Dr Steve Smith
Senior Research Fellow
Steve is a Senior Research Fellow at St Edmund Hall and a Researcher at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. He is also the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Fellow and is involved with matters of equality, diversity and inclusion at the Hall.
Steve joined the Smith School from the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) where he co-led the Climate Science Team and played a role in the legislation of the UK’s net zero target. Before that he was Head of Science at the Committee on Climate Change. After studyng Physics as an undergraduate at Lincoln College, Oxford, Steve gained a PhD in atmospheric physics from Imperial College, London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society.
Alongside continuing to advise government, businesses and agencies, Steve communicates climate change to children and wider audiences. He has advised Usborne Books for their titles Climate Crisis for Beginners and Can We Really Help the Polar Bears?, and was a contributor to the Ladybird book on Climate Change.
Steve’s research interests lie at the intersection of climate science and policy. He has published on a range of topics including metrics for comparing the emissions of different greenhouse gases, and the governance of carbon dioxide removal. He is co-developer of a major global stocktake of net zero pledges across countries, cities, regions and companies.
Currently he serves as Executive Director of two research programmes, both focussed on stabilising the climate rapidly and sustainably:
The Oxford Net Zero Initiative brings together experts from across the University to address the critical issue of how to reach global net zero emissions. It includes leading academics from disciplines including Anthropology, Biology, Earth Sciences, Geography, Law, Business and Governance. The initiative not only provides multi-disciplinary research but also tools and new resources for policymakers and businesses.
CO2RE is a multi-disciplinary research hub focused on removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Backed by seven UK universities, CO2RE works with demonstration-scale removal projects around the country and conducts solutions-led research to encourage and evaluate a balanced portfolio of economically, socially and environmentally scalable techniques.
Where next?
Dr Steve Smith
- Senior Research Fellow
- Researcher at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment
- Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Fellow
stephen.smith@smithschool.ox.ac.uk