Canfora, Paolo

JRC, Italy

Paolo Canfora studied environmental engineering at Rome Tor Vergata University (Italy) and environmental change and management at the University of Oxford (UK). He worked at the European Commission’s Executive Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation (EACI) in Brussels and at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, where he dealt with energy efficiency. Since 2012 he works in Seville at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. He worked as scientist and team leader in the circular economy and industrial leadership unit. Since 2021 he coordinates the science for policy work programme of the Joint Research Centre in the area of growth and innovation. Such work programme supports the EU policies promoting the green and digital transitions, contributing to making them happen but, importantly, also ensuring that these are just from a social and territorial perspective.

During his work as team leader, Paolo set up and led the JRC team providing methodological and conceptual support to the definition of the EU Taxonomy of environmentally sustainable economic activities, the classification used to identify environmentally sustainable investments. Prior to that, Paolo’s work focused on analysing and promoting best environmental management practices for organisations in a number of different economic sectors, as well as on municipal waste management, recycling and circular economy.