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Energy Explained
Get the latest as our experts share their insights on global energy policy.
Assessing the Energy Impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act
This special CGEP blog series, featuring six contributions from CGEP scholars, analyzes the potential impacts of the OBBBA across a range of sectors.
Blog
by Jack Andreasen Cavanaugh, Anne-Sophie Corbeau, Tom Moerenhout, Matt Bowen, Ashley Finan & Noah Kaufman • July 14, 2025
Podcasts
Hear in-depth conversations with the world’s top energy and climate leaders from government, business, academia, and civil society.
Climate Shocks Are Redefining Energy Security
Many parts of the US have experienced brutal, deadly heat in recent weeks—and there’s plenty of summer left. Intense rainfall, made more likely by warming, dropped more than...
Biography
Dr. Gautam Jain is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). He focuses on the role of financial markets and instruments—including thematic bonds, blended finance structures, and carbon markets—in the energy transition, with an emphasis on emerging economies.
Dr. Jain has an extensive background in the financial industry where he covered emerging markets as a portfolio manager and strategist. He has worked at asset management firms and an investment bank, including The Rohatyn Group, Barclays Capital, and Millennium Partners. He has helped manage emerging market local debt and hard-currency bond portfolios, encompassing currencies, interest rate instruments, and sovereign credits. He specialized in portfolio construction and asset allocation incorporating macroeconomic, policy, and political developments in emerging markets.
He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Columbia University. He also has an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Iowa State University and a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He is a CFA charter holder, a Cornell EMI Fellow, an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a consultant for the United Nations to support the workstream of the Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) Alliance on “Tackling Local Currency Risk”.
He has co-authored publications in the Journal of Derivatives, the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Applied Probability, Probability in Engineering and Informational Science, and the International Journal of Production Economics. He has also contributed chapters for the 2020 and 2021 Cornell EMI Annual Reports.
Relevant Articles
Venezuela and Haiti, the countries most vulnerable to climate change and with the fewest resources to adapt
Eight countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are in the ‘red zone,’ according to an index created by Columbia University and the Rockefeller Foundation
Climate Finance (CliF) Vulnerability Index: Technical Methodology
The Climate Finance (CliF) Vulnerability Index is designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of climate vulnerability for nation states in order to improve the targeting and provision of climate change adaptation financing.
External Publications
with Gautam Jain & Andrew Kamau •
Columbia University Academic Commons
• May 21, 2025
A Green Taxonomy Can Boost Financing to Meet India’s Sustainability Goals
This article provides an overview, draws insights from the taxonomies of Europe and India's neighboring countries, and highlights the need for a taxonomy in India.
Structuring a US Sovereign Wealth Fund
The Trump administration may release a blueprint for a US sovereign wealth fund (SWF) in early May after the president signed an executive order in February giving the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of Commerce 90 days to develop a plan.
The real impacts of Trump 2.0 on energy finance
Be sure to sign into your Energy Central account (register for free here) to access this full post with the podcast recording. What does a change in U.S. presidential administrations have to do with stalled solar farms in Sub-Saharan Africa or wind projects in Southeast Asia? As it turns out, quite a lot. On this episode of Power Perspectives, we explore how U.S. policy shifts