Ms. Romany Webb

Romany Webb is Deputy Director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Romany also holds appointments as a Research Scholar at Columbia Law School, Adjunct Associate Professor of Climate at the Columbia Climate School, and Senior Advisor on Climate Science at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Romany’s research focuses on two primary areas: (1) energy and (2) negative emissions technologies. Romany’s energy-related research explores how legal and policy tools can be used to minimize the climate impacts of energy development as well the impacts of climate change on energy infrastructure. Romany also researches legal issues associated with the development and deployment of negative emissions technologies on land and in the ocean.

Between 2020 and 2023, Romany served as a vice chair and then co-chair of the Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Ecosystems Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources. Romany also served on the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Ocean Carbon Dioxide Removal and Sequestration from 2020 to 2022. In 2024, she was appointed to the Pool of Experts of the United Nations Regular Process for Global Reporting and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment, and invited to be a contributing author of the Third UN World Ocean Assessment. She also serves on a number of other advisory boards, councils, and committees.

Prior to joining the Sabin Center, Romany worked at the University of California Berkeley Energy and Climate Institute, researching executive authority to combat climate change. Romany also completed a fellowship with the Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Business at the University of Texas at Austin, where she researched energy policy. The fellowship followed several years working in private practice in Sydney, Australia.

Romany received an LL.M., with a certificate of specialization in environmental law, from the University of California, Berkeley in 2013. She also holds an LL.B., awarded with first class honors, from the University of New South Wales (Australia).