Simon Dietz is Professor of Environmental Policy in the Department of Geography and Environment. He is also affiliated with the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, of which he is a co-founder and former director.
Simon is an environmental economist with diverse interestes, from climate change and sustainable development. He has published dozens of research articles on a wide range of topics, including decision-making under uncertainty, questions of equity within and between generations, the links between economic growth and the environment, and the formation of international environmental treaties. He also works with governments, businesses and NGOs on topics of shared interest, such as carbon pricing, insurance and institutional investment.
In recent years he has also focused on corporate climate action and is the lead researcher on the Transition Pathway Initiative, an investor-led project to assess the progress that large, multi-national corporations are making on the transition to a low-carbon economy.
He is also co-editor of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, the top journal in the field of environmental/resource economics, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2018 he became the first recipient of the new European Award for Researchers in Environmental Economics under the Age of Forty, “a recognition given every year to the environmental economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to environmental economic thought and knowledge."
Simon’s previous major projects with LSE Consulting include analysing the implications of climate change for strategic asset allocation (client: Mercer), the effects of climate change on financial stability, with particular reference to Sweden (for Finansinspektionen, the Swedish financial supervisory authority), and the social cost of carbon for use in triple-bottom-line accounting (for a major multinational building materials firm). Other clients include the Council of Europe Development Bank, EBRD, IKEA and Axa.
Expertise: climate change; environmental economics; sustainable development
LSE Consulting projects: