Executive Board
Theme 1: Climate protection & transformation: Decarbonisation – Competitiveness – Quality of life
© TU Berlin WIP
Christian von Hirschhausen
Christian von Hirschhausen is Professor of Economics at the Workgroup for Economic and Infrastructure Policy (WIP) at Berlin Institute of Technology (TU Berlin), and Research Director at DIW Berlin (German Institute for Economic Research). He received a PhD in Industrial Economics from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris and was the Chair of Energy Economics at TU Dresden.
Von Hirschhausen focusses on the regulation and financing of infrastructure sectors, mainly energy, and is a regular advisor to industry and policymakers (e.g. World Bank, European Commission, European Investment Bank, several German Ministries). His research analyzes energy technologies, and is leading larger research projects on renewables, fossil fuels, and nuclear energy in Germany, Europe, and abroad.
© Klemens Krakow
Elmar Kriegler
Elmar Kriegler is Professor for Integrated Assessment of Climate Change at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Potsdam and Head of the Research Department "Transformation Pathways" at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). He is directing the integrated assessment of mitigation and sustainable development pathways at PIK. His core expertise is in integrated assessment modelling of climate change, scenario analysis and decision making under uncertainty.
Kriegler had a coordinating role in the development of the Shared-Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) in support of new scenarios for climate change research. He is also member of the scientific steering committee of the Integrated Assessment Modelling Consortium (IAMC). Kriegler has been a lead author in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WG III) and in the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C Warming and is currently serving as a lead author in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (WG III). He has published more than 80 articles in refereed journals and was named Highly Cited Researcher in 2018.
© MCC
Jan Christoph Minx
Jan Christoph Minx heads the MCC "Applied Sustainability Research" Working Group and is Professor of Climate Change and Public Policy at the Priestley International Centre for Climate (University of Leeds). He pursues an interdisciplinary research approach covering energy, climate change and sustainable development. His research focusses on four areas: Societal transformation processes and their governance, human well-being and sustainable development, climate change paths and atmospheric CO2 removal, and science-policy exchanges and the future of global environmental assessments. He is particularly interested in methods of evidence synthesis in order to reconcile the rapidly growing scientific literature for robust political decision-making.
Prior to his engagement at the MCC, Minx headed the Technical Support Unit of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). There he and his team coordinated the working group's contribution to the Fifth IPCC Assessment Report. He is currently a lead author of the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report.
© Matti Hillig
Arwen Colell
Arwen Colell joined the Policy Analysis Unit of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) in October 2019 and is part of the team supporting the Dialogue on the Economics of Climate Change. Her main interests are sustainable infrastructure solutions.
After working at the Environmental Policy Research Centre (FFU) in Berlin and in the Sustainability Strategy Unit of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, she became a Senior Manager at ubitricity, a Berlin-based startup designing infrastructure solutions connecting electric vehicles and renewable energies. She is co-founder of the energy cooperative BürgerEnergie Berlin.
She studied political science in Germany, Japan and the USA and specialized in the comparative analysis of energy and environmental policy. Her PhD thesis at the Bavarian School of Public Policy in Munich (HfP) examined social innovations in citizen-owned energy projects.
© Jonas Gulde
Ramona Gulde
Ramona Gulde coordinates scientific research projects of the Research Department "Transformation Pathways" at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). In addition to her work in the Dialogue on the Economics of Climate change, she is responsible for project management in the EU Horizon 2020 project NAVIGATE.
From 2012 to 2017, Ramona Gulde worked in consulting companies that are i.a. advising political decision-makers, international organizations and NGOs on their strategic decisions on projects and programs in the fields of renewable energies, energy efficiency and other issues of climate protection. A focus was the evaluation of programs and the optimization of political instruments.
She studied International Law at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, focusing on International Climate Change Law and has a Bachelor in European Studies from the University of Twente, Netherlands.
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© CoalExit
Pao-Yu Oei
Pao-Yu Oei is professor for Economics of Sustainable Energy System Transition at Europa Universität Flensburg (EUF), head of the 20-member research group CoalExit at EUF, TU Berlin and DIW Berlin as well as the corresponding CoalTransitions.org Research Hub examining the transition from fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources. He has been involved in numerous projects on the German and Global coal phase-out, worked for the German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU) and as managing editor of the Journal Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy (EEEP). He holds a Dipl. Ing. as industrial engineer and a Ph.D. in Economics from TU Berlin and is a guest researcher at the German Economic Research Institute (DIW Berlin).
