Dr. Barbara Buchner is Executive Director of the widely renowned Climate Finance program at Climate Policy Initiative. Named one of the 20 most influential women in climate change, Barbara advises leaders on climate, energy, and land use investments around the world.
Barbara is 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. She directs the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance and (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 nearly a billion US dollars for sustainable development in developing countries in just three years. In addition, Barbara built and directed 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.
Barbara holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Graz and was a Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.