Cristina Peñasco is Senior Research Economist at the Centre for Climate Change of the Banque de France. She previously was an Associate Professor in Public Policy in the Department of Politics and International Studies, and Director of the MPhil in Public Policy, both at the University of Cambridge.

She is a Bye-Fellow at Queens’ College, a Center Fellow at the Centre for the Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG) and an Associate Researcher of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, all three institutions associated with Cambridge. She is also a Researcher at the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire d’Evaluation des Politiques Publiques (LIEPP) at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Siences Po). She has participated in numerous projects on renewable energy support schemes in the European Union, Spain and the United Kingdom.

She is currently leading the empirical evaluation of the Economics of Energy Innovation and System Transition (EEIST) program, one of the flagship projects funded by the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). She has published in leading journals such as Nature Climate Change, Environmental Research Letters, Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy, The Journal of Clearer Production, Energy Policy or Research Evaluation, among others.

She is currently working on a line of research that brings together environmental economics, public policy, green innovation and energy efficiency technologies, focusing on the evaluation of policy instruments that enable the energy transition towards zero carbon economies. Her multidisciplinary research includes methods drawn from economics, political science, public management and environmental science.

She holds a PhD in Economics from the Spanish National Research Council and the University Rey Juan Carlos and an MPhil in Research in Economics and Business from ICADE Business School in Spain.