Jackrit Watanatada

Jackrit Watanatada has 20 years of experience in clean energy corporate and project finance, project development, and public policy. After his early years and education in Brasilia, Washington DC and London, he began his career in Bangkok in the late 1990s where he joined the founding development team of the A.T. Biopower 22MW rice husk fuelled power project. The project was Thailand’s first large-scale, renewable energy limited recourse project finance transaction, and among the first CDM projects in the world to be approved by the UNFCCC in the early 2000s. From the mid-2000s, during the first major global investment push for clean energy, Jackrit began his work in environmental direct investments with RNK Capital in New York, an investment firm with then $1.1 billion under management for structured transactions in global carbon markets, where he was responsible for originating and structuring clean energy and emissions reductions deals throughout South East Asia and China.

In the public policy and civil society arena, building on earlier work supporting policy development and capacity building programmes for climate finance in South East Asia, Jackrit served as deputy chief executive officer of the Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia (ASrIA, now part of PRI) while based in Hong Kong in 2014, leading policy research projects in collaboration with the IFC, GIZ, and the UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System. Returning again to the private sector in 2016, Jackrit established a corporate finance advisory practice at CH&Co, a French-Swiss financial services strategy and consulting firm, where he covered China to Europe investments in banking and wealth management, in addition to advising on fundraisings and acquisitions in Asian renewable energy markets.

Jackrit holds a BA from University College London in Philosophy and Economics. He has field experience in over 15 countries, lived in 7 countries, and is fluent in French, English and Thai.