Dr. Stephen Hammer currently serves as an Advisor, focused on International Climate Policy and Strategy, with the World Bank’s Climate Change Group in Washington DC. In this role he serves as a key policy advisor to WBG senior management and leads the Bank’s climate finance-related engagement with the G7, G20, and UNFCCC. He represents the World Bank on numerous global commissions and working groups focused on climate finance, and was one of the key movers behind the creation of the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, a group which he continues to advise on strategic matters. In 2021 he chaired the global working group focused on the “Paris Alignment” of MDB lending portfolios.
Prior to his current role he served as Manager, Climate Policy for the World Bank Group, where he led an interdisciplinary team of 60+ scientists, economists, technical experts, and consultants focused on the mainstreaming of climate change in World Bank operations, frontier research on climate change and development topics, and the provision of climate-related advisory services to clients. Before Dr. Hammer joined the World Bank, he was a professor at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), where he taught courses on a variety of urban energy and climate policy topics. Prior to that, he taught at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he founded and directed the Urban Energy Program; at the Milano Graduate School of Urban Affairs; and at the Pratt Institute.
Dr. Hammer holds a PhD from the London School of Economics, an MPP from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a B.S. in Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning from the University of California at Davis.