Who is Consumer Counsel Claire E. Coleman?
Claire E. Coleman is Connecticut’s Consumer Counsel. She represents people who use electricity, water, internet, and telecommunications services in the State. She appears before the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA), courts, and the State legislature on behalf of utility customers. She also works with Regional and Federal decision-making entities. Governor Ned Lamont chose Coleman in December 2021. The State Senate officially confirmed her in March 2022.
As Consumer Counsel, Claire leads the State’s Low-Income Energy & Water Advisory Board. She is also on the Executive Committee of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. Additionally, she’s a member of the Advisory Group for the National Energy Screening Project’s National Standard Practice Manual for Conducting Benefit-Cost Analyses of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs).
Coleman has served on:
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) Grid Planning for Building Electrification Task Force (ESIG)
- DOE Grid Modernization Lab Consortium (GMLC) Advancing Equity in Grid Planning and Operations Working Group
Before her current role, Coleman served as the Undersecretary for Legal Affairs in the Office of Policy and Management (OPM) for the State of Connecticut.
Before then, she worked as the Climate & Energy Attorney at Save the Sound. She also served as Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee. In that role, she did investigations and prepared Congress members for hearings on many government policy areas, including energy and environmental regulation.
Coleman also worked as a Litigation Associate at Wiggin and Dana LLP in New Haven and Sullivan and Cromwell LLP in New York. She has served as Law Clerk to the Honorable Ellen Bree Burns, United States District Judge for the District of Connecticut.
Claire is a graduate of Cornell University and the Northwestern University School of Law. Between college and law school, she served as a Team Leader for the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.