Darmstadter has served on National Research Council bodies and has contributed to its studies. He also has served on a team that evaluated the performance of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Institute of Global Environmental Change. Darmstadter has been an adjunct faculty member of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, an editorial committee member of the Annual Review of Energy, and a contributing editor of Environment magazine.
 
Darmstadter has presented papers at numerous international conferences. In 1995, he gave a series of lectures in Argentina under the auspices of the U.S. Information Agency. More recently, he presented papers at a 1999 renewable energy workshop in Austria and at the August 2000 Greenhouse Gas Technology Conference in Australia.