COP 29 and the underlying science – with Professor Sir Jim Skea
public in-person lecture
Key IPCC findings and plans for the Seventh Assessment Cycle.
Professor Sir Jim Skea - Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Emeritus Professor, Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial.
This talk covered three topics: what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is, how it operates, and how it interacts with policy; the most recent IPCC findings from the Sixth Assessment Report published in 2023; and IPCC’s plans for the 2020s.
Professor Sir Jim Skea addressed how science and policy interact in respect of climate change. He covered IPCC findings with respect to the three goals of the Paris Agreement, that is limiting global warming, reducing vulnerability to climate change, and supporting climate action especially though finance. Finally, he outlined what has been decided, and what has yet to be decided, in terms of future reports.
Professor Sir Jim Skea was elected IPCC Chair for the Seventh Assessment cycle in July 2023. From 2015 to 2023, Jim was Co-chair of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, focusing on climate change mitigation. He was part of the scientific leadership for the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C.
Jim Skea was a Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College London from 2009 to 2023. His research interests are in energy, climate change and technological innovation.
He was the Chair of Scotland’s Just Transition Commission from 2018 to 2023, and was a founding member of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, acting as its Scottish champion.
Between 2012 and 2017 Professor Skea was Research Councils UK’s Energy Strategy Fellow and was President of the Energy Institute between 2015 and 2017. He was Research Director of the UK Energy Research Centre from 2004-2012.
Born in Scotland, Jim Skea read Mathematical Physics at Edinburgh University, followed by a PhD in energy research at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory. In 1981, he moved to Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to work on emerging US energy and environment policy. He then worked at the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University (1983-1998), where he moved through the ranks, becoming a Professorial Fellow in 1994. He was subsequently Director of the Policy Studies Institute (1998-2004).
He was awarded an OBE in 2004 and CBE in 2013 for his work on sustainable transport and sustainable energy respectively. In 2024, Jim Skea was awarded a knighthood in the King’s Birthday Honours list for services to global leadership in climate science.
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