Andrei Covatariu

Andrei Covatariu is an international energy and climate change expert and a non-resident Scholar in the Black Sea Program at the Middle East Institute. His activity focuses on climate and energy policies, concentrating on the energy transition process and its geopolitical, economic, and social challenges. Andrei’s views and policy analyses are regularly published and cited in international media.

Andrei is currently an expert on the Task Force on Digitalization in Energy at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). He is also a consultant for the Public Power Corporation (PPC) utility company in Greece, acting as a climate policy advisor for the CEO and chairman. In addition, Andrei is a senior research associate at the Energy Policy Group think tank in Romania. In 2021, Andrei co-founded ECERA, a network of sustainability practitioners aiming to produce policy-relevant knowledge, helping governments, companies, NGOs, universities, and others navigate the various facets of sustainability. 

In the past, Andrei has worked with other for-profit companies (Enel Romania, where he was the head of public affairs, among other roles), multilateral and international organizations (the World Energy Council, as a former board member of FEL-100), think tanks (Harvard’s Belfer Center, the Centre on Regulation in Europe, and the Energy Policy Group, etc.), and NGOs (Climate Reality Project, Climate Interactive, etc.). He was a fellow with the Middle East Institute’s Frontier Europe Initiative in Washington, DC in 2020 and a Masdar Institute Future Sustainability Leader in Abu Dhabi in 2022.

Andrei holds bachelor’s and master's degrees in nuclear engineering and a master's degree in business administration. Andrei also completed a master's in public policy (MPP) at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, with a summer project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.