Patrick Hughes is Senior Director of Government Relations and Strategic Initiatives at the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA). Patrick is the principal lead for NEMA’s legislative and regulatory government relations work on grid modernization, high-performance buildings, energy storage systems, electric vehicles, and more. Patrick also leads NEMA’s Strategic Initiatives program—an idea incubator and accelerator that establishes short-term, innovative programs and projects to prepare NEMA members for emerging opportunities and technologies, including smart cities, Internet of Things, high-performance buildings, and the energy-water nexus.
Before joining NEMA, Patrick was a Senior Associate at the Energy Future Coalition, an initiative of the United Nations Foundation, where he focused on developing new methods to increase the energy efficiency of the commercial building stock in the United States, as well as advocating for policies that encourage the build-out of the electric grid to interconnect remote renewable energy resources. Prior to that, he worked in the office of Congresswoman Grace F. Napolitano (D-California). Patrick has a M.S. in Energy Policy and Climate Science from Johns Hopkins University and received B.A. degrees in Political Science and Spanish from the University of Rochester.