International environmental lawyer, entrepreneur, and systems architect building the private sector's on-ramp to solving climate change.
Her work rests on a single conviction: the economic system is not structurally aligned with the laws of physics and the living systems it depends on... and climate change is the predictable result.
She builds the legal, commercial, and institutional structures that determine whether serious climate work stays marginal... or gets built.
Founder & CEO, Facet Power Climate Systems
"One of the clearest thinkers on climate."Mat Yarger · Demia
Precedent-setting in law. Field-defining in industry. Most of it did not exist until she built it.
Building the legal pathways, commercial structures, industry frameworks, and capital architecture needed to reconnect economic behavior with ecological reality. Across more than three decades, that work has moved through four distinct arenas.
Amy's environmental ethic was formed long before law school... in forests, on reefs, along lakeshores, and in landscapes where the fragility and interdependence of living systems could be seen firsthand. From childhood on a rural farm to rehabilitating orangutans orphaned by deforestation in Borneo, to mapping reefs in Belize, counting hippos in Kenya, and discovering new species on the Amazon, these early experiences grounded a lifelong conviction: climate and environmental problems cannot be understood or solved in fragments.
Naturalist expedition, 1,000 miles upriver
Observing biodiversity, ecological, and climate complexity firsthand.
Orphaned juvenile orangutan rehabilitation
Field research with Dr. Biruté Galdikas amid active deforestation.
Ecological assessment
Hippo, flamingo, and lesser fauna and flora; assessing the impact of industrial growth on lake ecology and the local Maasai community.
CEDAM International Reef Mapping Project
Reef mapping, fish counts, and underwater biodiversity photography for conservation... before conservation had a carbon price.
AMK · Borneo 1992
AMK · Borneo 1992
AMK · Borneo 1992AMK · Borneo 1992
Amy built her legal career in places where the map was thin: cross-border disputes, novel climate tech, first-of-their-kind regulatory pathways and institutional failures with real consequences on the ground.
She worked on global environmental governance before the vocabulary around it had fully formed.
At the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of International Environmental Policy, she laid foundations of global climate governance, developing U.S. positions on emerging international environmental issues for United Nations bodies, a framework that would evolve into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
She fought for Global South communities carrying environmental harm tied to development finance.
At the Center for International Environmental Law, she worked on claims brought through the World Bank Inspection Panel at the intersection of environmental accountability, institutional power, and multilateral finance.
She took on the toxic legacy of U.S. military withdrawal in the Panama Canal Zone.
Advising the Republic of Panama on claims concerning contamination and environmental liability after transfer of the Canal Zone.
She navigated environmental law in international waters where there was no clear precedent to follow.
In a sovereign-state undersea gas pipeline matter, she advised on environmental issues tied to transboundary marine infrastructure in a legally unsettled setting.
She secured a first-of-its-kind federal pathway for infrastructure that did not fit inherited regulatory categories.
Amy helped obtain a novel Clean Air Act classification for a waste-to-energy facility where no prior regulatory template existed.
She built permitting pathways for infrastructure agencies had never seen before.
She guided first-of-their-kind recycling and organics facilities through complex review spanning air, water, wetlands, endangered species, and historic preservation.
She worked the legal afterlife of industrial systems that had been offloading risk for decades.
In CERCLA and RCRA matters, she handled liability and legacy-site risk at complex energy facilities.
Hazardous waste matters across borders.
Anti-personnel landmines... legal analysis and remediation duties.
Nuclear weapons... questions at the edge of humanitarian and environmental law.
Municipal Art Society of New York v. Trump World Tower.
Land use · Historical preservation · Community sovereignty
Municipal challenges to Trump golf course development, Westchester, New York.
Land use · Environmental rights · Local sovereignty
A constitutional challenge to New York voting law.
Constitutional
Amy's work in climate commercialization has centered on a recurring market failure. Much of it has focused on solutions that sit outside the center of policy support and investor attention: biobased, circular, and waste-to-value systems... where the answer has been to build the missing scaffolding: diversified revenue models, co-product strategies, standards, policy pathways, and the investment logic that makes projects more resilient and more legible to capital. Rules, categories, standards, business models, and structures. The end-to-end system.
Built the thing itself.
Founded a first-of-its-kind integrated organics-recycling platform using high-solids anaerobic digestion and in-vessel composting to convert food waste into biogas, compost, and usable heat for co-located greenhouses. Led siting, permitting, regulatory strategy, public outreach, utility interconnection, and cross-border technology translation. Secured local permits in six weeks. Helped obtain two U.S. patents.
Built the American Biogas Council.
From inception to the leading U.S. biogas trade association: 20 companies to 330. She built its federal policy program from the ground up, shaped industry engagement with the White House, EPA, USDA, and DOE, and led the multi-year stakeholder effort that produced the first U.S. digestate standard and certification framework.
Built the U.S. Biochar Coalition.
