Michael will present his paper on energy access, "Powering Cities in the Global South: How Energy Access for All Benefits the Economy and the Environment," another chapter of the World Resources Report: Towards a More Equal City. Millions of residents in some of the fastest growing cities in the world don’t have access to clean, reliable energy, and the challenge of reaching them is not getting easier. In 2012, only 58 percent of the urban population had access to electricity in low-income countries, and nearly 500 million urban residents worldwide used dirty and harmful cooking fuels like charcoal and wood.

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Speaker: Michael Westphal

Michael is a Senior Associate in the Sustainable Finance team. He is working on a number of research and analysis projects related to international climate finance.

Michael has 18 years of experience working in the environment, climate change and international development fields. Prior to joining WRI, Michael was a Senior Associate at Abt Associates, where we was the Technical Director for the USAID Analysis and Investment for Low-Emission Growth project. He has worked for and consulted for a number of international organizations, including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank and the United Nations Development Programme. For the ADB, he co-led a study on the Economics of Climate Change in East Asia. At the World Bank, he co-authored a number of reports, including the World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change, Adapting to Climate Change in Europe and Central Asia, and Adaptation to a Changing Climate in the Arab Countries, as well as helping to lead the development of the World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal. Prior to this, Michael was an American Association for the Advancement of Science Science and Technology Policy Fellow in the EPA’s Office of International Affairs, where he worked with the State Department on a science cooperation and weapons non-proliferation project in the former Soviet Union.

Michael holds a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from the University of California at Berkeley, with a focus on ecological modeling and conservation planning.