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Professor Charlie Wilson

BA, MSc, PhD

Charlie Wilson is a Jackson Senior Research Fellow at Oriel College, and a Professor of Energy and Climate Change in the Environmental Change Institute at the School of Geography and the Environment for which he also leads the energy programme.

Charlie also holds a visiting research scholar position at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria.

Prior to joining Oriel and Oxford, Charlie spent 11 years with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UK). He has a PhD from the University of British Columbia (Canada) on the social and behavioural determinants of energy use. Prior to his PhD, he worked for a number of years in the private sector in both renewable energy and carbon finance, and climate change policy.

Research Interests

Charlie’s research interests lie at the intersection between innovation, people, and policy in the field of energy and climate change mitigation. He works both at a systems level on scenarios and modelling of net-zero transformations, and at a micro level on innovation processes, technology adoption, and pro-environmental behaviour. His research is supported by grants from the European Research Council (ERC), Horizon Europe, and the UK Research Councils. Much of his work currently is on digitalisation and its impacts on energy, materials, and carbon emissions.

Selected Publications

For a full list of Charlie’s publications, please go to his Google Scholar or ORCiD pages.

A few recent examples of high-impact publications include:

Rao, N. D. and C. Wilson (2021). “Advancing energy and well-being research.” Nature Sustainability. doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00775-7

Kikstra, J. S., A. Vinca, F. Lovat, B. Boza-Kiss, B. van Ruijven, C. Wilson, J. Rogelj, B. Zakeri, O. Fricko and K. Riahi (2021). “Climate mitigation scenarios with persistent COVID-19-related energy demand changes.” Nature Energy. doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00904-8

Wilson, C., L. Kerr, F. Sprei, E. Vrain and M. Wilson (2020). “Potential climate benefits of digital consumer innovations.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 45: 113-144. doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-012320-082424

Wilson, C., A. Grubler, N. Bento, S. De Stercke and C. Zimm. (2020). “Granular technologies to accelerate decarbonization.” Science 368(6486): 36-39. doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz8060