Theme 2: Climate protection: Instruments and policies after COP21
© Anna Logue Fotografie
Achim Wambach
Achim Wambach has been President of the ZEW (Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research) since April 2016. He is a member of the Monopolies Commission since July 2014 and was elected chairman in March 2016. In September 2018 he was appointed Co-Chairman of the Commission Competition Law 4.0 of the German Federal Government. From 2015-2018 Achim Wambach was a member of the steering committee of the German National Platform for Electric Mobility (NPE) as well as of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Further Development of the Risk Structure Compensation Scheme. He is also a member of the Academic Advisory Board at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, acting as its chairman from 2012-2015.
Wambach obtained a PhD in Physics at the University of Oxford and a Master of Science in Economics at the London School of Economics. He completed his habilitation thesis in economics at the University of Munich. His fields of interest include market design and competition policy.
© ZEW
Martin Kesternich
Martin Kesternich is deputy head of the ZEW Research Department “Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management” and has been a Professor in economics, with a special focus on environmental and resource economics, at the University of Kassel since January 2019.
He studied economics at the University of Mannheim and the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires, before receiving his doctoral degree in economics from the University of Hamburg in 2015. Holding a scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Martin Kesternich was a visiting scholar at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
His research interests encompass experimental and empirical approaches in the fields of environmental and behavioural economics.
© Erich Dichiser.
Marc Frick
Marc Frick is academic assistant to the head of the Research Department “Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management” at ZEW. He studied philosophy at Heidelberg University, majoring in the history of economic thought and political philosophy. In his doctorate at he Chair of Modern Political Theory at Heidelberg University, he deals with different forms of exchange, in particular the comparison of market and gift exchanges. From 2015 to 2019, he worked together with a team led by Professor Malte Faber on a project of science communication which aimed to develop an approach for the digital communication of scientific findings on environmental and economic topics. He now contributes to the coordination of theme 2 of the Dialogue on the Economics of Climate Change.
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Theme 3: Dealing with climate risks
© Debora Tydecks-Zhou
Kati Krähnert
Kati Krähnert is a development economist. She currently heads, jointly with Christoph Gornott, the Working Group “Adaptation in Agricultural Systems” at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). She holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Humboldt University of Berlin (2010) and a MA in Social Anthropology and Economics from Free University of Berlin (2005).
Her research focusses on the economic impact of climate change on households in developing economies, using an applied micro-economic approach, in order to advise policy stakeholders. She also evaluates the effectiveness of policy measures designed to strengthen the resilience of households. Krähnert has broad experience collecting household-level data in developing countries, including Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Ghana, Rwanda, and Mozambique.
© Christine Geginat
Frank Wätzold
Frank Wätzold studied at the London School of Economics and the Freie Universität Berlin where he graduated as a Diplom-Volkswirt. After obtaining a PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin, Frank Wätzold worked as a senior scientist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and as a Professor for Land Economics at the University of Greifswald. Since 2010, he holds the chair of "Environmental Economics" at the Brandenburg University of Technology in Cottbus.
Key research areas include the evaluation of policy instruments for the conservation of biodiversity and the preservation of ecosystem services as well as the economic analysis of climate adaptation measures. Frank Wätzold received the UFZ research prize jointly with Karin Johst and Martin Drechsler in 2018 for his work in the field of ecological-economic modelling. He is active in policy advice and serves a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Biodiversity and Genetic Resources for the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
© D. Ayalew
Lemlem Habtemariam
Lemlem Habtemariam is a postdoc at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). She received her PhD from the Technical University of Munich at the chair of Agricultural Production and Resource Economics.
Her research focuses on analyzing the economic impacts of climate change, and the economic evaluation of adaptation measures in the context of low-income countries farming systems. Further fields of interest include evaluation of policy instruments such as agricultural insurance to increase the climate resilience and wellbeing of farmers. Habtemariam mainly uses household surveys and applies econometrics methods in her research.
© Lutz Philip Hecker
Lutz Philip Hecker
Lutz Philip Hecker is an environmental economist and a postdoc at the Department of Economics, in particular environmental economics at Brandenburg University of Technology in Cottbus (BTU). He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from the BTU Ph.D. programme „Environmental and Resource Management“, a MA in Economics from University of Mannheim and a MA from Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena in Philosophy, Economic sciences and Romance studies.
