person

Professor Cameron Hepburn

Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment

Profile

Cameron Hepburn is Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. He also serves as the Director of the Economics of Sustainability Programme, based at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School.

Cameron has published widely on energy, resources and environmental challenges across disciplines including engineering, biology, philosophy, economics, public policy and law, drawing on degrees in law and engineering (Melbourne University) and masters and doctorate in economics (Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar). He has co-founded three successful businesses and has provided advice on energy and environmental policy to government ministers (e.g. China, India, UK and Australia) and international institutions (e.g. OECD, UN).

Teaching

Current graduate research students

  • Joris Bücker | Long term (economic) policy tools based on complexity economics and the non-linear planetary impact of climate change
  • Alex Clark | Stranded states: Public management of fossil fuel assets in the international system
  • Adam Ferris | Studying decision architecture to find key behavioural intervention measures for increased traction in green consumption
  • Andrea Bacilleri
  • Brian O'Callaghan
  • Cari Baumgärtner
  • Kathryn Condon
  • Kaya Masler
  • Matteo Gasparini | Exploring the role of financial institutions in the low carbon transition and the implications for financial stability
  • Max Nathanson | Strategic Urban Development and the Climate-Security Nexus in US Foreign Policy: Evidence from Central America
  • Moritz Schwarz | Climate Risks and the Financial System - The role of climate-stress testing for central banks and financial regulators
  • Carter Powis | A multi-disciplinary analysis of the role of transient negative emissions in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement
  • Xiyu Ren | The impact of the energy transition on the economy: studies on the pattern and the relationship between policy contexts, firm decisions and innovation choices
  • Adam Parr | Law and regeneration in seventeenth-century England
  • Rupert Stuart-Smith | Attribution science in the courts: establishing the liability of greenhouse gas emitters for climate change damages
  • Frank Sperling

Recent graduate research students (since 2006)

  • Lucas Kruitwagen | Completed DPhil in 2021 | Technology, information, and the governance of environmental risk
  • Penelope Mealy | Completed DPhil in 2018 | ‘Know What?’ New lens on productive knowledge shed light on long run development structural change, job switching and the transition to the green economy
  • Alexander Pfeiffer | Completed DPhil in 2018 | The ‘decarbonisation identity’ and pathways to net-zero: the scale and impact of committed cumulative carbon emissions and stranded assets in the electricity generation sector on the decarbonisation of the economy
  • Yangsiyu Lu | Environmental Risks, Stranded Assets, and the Impacts of Regulation on Firm Productivity
  • Galina Alova | The low-carbon transition of the global electricity sector
  • Sugandha Srivastav | Understanding and Incentivising Innovation for a Climate Compatible Future 

Selected publications

For a complete list of publications please visit Prof Hepburn's personal website

Books

Journal articles

Book chapters

  • Dutton, A.J., Gratwicke, B., Hepburn, C., Herrera, E.A. and Macdonald, D.W. (2013) Tackling unsustainable wildlife trade. Chapter 5 in, Macdonald, D.W. and Willis, K.J. (eds.) Key Topics in Conservation Biology 2. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 74-91. ISBN: 9780470658765.
  • Hepburn, C. and Bowen, A. (2013) Prosperity with Growth: Economic Growth, Climate Change and Environmental Limits. Chapter 29 in, Fouquet, R. (ed.) Handbook On Energy And Climate Change. Edward Elgar. ISBN: 9780857933683.

Other publications

  • Mattauch, L., Millar, R., van der Ploeg, R., Rezai, A., Schultes, A., Venmans, F., Bauer, N., Dietz, S., Edenhofer, O., Farrell, N., Hepburn, C., Luderer, G., Pless, J., Spuler, F., Stern, N. and Teytelboym, A. (2018) Steering the Climate System: An Extended CommentCESifo Working Paper No. 7414.

Reports

Workshops

  • Farmer, D. and Hepburn, C. (2014) Less Precision, more truth: Uncertainty in climate economics and macroprudential policy. Bank of England interdisciplinary workshop.