Irina Lazzerini

Irina Lazzerini is Principal Specialist, Clean Energy at SEforAll. As part of the International Relations and Special Projects and the UN Energy teams, Irina supports raising ambition on high level SDG7, climate diplomacy and just energy transition with countries in Africa and Asia.

Irina brings over 15 years of work and research experience in the field of international climate mitigation policies, with focus on Europe (Western Balkans, Eastern Countries) and Asia (China, Korea, Japan, ASEAN, ASEM). Before joining SEforALL, Irina was Senior Sustainable Energy Expert at the Energy Community Secretariat in Vienna, leading the Just Energy Transition and Gender Equality initiatives and largely contributing to building the climate dimension of the organization. She launched new institutions at political and technical level as well as supported coal-dependent Contracting Parties in developing, transposing, and implementing their climate policy and legislation, integrating energy and climate planning and engaging in 2030 energy and climate targets negotiations in the framework of the EU climate acquis, the Decarbonization Roadmap, and the Paris Agreement.

Prior to that, Irina was research fellow on sustainable development at Tsinghua University (Beijing), policy officer within the European Commission Environment Directorate General (Brussels) and senior energy analyst at Enel Foundation (Italy). She worked with UNIDO on green industry policy, with WEF on projects evaluating the impact of off-grid renewable energy solutions and with EURICUR (Rotterdam), co-authoring several publications on energy transitions in cities and a chapter of ‘Innovating Climate Governance’, published by Cambridge University Press in March 2018.

Irina holds both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in economics, Languages and Juridical Institutions of Eastern Asia from Ca’ Foscari University, Venice; a Postgraduate Master’s degree in European Interdisciplinary Studies from the College of Europe, Natolin, Poland; and an executive MBA on Renewables from Berlin University of Applied Sciences (BHT). She is fluent in English, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish and Italian. She also speaks German.