CPI

CPI San Francisco is the headquarters for Climate Policy Initiative and home to operations and research staff. Our Executive Director, Thomas C. Heller, works primarily out of the San Francisco office along with other key staff including David Nelson, our Senior Director of Research and Programs, and Kath Rowley, our San Francisco Office Director. The work at CPI San Francisco primarily focuses on North America and on topics such as clean technology and renewable energy policies, energy efficiency, and innovation, among others. The office is also participating in several cross-regional CPI studies.

In China, CPI collaborates closely with the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Dr. Ye Qi, Professor of Environmental Policy and Management and Director of the Public Policy Institute at Tsinghua, is the CPI office director and leads a team of graduates and students of the University to analyze the state of low-carbon development in China and the effectiveness of regulatory and financing policies on such development.

CPI Berlin is co-located with the German Institute for Economic Research, DIW Berlin, and its staff joins with other cutting-edge researchers in producing quality climate policy analysis. Led by Karsten Neuhoff, Research Director for Climate Policy Impact and Industry Response at DIW Berlin, the CPI Berlin office targets carbon policy in Northern Europe and Russia with a focus on carbon pricing, energy subsidies, energy efficiency, power market design, and other topics.

The Rio de Janeiro office collaborates closely with the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio (PUC-Rio) and is led by Juliano Assunção, who is on the faculty of PUC-Rio, where he focuses on development economics.  Assunção is also a member of the Consortium on Financial Systems and Poverty and a consultant for a Brazilian asset management firm and other institutions (such as the Ministry of Finance and World Bank). CPI Rio’s research focuses on forestry and agriculture, finance, and cap and trade systems, among other topics.

In Venice, CPI partners with the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), an independent research organization focused on the field of sustainable development, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. The research team there is led by Barbara Buchner, who previously served as a Senior Energy and Environment Analyst at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and at FEEM in Venice. In Venice, CPI work focuses on Southern Europe, the Maghreb, and the Gulf, as well as climate finance. For its Climate Finance Project, CPI Venice also convenes private and public experts in international climate finance.