Dr Elena Vasquez

Brought in to take over the Southern Europe and Mediterranean desk during the post-Paris, pre-Green-Deal transition. Brief was narrow and operational: design and deploy grant capital that moves Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and the littoral states from framework commitments into enforceable national legislation, and rebuild the standing scientific-advisory link between the regional research community and finance and environment ministries. The desk had turned over twice in three years; two of the largest institutional co-funders were considering exit.

Joined in 2014 to build a function that did not exist inside the group: a climate strategy and policy affairs desk embedded within Iberdrola Renovables, the 14GW renewables arm of the Iberdrola group. Brief was to translate IPCC-grade physical-climate data into investment-committee language for offshore wind, onshore wind, and utility-scale solar deployment across Europe, and to lead scientific and policy due diligence on the UK, German, French, and Baltic offshore pipeline then in early development. Appointed as the first atmospheric physicist on the Renovables leadership team.

Three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. Research focus on aerosol-cloud interactions — specifically, the quantification of uncertainty that indirect aerosol effects introduce into decadal climate projections. The institute's aerosol-cloud work during this period fed into the CMIP5 ensemble underpinning IPCC AR5 and the uncertainty bounds subsequently adopted in the EU's 2030 emissions framework.

Doctoral programme at the Universitat de Barcelona, co-supervised with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Thesis on radiative forcing of mineral-dust aerosols in the Mediterranean troposphere — a topic at the working interface of atmospheric physics, regional climate modelling, and North African dust transport dynamics. Fully funded by a competitive FPU doctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education.