Sam Fankhauser

Biography

Sam is Professor of Climate Economics and Policy at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and the School of Geography and the Environment.  He is also Research Director of Net Zero Climate, a university-wide initiative on  how to reach net zero carbon emissions.  Sam studies policy interventions to reduce carbon emissions, encourage the safe uptake of  carbon removal technologies and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Sam joined Oxford University and Reuben College in spring 2021 from the London School of Economics, where he had been director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment for 10 years.  He has also been a member of the Climate Change Committee, which advises the UK government on emissions targets, and a non-executive director of CDC Group (now British International Investment), the UK’s development finance institution.  He was an author of the second, third and fourth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

An environmental economist by background, Sam studied economics at the University of Berne (Switzerland), the London School of Economics and University College London. He then worked for over a decade at the Global Environment Facility, the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) before returning to academia in 2008.