Paul Simons

Paul Simons has served as a Senior Fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute since 2020, teaching and mentoring students in the clean energy transition, while participating actively in the COP 26 process, and leading international teams to investigate the energy transition policies of Japan and Colombia. He has been actively engaged in global energy and climate change policymaking for more than two decades. From 2015 to 2020, he served as Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the leading global authority for energy and climate change analysis and policy development.  At the IEA, he led outreach activities with major emerging economies, including developing and implementing the Association process that drew countries including China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, Morocco, and Singapore into the IEA family.  For five years, Paul Simons coordinated IEA participation in the G 20 process, the leading global forum for multilateral cooperation, and edited all major IEA publications including the benchmark World Energy Outlook. He launched in-depth energy policy reviews of key IEA countries, and led IEA participation in the annual UN COP climate change process.

 

Previously, during a 30-year diplomatic career, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Chile, where he led efforts to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency investments, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy and Sanctions, where he coordinated U.S. energy diplomacy initiatives worldwide and chaired the IEA’s principal policy committee. Prior to his diplomatic service, he worked in international corporate banking. Paul Simons holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.B.A. in Finance from New York University.