James Skea

Sir James Ferguson "Jim" Skea CBE FRSE ( sk-EE; born 1 September 1953) is a British academic. He is currently Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for its seventh assessment cycle, and a Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College London. Before being elected as chair, Skea was co-chair of Working Group III of the IPCC. He was a founding member of the UK Government's Committee on Climate Change and currently chairs Scotland's Just Transition Commission. He was a co-author of the IPCC 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. In July 2023, Skea was elected as Chair of the IPCC.

Education

Skea studied at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated with a BSc degree in Mathematical Physics with first-class honours in 1975. He gained his PhD degree in Energy Research from Clare College, Cambridge, in 1978.

Academic career

From 1978 to 1981, Skea was a research assistant in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. He then worked at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as a research associate and later visiting assistant professor from 1981 to 1983. He was employed at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex as a Research Fellow (1983–1989), Senior Research Fellow (1989–1993) and a Professorial Fellow (1994–1998). Skea was Director of the Policy Studies Institute from 1998 to 2004. He has held an appointment as Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College London's Centre for Environmental Policy since 2009.