Principal Climate Policy Officer, IFC, Climate Change Group
The World Bank
Tom Kerr leads climate finance and policy strategy and external engagement at the International Finance Corporation and World Bank Group. This involves serving as Cluster Lead in a cross-World Bank/IFC Climate Policy & Finance Team, coaching staff to advance public and finance and policy solutions and services for private sector and government clients. Mr. Kerr oversees the World Bank Group’s development of harmonized greenhouse gas accounting and climate finance tracking methodologies. He also is responsible for private sector adaptation investment and climate risk screening; national clean energy/climate investment strategy development; and public finance innovation. Tom leads the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, formed after the 2014 Climate Summit in New York to accelerate national action to price carbon as a climate change strategy. This involves partnering with private sector and government partners to develop best-practice principles for carbon pricing via knowledge management; working in specific countries to bring together public and private stakeholders to advance solutions; and communicating lessons learned, solutions and recommendations to high-level dialogues such as the UN climate talks, G20, and the World Bank/IMF Annual and Spring Meetings.
Prior to working at the World Bank Group, Mr. Kerr was the Director of Climate Change at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where he managed the global climate issue agenda by facilitating high-level dialogues between leaders in government, business and civil society at the Annual Meeting in Davos, at the G20 and other intergovernmental platforms. Tom designed and launched the Green Growth Action Alliance, a coalition of public finance, private finance and industry launched at the 2012 Mexican G20 with the goal of unlocking private finance for green growth. Before that, Mr. Kerr worked in Paris for the International Energy Agency, where he led the development of a suite of clean energy technology roadmaps and coordinated policy input into the Clean Energy Ministerial, the G8/G20 and the UNFCCC. He started his career in Washington at the US Environmental Protection Agency, designing and implementing a suite of voluntary programs for the US government (Energy STAR, methane recovery, green power, Climate Leaders) to engage early business action on climate change.
As part of his work in 1994-1998 to develop consensus for the global Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change methodology to calculate methane emissions from solid waste, Tom received a commendation from the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in 2007.
Tom has a Masters of International Environmental Law from Georgetown University Law Center, a JD from DePaul College of Law and a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Michigan.
Tom is married and has two sons; he enjoys gardening, running, cycling to work, travel, art, and designing and solving puzzles.