EU Climate Advisory Board chair elected

The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, nominated in March this year, has elected Ottmar Edenhofer as the Board’s first chairperson at a meeting on 17 May in Copenhagen. Ottmar Edenhofer is professor of the Climate Economics and Public Policy at the Technische Universität in Berlin, Germany, Director and Chief Economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change.

From 2008 to 2015, Ottmar Edenhofer served as Co-Chair of Working Group III of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and was the group’s lead author contributing to summaries of the IPCC’s 5th assessment report (AR5) and the special report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation.

In 2020, the Web of Science citation index ranked Ottmar Edenhofer in the top 1% of the most cited scientists in the world in the interdisciplinary science category. During the past three years, the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has placed Ottmar Edenhofer in the 20 most influential economists in Germany. Professor Edenhofer advises and collaborates in many boards and committees nationally as well as on European and international level.

See short bios of all the members of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change here.

Background

The European Climate Law, adopted in June 2021, sets out a binding objective of climate neutrality in the EU by 2050 in pursuit of the long-term temperature goal set out in the Paris Agreement. It also provides a framework for achieving progress in pursuit of the global adaptation goal established in the Paris Agreement.

To support the achievement of these objectives the European Climate Law also provides for the establishment of a European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change. The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change is established through an amendment of the founding regulation of the EEA.

The members of the Advisory Board are appointed in a personal capacity for a term of four years, renewable once. They will give their positions completely independently of the Member States and the EU institutions. No more than two members of the Advisory Board can hold the nationality of the same Member State.