Michael Mehling is Deputy Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Professor at the University of Strathclyde Law School. He brings over two decades of experience working on energy and environmental policy with government agencies, private companies and civil society organizations in North America, Europe, and the developing world. His work focuses on instruments of energy and environmental policy. In recent years, his research interests have included carbon pricing, the international climate negotiations, comparative energy and climate policy, and the drivers and conditions of energy transitions.

Previously, Michael served as Executive Director of MIT CEEPR with responsibility for day-to-day operations and fundraising, and as founding President of Ecologic Institute in Washington DC, an environmental policy think tank with partner offices in Berlin and Brussels. He has advised and coordinated research projects for government agencies in Brazil, Chile, China, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Indonesia, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam, as well as intergovernmental entities including the Asian Development Bank, European Parliament, the European Commission, the International Carbon Action Partnership (ICAP), the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank Group.

Currently, Michael serves on the Boards of Climate Strategies in London; Ecologic Institute in Washington DC and Berlin; and the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition (ERCST) in Brussels; the advisory boards of the of the Blockchain & Climate Institute (BCI) in London; the International Policy Coalition for Sustainable Growth in Washington, D.C.; and the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility (IKEM) in Berlin; as well as the management of the Konrad-von-Moltke Fund. He is also an Associated Researcher with the Energy Policy Research Group (EPRG) at the University of Cambridge, a Policy Advisor of the Center for Climate and Trade at the Climate Leadership Council (CLC) in Washington, D.C., and a Commissioner with the Commission on Carbon Competitiveness in Canada. In the past, he has co-chaired the Scientific Committee of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC) research conference on carbon pricing, served on the Board of Directors of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources US (IUCN-US), and contributed to the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Lazarowicz Report commissioned by the UK Prime Minister.

Michael has held research and teaching appointments at Georgetown University and the Universities of Greifswald, Helsinki and Constance, and has been awarded various research and travel grants, including a John J. McCloy Fellowship in Environmental Policy from the American Council on Germany. His research has been published in the leading peer-reviewed journals on international law, environmental law and policy, and climate and energy policy. He is also author or editor of a number of books, including the co-edited volume Climate Change and the Law (Springer, 2013), The Green Market Transition: Carbon Taxes, Energy Subsidies and Smart Instrument Mixes (Edward Elgar, 2017), and Governing Carbon Markets with Distributed Ledger Technology (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Michael is Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly Carbon & Climate Law Review (Lexxion Publisher), the first academic journal dedicated to climate regulation, and a member of the Editorial Board of Energy & Environment (SAGE Publishing).

Michael holds a law degree from the University of Constance, as well as a postgraduate LL.M. degree in international law and a Ph.D. in environmental law from the University of Helsinki. He is admitted to the bar in Germany. As a German and American citizen, he has lived for extended periods of time in​ Europe, the United States, and Latin America. A native speaker of German and English, he is fluent in Spanish, has good command of French and Portuguese, and knows basic Finnish. He lives in Upstate New York, where he spends any free time revitalizing an antebellum farm and homestead.