Dr. Ursula Fuentes

Dr. Ursula Fuentes Hutfilter, based in Perth, Western Australia, is presently working as a Senior Climate Policy Adviser at Climate Analytics Australia. She focuses on the development of climate policy and energy transformation strategies in the Asia-Pacific Region, and contributes to work on the Climate Action Tracker. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at Murdoch University, Western Australia, leading a project under the Australian-German Energy Transition Research Hub.

From 2013 until January 2017 she was Head of Unit for Strategic Aspects of Climate Policy and the National Climate Plan at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Germany, where she has been responsible for general and strategic aspects of climate policy, as well as for the development of the German domestic climate plans and programmes at national level, covering all sectors: energy, buildings, transport, industry, agriculture, and forestry. Previously she was in charge of managing, building up and developing the German National Climate Initiative, a funding programme for innovative climate technologies and projects for local communities, small-scale businesses and consumers.

From 2003 to 2010, she held positions on International Climate Policy of the Federal Environment Ministry as Head of German Delegation to the IPCC (Fourth Assessment Report Cycle, Initiative on Special Report on Renewable Energy) and as Issue Leader for the EU Negotiation Team to the UNFCCC, focussing on mitigation, forestry (REDD/LULUCF), shared vision/ultimate objective, scientific and strategic aspects.

She held positions as research analyst for energy and climate policy for the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), for the Federal Parliament, and as project manager at RIVM in the Netherlands for the Science Policy Dialogue Project on Longterm Options for the Climate Regime.

Education: PhD in Atmospheric Physics (1998), Degree in Physics from Ludwig Maximilians Universität München.