Barbara Buchner

Dr. Barbara Buchner is Global Managing Director of Climate Policy Initiative, and also the Executive Director of its widely renowned Climate Finance program. 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.

Buchner directs the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance (the Lab) and its sister programs in Brazil and India. 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 2 billion US dollars for sustainable development in developing countries in just five years.

She is also the lead author on CPI’s 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, Buchner built and directs the San Giorgio Group, which brings together key financial institutions actively engaged in green, low-emissions finance in collaboration with the World Bank Group, CLP (China Light & Power), and the OECD.

Buchner regularly speaks at high-profile events as an expert in climate policy and climate finance, and has presented at Climate Week, at the Climate Finance Ministerial, World Future Energy Summit, IRENA Assembly Ministerial Meeting, One Planet Summit, GLOBE Capital, as part of the GCF Private Sector Facility, at COP side-events, and at the BNEF Future of Energy Summit, among many others. She is on the Advisory Board of the BCFN Foundation, the Evaluation Board of the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Energy Innovation Fund, and a member of the 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.

She was promoted from Director to Senior Director in 2013, to Executive Director in 2016, and to Global Managing Director in 2020. 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 out of San Francisco.