Our People
Dr Stuart Jenkins
Research Fellow
Research Fellow on Net Zero for the Fossil Fuel Sector
School of Geography and the Environment
DPhil, MPhys (Oxon)
Stuart is a Research Fellow on Net Zero for the Fossil Fuel Sector, working within Oxford Net Zero and the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography. He also holds a visiting researcher position within the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics sub-department in the Department of Physics. His research considers the intersection of physics with climate change policy, focussing on the design, appraisal, and physical requirements of net zero policy in various sectors of the economy. His interests include regulatory policy for fossil fuel extraction, net zero policy for hard-to-abate industry and the aviation sector, as well as the design and use of GHG metrics, carbon/GHG offsetting, and cost-optimised national, multi-national, and global mitigation policy.
Before this Stuart completed his Masters degree in Physics at Wadham College, University of Oxford, between 2014-2018, specialising in particle physics and atmospheric, oceanic and planetary physics. After this he completed a DPhil in Physics (AOPP) at Wadham, focussing on the physics of climate change. His research used climate models and satellite observations to identify evidence of a change in the rate of global warming, attributing it to both natural variability and a range of anthropogenic pollutants, principally aerosols. His research went on to consider future changes in the rate of warming under various mitigation scenarios, and the requirements of policy to halt future anthropogenic global warming. This work constrained a number of key physical climate parameters, such as the TCRE, TCR, ECS and ZEC.
Alongside his PhD Stuart worked with various stakeholders on a number of policy-relevant projects. He remains interested in research at the intersection between climate physics and policy design. Examples of his work include:
- the EUCalc integrated assessment model (http://tool.european-calculator.eu/intro),
- extended producer responsibility frameworks for the fossil fuel industry (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aca4e8),
- the design and application of novel GHG metrics (CO2-forcing-equivalence and the GWP* metrics) (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2020.0456),
- book chapters on the physical requirements of corporate mitigation policy, and frameworks for physical appraisal of carbon offsets (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-86803-1),
- updating the FaIR simple climate model (https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/14/3007/2021/),
- designing a novel Integrated Assessment Model emulator (https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU21/EGU21-10961.html).
See more current research here. If you are interested in any of the above, please get in touch!