She saw an industry that could be far more than it was, and moved to build the trajectory it needed. She stood up the national trade association for biochar systems and built the policy and market architecture for biochar as both industrial material and carbon-removal pathway... before it had a carbon price or institutional investment.
One input. Many revenue lanes.
Led commercialization strategy for a thermal-conversion technology platform... developing circular business models and go-to-market strategy for converting organic, municipal, plastic, and other waste streams into renewable electricity, bio-hydrogen, engineered biocarbon, sustainable chemicals, and carbon-removal value.
Civic engagement isn't separate from climate. It's the same fight.
In 2018, Gen Z became the largest voting bloc in America. They cared about climate. They marched for it. But that energy wasn't reaching the ballot... decades of disengagement had left a generation feeling their vote wouldn't matter. Amy saw what everyone was missing: turn that political power on, and you usher in a fresh wave of climate action at the ballot box. As COO of a social-impact media company, she flipped the conventional voter-turnout model. Youth know how to reach youth. So instead of registering young people through antiquated turnout playbooks, she let them lead... in their language, their media, their cultural spaces. She built the organization and its partnerships... School of Rock, Patagonia, TurboVote, Voters Not Politicians... and launched youth-led registration drives, pop-up civic events, digital tools, and an anti-gerrymandering campaign behind Michigan's winning ballot initiative.
Where the lessons assembled.
Built from lessons across organics, bioenergy, engineered biocarbons, and circular infrastructure, Facet Power was Amy's answer to a practical commercialization problem: how to turn high-impact distributed climate action into structures capable of attracting serious capital. It focused on designing climate projects that could stack value, improve execution, and perform better than fragmented conventional models... and became the foundation for Facet Power Climate Systems.
Facet Power evolved into Facet Power Climate Systems when Amy recognized that the barriers to climate deployment could not be solved at the project level alone. The system had to be built end to end... from local project origination and technical design to investor interface, commercialization, governance, and long-term value architecture.
The next big climate breakthrough is not technology. It is alignment.™
Its premise is simple: when climate systems are designed correctly, investor performance, local participation, ecological integrity, and execution quality should strengthen one another rather than compete. Each project is structured around four co-equal equity stakeholders.
This is not a symbolic overlay... it is a performance design that aligns accountability, ownership, and long-term value across the system. The architecture now extends beyond a single platform: PRISM OS, the Aperture Investor Terminal, Terra Mater Labs™, and Resonance Corps™... components built to close the operating, investment, innovation, and execution gaps that keep slowing real-world climate deployment.
Rather than wait for fragmented public systems or incomplete market structures to catch up, Amy began building the private-sector businesses and organizational tools needed to move climate action forward now.
Amy's writing traces the same arc as her career: environmental systems, international law, market design, and the institutional scaffolding required to make emerging sectors real.
Multilateral Lending Activities
Co-authored with David Hunter for the Yearbook of International Environmental Law, Vols. 5 & 6... the field's definitive annual survey of how development-bank lending affects the environments of the world's poorest communities.
Cited in Treatise on Environmental Law, §13.03 — Kyoto Protocol
The leading U.S. environmental-law treatise cited her by name in its section on the Kyoto Protocol. Frank P. Grad, 6 Treatise on Environmental Law.
Response to Sub-Critical Cosmic Impacts
On how the international community and the United Nations would respond to a sub-critical near-Earth-object impact... the humanitarian, legal, and recovery frameworks for a disaster with no precedent. Researched and drafted in part by Amy McCrae. Gerrard & Remo, 52 J.B.I.S. 115.
ABC Digestate Standard Testing & Certification Program
The first certification program for biogas digestate... the document that turned an industry co-product into a commercial asset. With Norma McDonald.
Gaining NAICS Status for Composting (3-part series)
The policy scaffolding that made a sector legible to regulators, investors, and markets. With Andrew C. Kessler.
Food-Waste Recycling Faces Hiccups ↗
Quoted on the gap between states mandating composting and the infrastructure needed to turn food waste into fertilizer or electricity. By Ben Leubsdorf.
Capitalizing On Digester Coproducts ↗
Quoted as cofounder of Turning Earth and cochair of the American Biogas Council's AD Coproduct Working Group, on building revenue from every input and every output of anaerobic digestion. By Bob Joblin.
Food Waste Infrastructure In Disposal Ban States ↗
Quoted on how renewable-energy policy and power-purchase rules disadvantage anaerobic digestion. Carol Adaire Jones, Part II.
"Quarterly reporting isn't a real economic cycle. Nature doesn't operate that way. And neither do resilient businesses."Amy McCrae Kessler · The Future of Trust, 2026
A curated gallery of fieldwork, platform development, project activity, public appearances, and footage from the ground. Coming soon.
Climate will be solved locally. Or not at all.™
International Environmental Lawyer · Entrepreneur · Systems Builder
Founder & CEO, Facet Power Climate Systems
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