Jim Watson is Director of the Sussex Energy Group at Sussex University in the UK and Deputy Leader of the Tyndall Centre Climate Change and Energy Programme. Jim trained as an engineer at Imperial College London and has a PhD in science and technology policy from Sussex University. Over the past 15 years, he has managed and conducted research on a wide range of energy and climate policy issues. He has particular expertise in energy innovation policy, decentralized energy systems, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power and energy security. He frequently works with UK government departments, and was a lead expert with the UK Foresight programme on its recent project on energy systems and the built environment, published as Powering Our Lives in November 2008.

Jim has extensive international experience, including over ten years working on energy scenarios and low carbon innovation in China – and more recent work with colleagues on low carbon technology transfer to India. The most recent output from this research is a Tyndall Centre report: China’s Energy Transition (co-authored by Tao Wang) and launched in Beijing in April 2009. Between 2006 and 2008, Jim was a steering group member of the UK-Japan project on low carbon societies. In summer 2008, he spent three months as a Visiting Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Jim is a Council Member of the British Institute for Energy Economics and a Trustee of the Koru Foundation. He was a Specialist Adviser with the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee from 2006-2009.