Cameron Hepburn

Cameron Hepburn is the former Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, the Battcock Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Oxford, and formerly a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also the Director of the Economics of Sustainability Programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School.

Education
Hepburn attended Camberwell Grammar School and received his undergraduate education in law and engineering at the University of Melbourne in Australia and his master's degree and doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

Career
Hepburn was an advisor to the former role of UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. He used to be part of the Academic Panel within the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change. Hepburn advised the UN and the OECD on environmental policy, energy and resources. He has also worked at Shell, Mallesons, and McKinsey & Company.

His business endeavours have included cofounding Climate Bridge, a transnational developer of clean energy projects, as well as Vivid Economics in 2006, and environment and energy consultancy firm. Then in 2013 he cofounded Aurora Energy Research. His role in cofounding these clean energy companies led in part to receiving the 2015 Advance Global Australian Award in Clean Energy. Vivid Economics was acquired by McKinsey & Company in 2021. He was the director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment the Director of the Economics of Sustainability Programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and Co-Director of the Net Zero Carbon Investment Initiative.

Research
Hepburn was a research fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science and his research interests include Environmental economics; Climate change economics; Environmental policy; Carbon markets and emissions trading; Sustainability; Behavioural economics" He has written publications in a range of disciplines,[1] including economics, public policy, law, engineering, philosophy, and biology. This research has been presented at TEDx in Vienna and in London.

Hepburn is an expert on economically-informed global environmental policy, especially government responses to climate change, in both academic journals and national news periodicals. This has included novel ideas to find “sensitive intervention points” in his role chairing the UK Committee on Climate Change Policy Advisory Group, and to reduce emissions influencing consumers away from climate change drivers, such as introducing a meat tax. His work on removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has led him to take on positions such as the Principal Investigator of the Greenhouse Gas Removal Hub. The institution is funded by the UK government as a part of its mission to reduce climate change.