Claire O’Neill was UK Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth from 2017 when wrote and implemented the UK’s Clean Growth and Green Finance Strategies, created the global Powering Past Coal Alliance, oversaw the deployment of £3 billion of international Climate Finance and £200 million of cleantech innovation funding, negotiated the world’s first public-private Offshore Wind Sector Deal and led the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Taskforce. In 2019 she brought forward the country’s ground-breaking Net Zero legislation and led the UK’s winning bid to host the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26). She served as COP26 President-Designate until she left politics in 2020 to lead the Climate and Energy team at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and create the WBCSD Business Manifesto for Climate Recovery launched at COP26. She now co-chairs the global Imperatives Advisory Board for WBCSD and has several non-executive Director and senior Advisory roles.
Claire grew up in the UK and studied Geography at Oxford University followed by an MBA at Harvard Business School. She had a transatlantic career with Bank of America, Mckinsey and Credit Suisse before entering politics. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and the UK Energy Institute and is a Business Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at Oxford University.
