 50 cities in the U.N.’s Sustainable Energy for All “Building Efficiency Accelerator” which helped cities around the world implement energy efficiency policies and projects.
From 2016-2025, Jennifer was the global director of the Energy Program at World Resources Institute (WRI). In that role, Jennifer worked in six countries on innovative strategies and partnerships to accelerate the shift to clean, abundant, affordable, and reliable energy.
Earlier in her career, Jennifer co-founded and directed WRI’s Green Power Market Development Group, pioneering corporate renewable energy purchasing and demonstrating corporate models for private sector renewable energy action. Her early work on Montreal Protocol implementation for ozone protection included program work for the U.S. EPA and the World Bank.
Jennifer holds a double MBA and MS in Natural Resource Policy from the University of Michigan and an AB in Political Studies/Asian Studies from Pitzer College in Claremont CA. She held a Watson Fellowship in 1990-91. She has been active in several Boards and in 2025 stepped down as Chair of the World Green Building Council Board of Directors.