Dr. Barbara Buchner is Global Managing Director of Climate Policy Initiative. Named one of the 20 most influential women in climate change and one of the 100 most influential people in climate policy, Barbara advises leaders on climate, energy, and land use investments around the world.
Barbara directs the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance (the Lab). The Lab’s public-private approach solicits, shapes, and tests cutting edge climate finance instruments that resolve financing barriers hindering alternative energy, adaptation, and land use projects. Instruments from the Lab have mobilized over USD 4 billion for sustainable development in developing economies.
She is also the lead author on the Global Landscape of Climate Finance, which has set the benchmark for climate finance tracking, and Climate Finance in 2013-14 and the USD 100 billion goal – a joint report with the OECD that played a seminal role in the lead up to the Paris Agreement. In addition, Barbara built and directs the San Giorgio Group, which brings together climate finance leaders to engage on critical issues that require collective effort to accelerate the transition to more sustainable, lower-emission economies.
Barbara regularly speaks at high-profile events as an expert in climate policy and climate finance. She has presented at the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact, the Climate Finance Ministerial, World Future Energy Summit, IRENA Assembly Ministerial Meeting, One Planet Summit, as part of the GCF Private Sector Facility, at COP side-events, multiple Climate Weeks, and at the BNEF Future of Energy Summit, among many others. She is a Professor in Practice for Sustainable Finance at the University of London SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance, a Program Director of the Climate Change and Energy Program at the Australian National University, on the Fast Infra Group Board of Directors, on the Advisory Board of the Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative, on the Mitigation Action Facility advisory committee, and a member of several influential groups and committees including the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, the group of experts of the G20 Task Force on a Global Mobilization against Climate Change, an Independent High Level Expert Group of the G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group, the Finance Sector Expert Group for the UNFCCC’s Race to Zero and Race to Resilience, the Expert Group on Climate and SDG Synergies, convened jointly by the UNDESA and the UNFCCC, the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Adaptation Gap Report steering committee, the Advisory Board of Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority’s (FRA) Regional Center for Sustainable Finance (RCSF), and One Planet Lab, created by President Macron to identify innovative solutions and actions, create new coalitions, and make specific recommendations on global challenges linked to climate change.
Previously Barbara served as a Senior Energy and Environment Analyst at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and as a Senior Researcher at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) where she was involved in a number of activities related to FEEM’s Climate Change Policy and Modelling Unit in the field of environmental economics. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Graz and was a Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Originally from Austria, Barbara is based in San Francisco.
