Barbara Dr. Botos

Introduction

Barbara is currently the Ambassador-at-large for Climate for the Department of Energy. She previously was the head of the Climate Policy Department at the Ministry of National Development and served as Deputy State Secretary for Climate Policy at the Ministry of Innovation and Technology from 2018 to 2022. He has taught and lectured at several universities (currently Associate Professor at Eszterházy Károly Catholic University) and has worked for local governments in the field of environment and climate policy. Barbara is a core member of Women in Energy.

Over the past 13 years, she has been actively involved in the UNFCCC and EU climate change negotiations as Head of Delegation and National Liaison to the UNFCCC and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In the summer of 2022, she was one of the top three candidates shortlisted by the UN Secretary General for the position of Director-General of the UNFCCC.

Barbara was a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she specialised in urban and regional planning. She holds a PhD in Earth Sciences from ELTE and MSc degrees in Environmental Science and Policy (CEU) and Biological Science (JATE).

Barbara's previous responsibilities included the development of legal and strategic frameworks for international, European and national climate policy and project implementation. Within the Ministry, she coordinated international and bilateral climate finance programmes and oversaw the activities of the Green Centre for the Western Balkans. He also coordinated the National Climate Protection Authority, which is responsible for the national F-gas regulation and the Hungarian emissions trading scheme. He also supervised, among others, several renewable energy, energy efficiency and e-mobility tenders and energy innovation and adaptation projects.