Dr. Jan Minx is head of the Working Group Evidence for Climate Solutions at PIK. He is the initiator of the What Works Climate Solutions Initiative, co-founder of the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report, and Co-Chair of the Climate Solutions Coordinating Group of the Campbell Collaboration. He works on a broad range of topics in climate and sustainability policy, including pathways to climate neutrality, the role, potential, risks, and governance of carbon dioxide removal technologies, trade-offs and co-benefits of climate policies, urban climate change mitigation strategies, and the wider field of climate change and human health.
Methodologically, the main focus of his work is on evidence synthesis to understand what climate solutions work, under what conditions, and why. One part of this work explores how artificial intelligence can scale evidence synthesis methods to vast bodies of evidence and apply them in the context of global environmental assessments. Another part involves developing new evidence synthesis methods to advance scientific policy advice and global environmental assessments.
Jan Minx regularly contributes to major global science assessments, including the recent work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He served as a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report for the chapter on emission trends and drivers in Working Group III (Mitigation of Climate Change). During the Fifth Assessment Cycle, he played a major role as Head of the Technical Support Unit, coordinating the report process. Additionally, Jan has contributed to the UNEP Gap Report and is a regular author for the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change. In 2023, he co-founded the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report, which fills a critical gap in the science assessment landscape by providing independent information on the state of the sector in light of international climate goals.
Jan publishes in some of the most esteemed scientific journals, including Science, Nature, Nature Climate Change, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. He has contributed to more than twenty book chapters and reports. His work has been cited more than 50,000 times according to Google Scholar, with annual citations exceeding 8,000 in 2024.
Jan Minx also writes op-eds and blog posts in German and international publications such as The Guardian, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Carbon Brief, Die Zeit, and Wirtschaftswoche. He is a regular guest on radio programs, sharing his expertise on climate and sustainability topics.
