Mary Jean Bürer
Consultant, Clean Energy Group
Biography
Mary Jean earned a Masters of Engineering (M.E.) degree in Manufacturing Engineering for Advanced Transportation Systems from the University of California, Los Angeles. She specialized in optimisation of design and manufacturing of methanol fuel cells, while working on her thesis in 1997, with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). During her academic instruction she also spent one semester at the School of Engineering at the University of Sussex, UK. Prior to this, Mary Jean earned a Bachelors degree in Environment, Economics and Politics from Claremont McKenna College and completed her thesis on the state of the art of photo and bio-degradable materials, for which she performed experimental work with UCLA's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Her professional experience includes consulting work concerning clean energy innovation to the Swiss Federal Office of Energy in Bern, and the Clean Energy States Alliance, a US group that supports the commercialization of clean energy technologies. She has also worked to develop international climate policy and the basis for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions market; via contracts with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA). In addition, she helped develop US state climate policy via employment for the California Energy Commission in Sacramento, California and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in San Francisco. Furthermore, Mary Jean has worked as a research associate performing energy analysis for the well-known Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) in California and worked for the UK's Imperial College in London to develop the International Programme on the Economics of Atmospheric Stabilisation (IPEAS), initially managing the Innovation Modelling Comparison Project (IMCP) with Professor Michael Grubb. More recently, she served as Deputy Secretary for the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Task Group on New Emission Scenarios (TGNES) - a key IPCC task group which reports to IPCC member governments. She is currently a research associate at the University of St. Gallen's Institute for Economy and the Environment (since June 2005) and a visiting Ph.D. scholar at CDM/CSI (since April 2006). Her research interests include: sustainable energy issues, technological innovation, venture capital, and regulatory risk management. Her thesis will deal with the influence of regulatory risk and opportunities on sustainability-related venture capital investment decisions.