Chris Hansen
Senate District 31
Senator Chris Hansen represents Senate District 31 in the Colorado State Senate. He specializes in energy sector economics and data analytics, with 20+ years of experience in the global energy industry.
He has served as the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Vice Chair of the Joint Budget Committee, and he currently serves on the Senate State, Veterans, & Military Affairs Committee, Appropriations, and Finance Committees, as well as the Legislative Council.
During his tenure in the Colorado House of Representatives from 2017-2019, Hansen served on the Capital Development, House Transportation & Energy, Natural Resources, and Joint Budget Committees, and as Chair on the House Appropriations Committee.
Prior to his work as an elected official, he was Senior Director at IHS Markit where he led a global portfolio of energy products, events and partnerships. He is a co-creator of the OptGen analysis tool, IHS CERA’s unique approach for applying financial portfolio techniques to power generation. Before joining IHS Markit, Dr. Hansen was a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, where he analyzed electricity and gas sector reform in India and published several papers in professional journals on energy sector economics and policy analysis. Dr. Hansen holds a BSc in Nuclear Engineering from Kansas State University; a Graduate Diploma of Civil Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; a Master of Science in Engineering Systems from MIT; and a PhD in Economic Geography from Oxford University. In 2012, he was selected as a Marshall Memorial Fellow by the German Marshall Fund and in 2017 was selected as a Public Leadership Fellow at Harvard University by the Gates Family Foundation. In 2019, he was selected as one of fifteen leaders from across the country to join the NewDEAL (Developing Exceptional American Leaders), a selective national network of rising state and local elected officials; and in 2021, he was named the NewDEAL Ideas Challenge Winner (Rebuilding Jobs and the Economy Category). In 2020, Senator Hansen received The American Institute of Architects Legislator of the Year Award. Most recently, he was named the Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Legislator of the Year, as well as received a "Champion of a Free Press" award in 2022.
In addition to his current role in the state senate, he is also a Co-Founder of the Colorado Energy & Water Institute and the Colorado Science and Engineering Policy Fellowship.
