Yacob Mulugetta is a Professor of Energy and Development Policy at the University College London; and held an academic post at the Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey, UK.  He is a founding member of the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) based in Ethiopia where he worked as Senior Climate & Energy Specialist (2010-2013).  

He has 25 years of research, teaching and advisory experience specialising on the links between energy infrastructure provision and human welfare. His research is focused on three interconnected areas: energy systems and development; energy systems and climate change; and political economy of low carbon development.

He served as a Coordinating Lead Author of the Energy Systems chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (Working Group III on Mitigation), a member of the core writing team for the IPCC synthesis report, Steering Committee member of UNEP’s Emissions Gap Reports (2015-2017), and lead author in the upcoming IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5oC.  More recently, he served in the drafting team of the African Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI), and continues to provide technical support for the initiative. Yacob Mulugetta is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS).