Paul Bodnar

Paul Bodnar served in the Obama administration as special assistant to the president and senior director for energy and climate change at the National Security Council. He was a key architect of the administration's international climate policies, including the U.S.-China presidential joint climate announcement of November 2014, the OECD agreement to limit public financing for coal-fired power plants, and the doubling of clean energy research and development budgets by 20 major countries through the Mission Innovation initiative. He also played a principal role in formulating U.S. strategy for the Paris Climate Conference. Mr. Bodnar previously served at the U.S. Department of State as lead negotiator for climate finance and counselor to the special envoy for climate change. At the State Department, he led the design and implementation of several pioneering finance initiatives, including the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance; the U.S.-Africa Clean Energy Finance Initiative; and the world’s first market-based approach to allocating concessional funding for climate mitigation (the World Bank’s Pilot Auction Facility). Earlier in his career, Mr. Bodnar worked as director for carbon finance at the $1.2 billion carbon fund managed by London-based Climate Change Capital. He was also cofounder and partner at Vertis Environmental Finance, now one of Europe’s leading environmental commodity brokerage firms. He holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. from Harvard University, both in political science.