Early in Bordoff's career, he was a consultant with McKinsey & Company. From 2000 to 2001, Bordoff served as an advisor to the Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat during the Clinton administration. He also clerked for the Hon. Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
In 2005, Bordoff joined the Brookings Institution as the Policy Director of the Hamilton Project, an organization within the Brookings Institution focused on economic research and policy founded by Peter Orszag and Robert Rubin.
Obama Administration
In 2009, Bordoff joined the Obama White House as the Associate Director for Climate Change at Council on Environmental Quality. He then worked as the Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change on the staff of the National Security Council until 2013. Bordoff was part of the coalition of White House advisers that pitched fossil fuel exports as a “win-win” to benefit consumers and enhance American power in the wake of industry glut from advancements in fracking.
Columbia University and the Center on Global Energy Policy
In 2013, Bordoff joined Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs as a professor of professional practice in international and public affairs. At Columbia, Bordoff founded the Center on Global Energy Policy in 2013. The think tank receives funding from oil and gas companies including BP, Occidental, Chevron, and ExxonMobil. Industry groups including Public Citizen alleged at the CGEP was the rebranded Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy, a now-defunct think tank housed at Columbia which, according to the Center for Public Integrity, “was launched in 2000 with $3 million from ExxonMobil and a foundation created by shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.” CEMTPP was headed by former Columbia professor and ExxonMobil counsel Hurst K. Groves until it was dissolved in 2014. In 2016, while working at Columbia and the CGEP, Bordoff expressed support for the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, telling SNL Gas Week that companies should “engage more with local communities to build public trust” and “there's always going to be some environmental opposition to energy infrastructure.”
National Petroleum Council
Since 2014, Bordoff has been a member of the National Petroleum Council, a federal advising committee that makes recommendations to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. Other members of the council include executives from ExxonMobil, Shell and BP America. In 2017, Energy SecretaryRick Perry requested the NPC to “examine any constraints to growing domestic oil and gas production caused by infrastructure limitations.” In the report, the National Petroleum Council predicted world energy demand will rise by 50% or 60% by 2030, and the demand “will be met by oil, gas, and coal in spite of the global movement towards renewables.” The NPC also found that “new pipelines and export infrastructure need to be developed, but overlapping and complex regulatory and permitting requirements can complicate and delay this development.”
2020 Presidential Election
Bordoff was one of 133 former national security officials to endorse Joe Biden's 2020 presidential candidacy in November 2019. Bordoff has also publicly praised Biden's environmental record, in a quote for the Washington Examiner, saying, “Vice President Biden has a strong environmental record and commitment to addressing climate change, and I expect he will focus on bold solutions that are also pragmatic and can actually result in achieving real and meaningful emissions reductions.”
