Prof. Dr. Niklas Höhne is a founding partner of NewClimate Institute. He is also Special Professor “mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions” at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He follows the international climate negotiations since 1995. He led numerous studies related to the international climate change negotiations and national climate policies, for example several evaluations of countries’ performances in climate change and two publications in Nature. Niklas Höhne is lead and contributing author for the IPCC’s Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Assessment Report for the chapters on climate policies and international cooperation. He is also lead author of all UNEP Emissions Gap reports since 2010. He created the Climate Action Tracker that tracks commitments and actions of countries on climate change. Niklas Höhne holds a PhD from the University of Utrecht for his dissertation on “What is next after the Kyoto Protocol – Assessment of options for international climate policy post 2012″. His work on sharing the effort of reducing emissions between countries led to the IPCC statement that developed countries would need to reduce emissions by 25% to 40% in 2020 compared to 1990 to be compatible with limiting global temperature increase to 2°C. He participated as expert in hearings of the European and German parliament. Before co-founding NewClimate Institute, Niklas Höhne worked at Ecofys, a leading climate and energy consultancy (2001 to 2014), where he last was Director of Energy and Climate Policy. Previously, he was a staff member of the UNFCCC secretariat (1998 to 2001), where he supported the negotiations on various issues, including reporting under the Kyoto Protocol, projections of greenhouse gas emissions, fluorinated greenhouse gases and emissions from international transport.

Kai-Uwe Barani Schmidt builds on more than 20 years of international and senior level working experience including at the executive office of the secretary-general of the United Nations, at the secretariat to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, at the World Bank Institute, and independent senior advisory work.

As a senior member of the secretary-general’s Climate Change Support Team, Schmidt contributed to the coordination of the global climate change summit in 2009 and was part of the secretary-general’s team at UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen. In the lead-up to and during the landmark Paris climate change agreement in 2015, he led the team’s work on the global climate action agenda, initiated by the secretary-general at his 2014 summit, that mobilized thousands of companies, hundreds of cities, and sub-national authorities in collaboration with governments, the UN, IGOs, and NGOs.

Over the last few years, Schmidt has contributed to the launch of the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT). This initiative aims to build a best practice for guidance, tools, and capacity of governments and sub-national authorities to measure the effects of their policies with regard to climate change and the other UN SDGs and report progress publicly, thus fostering greater transparency, effectiveness, and trust, enabling innovative financing and ambition in climate policies worldwide.

Schmidt’s experience has covered public policy design, regulatory design, and implementation of global emissions trading and offset instruments. He has coordinated high-level events, navigating the interface of international negotiations with private sector, intergovernmental, and non-governmental organizations focusing on private sector engagement in climate change and development action at international, national, sub-national, city, and company/NGO levels. In addition, Schmidt’s experience has covered institutional build-up and management of both resources and people.

Jason leads Vivid Economics‘ work on climate change and private finance, supporting a variety of financial institutions. Jason brings deep expertise on climate related risks, and the interaction between policy, technology and consumer behaviour across major regions and sectors, including energy, mining, real estate and manufacturing. He has worked with asset owners and managers in assessing risk exposure of asset portfolios and their correlation across diversified asset holdings; with banks in conducting asset and company due diligence that integrated climate-related risks; with private equity funds and banks in assessing the investment opportunities from a low-carbon transition; and with insurance companies assessing market risks and opportunities associated with low-carbon policies and climate damages. He has spent over a decade leading scenario-based analysis of the low-carbon transition using and developing a variety of systems models. His prior experience includes Associate Director at the Carbon Trust and Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Co. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. from Yale.

Artur Runge-Metzger is the Director for Climate Strategy, Governance and Emissions from non-trading sectors, DG CLIMA, European Commission.

He took up his current position on 1 January 2016. The current directorate covers international and EU climate strategy and economic assessment and evaluation, EU domestic legislative initiatives related to households, land transport, waste, agriculture and forestry, carbon capture, use and storage, financial instruments for EU innovation, monitoring, reporting, and verification.

Since 1 September 2003, he was first Head of Unit, and since 2009 Director focussing on international and domestic climate strategy, international climate change negotiations, climate finance, land use and monitoring and reporting. During this time he was one of the EU lead negotiators, Vice-President of the UNFCCC Bureau in 2010-2012, and also co-chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) in 2013/14 preparing the Paris Agreement.

Before this, he spent two years as Head of Operations in the EC Delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo.

From the end of 1997 until 2001, he worked in DG Development and DG Environment in Brussels on a wide range of environmental issues, particularly climate change in developing countries.

He joined the European Commission in 1993, when he was first responsible for the bilateral co-operation covering agricultural policies, rural development and the environment in the EC Delegation in Zimbabwe in Harare.

After his University education, he started his professional career at the University of Göttingen, Germany in 1985. His main scientific and lecturing topics were natural resources economics and development economics, including extensive field research in rural West Africa.

He holds a doctoral degree in agricultural economics.

Mark Workman is a director for Foresight Transitions, he works with a team which provides strategy and decision support services across energy, environmental and technology sectors including Greenhouse Gas Removal. He has been working in the carbon removal space for a decade and is a co-founder of the Carbon Removal Centre which seeks an open, participatory and inclusive approach to exploring carbon removal establishment and scale up.

He is a Coastal Engineer (University of Southampton), Military (Queens Gurkha Engineers) and Business Leader (Medical and Security Consultancy), Environmental Economist, Academic (Imperial College London) and Strategist by training. He has undertaken military tours, led extreme and high-risk expeditions all over the world and run multi-million dollar business units.

As a visiting researcher at Imperial College London, Mark is developing specialisations around: resource systems, energy transitions, environmental and climate change, violent conflict and the processes of decision making under uncertainty.

Janos Pasztor (a Hungarian and a Swiss citizen) is Senior Fellow of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and is Executive Director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G).

He has four decades of work experience in the areas of energy, environment, climate change, and sustainable development. Before taking up his current assignment he was UN Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Change in New York under Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Earlier, he was Acting Executive Director for Conservation (2014), and Policy and Science Director (2012-2014), at WWF International. He directed the UNSG’s Climate Change Support Team (2008-2010) and later was Executive Secretary of the UNSG’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability (2010-2012). In 2007 he directed the Geneva-based UN Environment Management Group (EMG). During 1993-2006 he worked and over time held many responsibilities at the Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC), initially in Geneva and later in Bonn.

His other assignments included: the Secretariat of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit ’92); Stockholm Environment Institute; United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); Secretariat of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission); the Beijer Institute; and the World Council of Churches.

He has BSc and MSc degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).