His research focuses on the economic analysis of environmental instruments in developing and industrialized countries. Within the Dialogue on the Economics of Climate Change he engages with the theme ‘Dealing with climate risks’.
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Theme 4: International climate policy
© ifo
Karen Pittel
Karen Pittel was appointed Professor of economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 2010 after her habilitation at ETH Zurich. She is the director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Resources of the Ifo Institute.
Pittel has been a member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) since 2016, was a member of the German Research Foundation's Committee on Future Earth from 2013 to 2018 and has been a member of the Bavarian Climate Council since 2015. In 2019 she was appointed to the steering committee of the science platform on the Climate Protection Plan 2050.
The research interests of Karen Pittel are in the areas of energy, climate and resource economics with a focus on the transformation of energy systems and the long-term effectiveness and efficiency of climate and energy policies.
© Romy Vinogradova
Waldemar Marz
Waldemar Marz is an environmental and resource economist and has been a postdoc at the ifo Institute’s Center for Energy, Climate and Resources since 2019. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich (2019), a diploma in Energy and Process Engineering from the Technical University of Munich (2011) and a B.Sc. in Economics from the LMU Munich (2013). In 2017 he was guest researcher at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
His research focuses mainly on the political economy of climate policy and the spatial and urban economic effects of environmental policy measures adopted in the mobility sector. He also examines the effects of climate policy measures on fossil resource as well as capital markets. In terms of methodology, his work focuses on applied theory, numerical methods and structural econometrics.
Cross-cutting theme: Financial markets, financial sector and climate finance
© Phototek
Ottmar Edenhofer
Ottmar Edenhofer is Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Professor for the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University Berlin as well as founding director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). Furthermore, he is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and of the National Academy of Science and Engineering acatech.
Edenhofer has published numerous articles in leading journals and authored various books. From 2008 to 2015 he served as Co-Chair of Working Group III of the IPCC, shaping the Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change Mitigation substantially, which has been considered a landmark report and provided the scientific basis for the Paris Agreement.
© PIK/Klemens Karkow
Kai Lessmann
Kai Lessmann is a senior researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, where he leads the research group “FutureLab Public Economics and Climate Finance” since 2019 and previously was the head of the research group “Policy Instruments Modeling” since 2009. He holds a diploma in Applied System Science from Osnabrück University and a doctorate degree from TU Berlin.
His research focusses on instruments and institutions to implement climate policy. Lessmann has explored incentive mechanisms of international climate agreements and cooperative climate policy, the optimal implementation of domestic climate policy in second best settings, and in integration with public finance and, more recently, the interaction of climate policy and the financial system. Lessmann has employed a broad toolbox of methods based on game theory, theoretical and numerical modelling, and environmental economics in particular. He has published in a wide range of economic and general interest journals and contributed to assessments of the IPCC and the IPSP.
© DIW Berlin / Barbara Dietel
Karsten Neuhoff
Karsten Neuhoff leads the "Climate Policy" Department at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and is Professor at Technical University Berlin. He holds a Master in Physics from Heidelberg University and a PhD in Economics from Cambridge University.
His research interests focus on the economics and financing of a low-carbon transformation in the power, industry and building sector. He investigates how policies and markets can be designed to achieve carbon neutrality. In research and advice projects for national governments, EU Commission and international organizations and as board member of the research network Climate Strategies he brings together multi-disciplinary teams and engages stakeholders to enhance quality, relevance, and uptake of the research. He published 60 journal articles and (co-)authored the books “Planetary Economics: Energy, Climate Change and the three domains of sustainable development” and “Climate Policy after Copenhagen - The Role of Carbon Pricing.”
© DIW Berlin / F.Schuh
Franziska Schütze
Franziska Schütze is a research associate in the Climate Policy Department at DIW Berlin since August 2019. From 2012 to 2019 she worked on various national and european research projects at the Global Climate Forum e.V. Her research focuses on the economic impacts of climate and energy policy and the role of the financial sector in energy system transformation. This includes the assessment of climate-related risks and opportunities as well as the evaluation of green fiscal policy and financial market regulation. From 2010 to 2012 she worked as an analyst for a venture capital fund for sustainable companies in the fields of renewable energy, e-mobility, and natural resources and green IT. She holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in International Economics and Business from Utrecht School of Economics, with stays at Lund University and Copenhagen Business School. From 2014 to 2018 she was treasurer of the Global Climate Forum e.V.
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