Karl W. Steininger

Karl W. Steininger is Professor of Climate Economics and Sustainable Transition at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz. He also serves as the Wegener Center's director. He earned a Master's Degree in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Vienna, followed by a Fulbright grant for graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD in Economics at the University of Vienna. He was on the faculty at the Technical University of Vienna, with the World Bank's Environment Department in Washington, D.C., and on the faculty at the Department of Economics at the University of Graz.

Karl's research focuses on economic impacts of climate change and long term net-zero-carbon transition, analyzing options such as adjustments in spatial planning, technological development in industry or enhancing the supply of renewable energy, including solar. This involves the fields of environmental and resource economics, transport economics, spatial economics, international economics and public finance.

His more than 120 publications on climate change, global change and international economic issues were published in journals such as Nature Climate Change, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Global Environmental Change, Environmental and Resource Economics and Ecological Economics, his books with Springer and Edward Elgar.

He is director of the Wegener Center, heads its research group Economics of Climate and Environmental Change, and is in the faculty of the Field of Excellence Climate Change Graz. Earlier functions include president of the Austrian Economic Association (NOeG), chairman of the Board of the Climate Change Centre Austria, Chair of the Monitoring Group of the Paris Agreement and Transport at the national transport norming body FSV,  and chair of the Chapter of Environmental and Resource Economics of the German Economic Association (Verein fuer Socialpolitik). He reviews for the world´s top journals in his field and advises multiple research funding organizations.