Paul Bledsoe is president of Bledsoe & Associates, a public policy and communications firm specializing in tax policy, energy, and climate change, and a senior counsel to Edelman. He is also professorial lecturer at American University’s Center on Environmental Policy.

Paul served as Director of Communications of the White House Climate Change Task Force under President Clinton, Special Assistant to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, and Communications Director of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Finance under Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He was Senior Policy Advisor to the Presidential Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill from 2009-2010.

Paul has produced major studies on the U.S. clean energy economy, including in 2020 “Jumpstarting Clean Energy Manufacturing in Economic Infrastructure and Stimulus Legislation” which was featured by Real Clear Energy as leading research on the topic for nearly a year after its publication. Paul was also a senior strategist for the American Energy Innovation Council, a group of 12 CEOs including Bill Gates advocating U.S. clean energy technology breakthroughs and deployment, from 2009 to 2018.

Paul was senior advisor to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a leading centrist think tank, co-founded by former Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole, Tom Daschle, Howard Baker and George Mitchell, from 2007-2012.  From 2002 to 2010, he was Director of Strategy and Communications for the National Commission on Energy Policy.

Paul was Senior Fellow on Energy and Climate at the German Marshall Fund from 2013-2015. He was strategic advisor at the Progressive Policy Institute from 2016-2023. And he was an Adjunct Teaching Fellow at Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment from 2003-2005. In 2016, he was one of two main speakers at an Oxford Union formal debate in favor of a strong, necessary role for developing countries in climate protection, a position which carried the day by nearly a two to one margin.

Paul helped shape two of the world’s major climate agreements, writing about and advocating a nationally determined, ‘pledge and review’ approach which led to the Paris Agreement in 2015. Paul has been a major voice for two decades regarding phasing out hydrofluorocarbons, leading to the Kigali Amendment in 2016. In 2021 and 2022, he was named one of the 500 most influential people in Washington by Washingtonian Magazine. Paul has written for and been featured in leading print outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Financial Times, Politico, LA Times, and on many television and radio programs including CNN, MSNBC, PBS, FOX, BBC, and NPR. Paul received a B.A. with honors and a M.A. from Ohio State University.