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IPCC selects CIED Directors as Lead Authors of its Sixth Assessment Report

Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of the Centre on Innovation and Energy Demand (CIED) at the University of Sussex and Professor Frank Geels, Co-Director of CIED and based at the University of Manchester, have been selected as Lead Authors of the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Both researchers will be part of Working Group III, responsible for assessing the mitigation of climate change. Professor Sovacool will be a lead author for Chapter 4 on ‘Mitigation and development pathways in the near-to mid-term’, while Professor Geels will be lead author for Chapter 5 on ‘Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation’.

Professor Sovacool commented:

‘I am honoured and humbled to be a part of the world’s premier scientific body seeking to identify actionable solutions to climate change. Without understatement, climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, and the IPCC is working on cutting edge solutions across the disciplines of science and technology as well as economics, public policy, and ethics’.

Professor Geels added:

‘I am delighted to work with a group of world-leading scholars on assessing climate mitigation research with regard to demand, social acceptance of solutions, sectors/systems, capacity for change, feasible rates of change, actors and their relationships.’

Lead authors for the working groups were nominated by government representatives, heads of international organisations and members of the IPCC Bureau and selected by the bureaus of the three IPCC working groups.

The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report is a comprehensive scientific assessment of climate change. It includes three working groups: Working Group I assesses the physical science basis of climate change; Working Group II is responsible for impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; and Working Group III assesses the mitigation of climate change. The outline of the report will be agreed in 2019 and finalised in 2022.

The IPCC is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. It provides policy makers with regular scientific assessments concerning climate change, its implications and risks as well as to put forwards adaptation and mitigation strategies.

 

Read the original press release by the IPCC.

 

Read the Chapter Outline of the Working Group III Contribution to the report.