Summary
Jeremy Woods is a Reader in Sustainable Development at Imperial College London working on the interplay between development, land-use and the sustainable use of natural resources. He lectures on the Sustainable Energy Futures and Environmental Technologies MScs in Imperial College London and is the Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy.
In the lead-up to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, he coordinated the land/food/bioenergy and climate science components of the Global Calculator and led the development of the Financial Times COP21 Climate Calculator (http://ig.ft.com/sites/climate-change-calculator/). This work continues to be highly influential, supporting national and international climate negotiations and in 2020 we completed the European Calculator for the European Commission aimed at supporting Europe’s transition to a low carbon economy. With over 30 national calculators having been built and more under construction, alongside city and regional calculators, a new International 2050 Calculator Programme has been initiated to help support national and global transitions to sustainable, just and climate resilient futures. As a member of the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment’s (SCOPE) Scientific Advisory Committee on its ‘Bioenergy: bridging the gaps’ project he was lead author of the ‘land and bioenergy’ chapter and co-author on a cross-cutting issues chapter on ‘Food Security’. The globalisation of food commodity markets is a major emerging concern for food security. The Belmont ‘Food Security and Land Use: The Telecoupling Challenge’ project is identifying the emerging critical risks and opportunities.
He has been a member of a number of Royal Society working groups and panels including it’s – DFID Africa Capacity Building Initiative Assessment Panel and previously its Leverhulme Africa Awards Assessment Panel. He has sat on two RS working groups, ‘GHG emissions from agriculture’ in 2010 and its 2008/09 working group on ‘Biofuels’ which produced an internationally acclaimed report on the science and policies needed for their sustainable development.
His research links environmental impact, techno-economic and sustainability assessment frameworks and is applied to policy making and industry standards. His external interests include being a trustee of the Environmental Law Foundation (www.elflaw.org) and was Chair of a voluntary community-based carbon offsetting charity, Plan Vivo (www.planvivo.org; 2010 to 2014). He is a director of LCAworks Ltd (a consultancy on life-cycle assessment; www.lcaworks.com ) and Themba, a charity dedicated to renewable energy and sustainable natural resource use for development. Under Themba, he has recently established a voluntary carbon offsetting programme, ProfsWhoFly, which is dedicated to the delivery of community based, environmentally and socially equitable offsetting that support agricultural resilience and local food and energy security.
Selected Publications
Journal Articles
Ni Y, Richter GM, Mwabonje ON, et al., 2020, Novel integrated agricultural land management approach provides sustainable biomass feedstocks for bioplastics and supports the UK’s “net-zero” target, Environmental Research Letters, Vol:16, ISSN:1748-9326, Pages:1-10
Kline KL, Msangi S, Dale VH, et al., 2016, Reconciling food security and bioenergy: priorities for action, Gcb Bioenergy, Vol:9, ISSN:1757-1707, Pages:557-576
Lynd LR, Sow M, Chimphango AFA, et al., 2015, Bioenergy and African transformation, Biotechnology for Biofuels, Vol:8, ISSN:1754-6834
Lynd LR, Woods J, 2011, A new hope for Africa, Nature, Vol:474, ISSN:0028-0836, Pages:S20-S21
Murphy RJ, Woods J, Black MJ, et al., 2011, Global developments in the competition for land from bio-fuels, Food Policy, Vol:36
Smith P, Gregory PJ, van Vuuren D, et al., 2010, Competition for Land, Phil Trans B, Vol:365, Pages:2941-2957
Woods J, Williams A, Hughes JK, et al., 2010, Energy and the Food System, Phil Trans B, Vol:365, Pages:2991-3006