CCC ThinkTank Team

James is also an advisor to the Climate Bonds Initiative, a trustee member of the UK Green Building Council and was a member of the Green Investment Bank Commission.

Prior to CCC, James was Counsel to Baker & McKenzie and was the founder and the head of their Climate Change and Clean Energy Practice. He has spent much of his legal career working on climate change matters, including negotiating the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol as an adviser to the Alliance of Small Island States. As a barrister he appeared in several of the leading cases in international and environmental law.

James is also a senior advisor to the Climate Group, chairman of China Dialogue, a member of the development board at the University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, and a member of the advisory board at the University of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute.

James has held academic positions at Cambridge, London, Bruges and Sydney and is currently affiliated with the Yale Centre for Environmental Law and Policy.

During his time at CCC he has worked on secondment as a senior civil servant at the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change, as Sherpa to the Green Investment Bank Commission and as a Policy Adviser on energy and climate change to the Conservative Party's Implementation Unit before the 2010 UK General Election. Prior to joining CCC, Ben was Research Director, Environment and Energy at Policy Exchange. He has also worked on environmental issues at the United Nations Environment Programme, Foreign & Commonwealth Office and in Parliament.

In addition to his role at CCC, Ben is a Programme Director and Research Fellow at the University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (SSEE), where he directs the Stranded Assets Programme. He also has a number of board and advisory appointments, including with the Green Alliance, Carbon Tracker Initiative, Green Economy Council and Capital Markets Climate Initiative, and is a regular peer reviewer, latterly for the IEA, OECD, IDB and CDKN. He is also a Contributing Author to the Green Growth Best Practice Initiative.

Ben read economics and specialised in development and China at London, Peking and Cambridge universities. He is a Member of the Senior Common Room at Brasenose College, Oxford and is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, Royal Geographical Society and LEAD.

Selected media experience includes: Associated Press, BBC News, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC World Service, Bloomberg, Business Week, CNBC, ENDS, International Herald Tribune, Investors Chronicle, ITV, Metro, Platts, Point Carbon, Press Association, Reuters, Sky News, The Economist, The Evening Standard, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The Independent, The New York Times, The Scotsman, The Telegraph and The Times.

Prior to CCC, Rupert spent 14 years in financial markets at JP Morgan in London, including as Head of European Government Securities Trading.

Rupert has an MSc in Environmental Technology from Imperial College, London and an MA in History from Trinity College, Cambridge.

In relation to CCC's research programme he focuses on financing mechanisms and financial instruments to support policy incentives. He is active in the discussions of the evolution of carbon finance and new flexible mechanisms, long-term finance and the Green Climate Fund under the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and Kyoto Protocol. Steven lead CCC's finance pieces for the EU Commission's "Global Sectoral Approaches" project with CCAP (Centre for Clean Air Policy), focusing on Mexico and China.  He is a board director of the Climate Markets and Investors Association, is part of the Executive Committee of the Project Developer Forum and serves as private sector observer to the Forestry Investment Programme under the Climate Investment Fund. He is involved in various initiatives aimed at facilitating the dialogue between business, decision makers and representatives from the international community on public private cooperation and financing instruments for climate change mitigation.

Prior to joining CCC, he worked on linkages between climate change regulation and development at ODI (Overseas Development Institute). As a qualified Mexican lawyer he has experience in environmental and planning law. He has provided legal advice to international and domestic companies with regard to compliance with environmental legislation and has negotiated with Mexican environmental authorities on behalf of clients. Steven holds a law degree from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and a Master's in Law from the London School of Economics.