Conrad is a Director in the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. Over his 15 year career in the Australian Public Service, Conrad has contributed to the development of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the Carbon Pricing Mechanism, the Emissions Reduction Fund, the National Energy Guarantee, the Safeguard Mechanism, and transport emissions policy. Conrad also worked on the 2008 and 2011 Garnaut Climate Change Reviews.

Through his PhD research at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, Conrad is examining factors that support upscaling the stringency of countries’ climate change mitigation policy instruments. During his PhD candidature, Conrad has represented The Australian National University at the 2024 Raisina-IE Global Student Challenge in India, and contributed as an author to the World Bank’s 2024 State and Trends of Carbon Pricing Report.

Supervisors: Professor Llewelyn Hughes (Primary supervisor), Professor Frank Jotzo (Associate supervisor), Dr Rebecca Colvin (Associate supervisor)

Publications

• Buffier C, Hughes L & Jotzo F (2025), 'Climate policy upscaling: the role of policy design in removing barriers to stringency', Climate Policy, 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2025.2523521
• Contributing author: World Bank (2024) State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2024. World Bank, Washington DC http://hdl.handle.net/10986/41544