Michel Zimmermann works in the thematic areas of environment, climate, and energy, with focus on macroeconomic analyses, climate economics, and energy economics.

He studied economics and the «Economics and Policy of Energy and the Environment» at the University of Zurich and University College London (UCL). In his Master’s thesis, he examined the British energy and climate policies with respect to distributional effects. He then received his doctorate at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) on the theme of rebound effects and the effectiveness of industrial energy efficiency in the reduction of energy use, with the help of economic modeling.