Michał Tadeusz Kurtyka (born July 20, 1973) is a Polish manager, economist, and civil servant who served as the Minister of Climate and Environment until October 2021. He is a technocrat and a non-partisan figure. Kurtyka served as President of the

2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference The 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as the Katowice Climate Change Conference or COP24, was the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It was held be ...

Katowice Katowice (, ) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Katowice urban area. As of 2021, Katowice has an official population of 286,960, and a resident population estimate of around 315,000. K ...

. The Katowice Climate Change Conference enabled practical implementation of the 2015

Paris Agreement The Paris Agreement (also called the Paris Accords or Paris Climate Accords) is an international treaty on climate change that was signed in 2016. The treaty covers climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance. The Paris Agreement was ...

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

Education and academic career

Kurtyka was educated at the Parisian

École Polytechnique (, ; also known as Polytechnique or l'X ) is a ''grande école'' located in Palaiseau, France. It specializes in science and engineering and is a founding member of the Polytechnic Institute of Paris. The school was founded in 1794 by mat ...

. He was also a scholar at the

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into Outline of p ...

Gaithersburg, Maryland Gaithersburg ( ) is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. At the time of the 2020 United States census, Gaithersburg had a population of 69,657, making it the third-largest incorporated city and the ninth-most populous communit ...

, America, studying quantum optics. At NIST he worked under William D. Phillips, a Nobel laureate in physics. During his studies he also specialized in economics, with particular focus on market organization, studying under Professor Jean Tirole, the 2014 Nobel laureate in economics. In the field of international economics, he studied at the University of Louvain La Neuve in

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

, and later obtained a master's degree in the subject at the Warsaw School of Economics. He defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Warsaw. He was a lecturer in the field of economics, market organization, change management and industrial strategy at the University of Warsaw, the

Collegium Civitas Civitas University ( Polish: ''Uniwersytet Civitas'') is one of Poland's leading non-public higher education institutions. It is a member of the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland (CRASP) and the Conference of Rectors of Non-Pub ...

and the Oxford Programme On Modern Poland. He is the author of the book “From Restructuring to Modernisation. Delayed Transformation of the Polish Power Sector in 1990-2009.”, as well as the co-author of the concept of implementation of effective changes in an enterprise, described in the book “Change Management. From Strategy to Action”.

Professional career

Kurtyka began his civil service career in 1998 as an official in the Office of the Committee for European Integration, then headed by Jan Kułakowski, in which capacity he worked on Poland's accession to the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

as head of the analytical team. He later oversaw the modernisation of Polish and international enterprises by providing them with advice with regard to the integration to European and global markets. From 2006-2008 he was a member and vice-chairman of the supervisory board of Gaz-System, Poland's natural gas infrastructure organisation. From 2016-2018, he served as the Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Energy, before being promoted to Secretary of State. In the Ministry of Energy he was directly responsible for climate and energy policy implementation in the fuel and gas sector, technological development and innovations, as well as international relations with countries and international organisations. He also supervised the state’s participation in the biggest Polish oil and gas companies, such as PGNiG, Lotos and Orlen. He was the author of the Act on Electromobility and Alternative Fuels which enabled a progressive development of these forms of transport. In July 2018, he was additionally appointed Secretary of State in the Polish Environment Ministry, complementing his Energy Ministry function. On November 15, 2019, he was appointed the Minister of Climate. On October 6, 2020, after the government’s reconstruction, he was appointed to the office of Minister of the newly established Ministry of Climate and Environment.

International experience

Internationally, Michał Kurtyka chaired the works of the IEA in 2016-2017 when the Agency delivered the “Long Term Financial Health” reform which assured its sustainable financial security. In April 2018, it was announced he would chair the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which was held in December 2018. The appointment of Kurtyka, as a relatively anonymous bureaucrat, marked a break from the diplomatic norms of previous climate change conferences, where more senior politicians have traditionally presided. The conference ended with the adoption of the Katowice Rulebook which enables the implementation of the

. At the conclusion of the summit Kurtyka noted: "putting together the Paris agreement work programme is a big responsibility. It has been a long road. We did our best to leave no-one behind". In 2019, as the Chair of IEA Ministerial, Kurtyka led to the adoption of the first in ten years IEA Ministerial Communiqué. On October 27, 2020, Michał Kurtyka was nominated as candidate for the position of OECD Secretary General.

Personal life

In August 2020, Kurtyka became the second member of the Polish government who tested positive for

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory illness responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had the Novel coronavirus, provisional nam ...

.Agnieszka Barteczko and Alan Charlis (August 20, 2020)
Polish climate minister says he has coronavirus
''

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kurtyka, Michal 1973 births Living people Polish economists Politicians from Kraków Environment ministers Government ministers of Poland SGH Warsaw School of Economics alumni École Polytechnique alumni