Dimitri Zenghelis

International Advisor in Economy, Sustainability and Climate Change

Helping us to explore how we transition to a resource efficient, low carbon society, while successfully managing the changing landscape of opportunity and risk associated with the coming industrial revolution.

Biography

Dimitri Zenghelis is Special Advisor for the Wealth Economy Project, at the Bennett Institute, University of Cambridge, which he previously co-founded and led, and is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics. He is Chair of the Responsible Wealth Committee at Capital Generation Partners and is a Senior Associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

He was until recently Head of Policy at the Grantham Research Institute at the LSE and Acting Chief Economist for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. Previously, he headed the Stern Review Team at the Office of Climate Change, London, and was a lead author on the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, commissioned by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown. He was also Senior Economic Advisor to Cisco’s long-term innovation group and an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House.

Before working on climate change, Dimitri was Head of Economic Forecasting at HM Treasury providing regular briefings to the Chancellor Gordon Brown and Prime Minister Tony Blair. He was also Head of the EMU Analysis Branch. This informed and administered an assessment of the Five Economic Tests, reviewing progress of the single currency in the euro area.

He advises governments, financial institutions and international organisations (including the UN, World Bank and regional development banks) on macroeconomics, sustainable growth, climate change and innovation. He currently advises the Mayor of London and the UK Committee on Climate Change and was a Coordinating Lead Author for the UN Global Environment Outlook, GEO-6. Dimitri sits on numerous advisory boards including the Oxford Sustainable Finance Programme and the Post-Carbon Transition programme at Oxford University.

Topics

Climate and Sustainability

  • Why the science of climate change makes transitioning to net zero inevitable.
  • Can we be green and grow? Is sustainability and the net zero transition a threat to growth or a driver?
  • How to model structural change and technology tipping points?
  • What is the role of social norms and social expectations in driving policy, investment and lowering the costs of decarbonisation?

Innovation and Structural Transition

  • Understanding the changing economic, technology and policy landscape
  • Understand the process of rapid structural change and the drivers of systemic innovation, including looking out for and recognising the fast-growing opportunities.
  • Do Moore’s law and Writes law apply to clean technologies?

Business Recommendations

  • What the low-carbon transition means for portfolio theory and why diversification in a path-dependent world is not always beneficial
  • Managing the transition and profiting from the changing landscape of risk and opportunity in a resource-efficient, low-carbon and digital world.
  • Beyond carbon disclosure: how to build climate and transition into business risk-management and hedging strategies.
  • Exploring leadership values, thinking and practice required to deliver change and overcome barriers (by re-evaluating assertions like “this is just the way we have always done things”)

The Geopolitics of Change

  • Can we afford to invest in a clean transition? What does macroeconomics and the global market for saving and investment tell us?
  • Will new geopolitical alliances induce more active economic strategies to support investment? What will it mean for global productivity and sustainability?
  • Will the post-Ukraine energy crunch slow or accelerate the low carbon transition?

The Role of Economics and Ethical Framework for Assessing Climate Risk

  • How economic modelling has failed to inform the climate change debate and what can be done about it?
  • The pros/cons of using economics to make difficult long-term decisions.
  • How do you value climate risk through time and across geographical space?
  • Options for inter-temporal appraisal and discounting for non-marginal decision-making under uncertainty.

Policy Recommendations

  • Practical steps that can be taken by investors and government to bring emissions down.
  • Moving beyond carbon pricing (shadow and explicit) towards coherent and complementary forward-looking policy frameworks.
  • Why is opportunity and self interest proving to be a better driver of collaboration and urgent action than fear and moral suasion?
  • What are the barriers to change and how can economic resistance and inertia be overcome when seeking to transition an organisation to a low-carbon resource-efficient future?

Beyond GDP

  • Bringing climate and nature into the National Accounts. How to understand the limitations of, and move beyond, GDP as a statistic.
  • Ethical frameworks and metrics for assessing climate risks including methods for discounting non-marginal and highly uncertain future outcomes.
  • How do we measure social capital, the glue that holds society together, is it being depleted and why does this matter?

Masterclasses

You may want to go deeper with your audience. Masterclasses can be tailored and developed to suit your audience needs, be it a 90-minute Masterclass, a half-day or full-day workshop or a full online or face-to-face programme. Please contact one of our expert team to discuss.

Securing a Clean Transition
Drawing on his experience as an academic advising government, business and multilateral organisations, Dimitri Zenghelis challenges audiences from all backgrounds to see a clean technological, behavioural and institutional revolution as an opportunity rather than a risk.

Videos

Resources

Books
Podcasts

Testimonials

“Thanks Dimitri for attending our session, your knowledge is unparalleled. Based on audience feedback on our poll, the audience found it extremely engaging and the information that you gave was extremely insightful. The dynamic between you and our host set the tone and we look forward to working with you again.”

“Dimitri is an economist’s economist – his contributions to technical debates at the highest level continue to push the research frontier. But by distilling and communicating the salient, actionable lessons from even the most complex economic issues, he is also the layperson’s economist. His unique blend of technical rigour and disarming, accessible style makes him an engaging speaker, much in demand by academic, policy, business, and NGO audiences around the world. ” Dr Matthew Agarwala, Project Leader: The Wealth Economy. Bennett Institute for Public Policy, Cambridge

“The best lecture I have ever heard, in my life! And I’ve heard a lot of lectures” Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy

 

“Dimitri is a compelling speaker. He has a forensic mind, elegantly cutting through complex economic arguments to communicate clearly to a wide audience the economics of change and sustainability.” Professor Diane Coyle CBE

“The world must listen to Dimitri. And they will enjoy it as well as being enlightened” Professor Lord Nicholas Stern

    About You

    About Your Event