Francis X. Johnson

Francis X. Johnson has over twenty-five years of experience in interdisciplinary energy/climate analyses, capacity-building and research, focusing especially on biomass and land use in relation to climate and development goals. His work addresses environmental impacts, socio-technical innovation, policy analysis, market development, institutional design and governance mechanisms across different scales and sectors. He currently leads the SEI Initiative on Governing Bioeconomy Pathways. Prior to joining SEI, he was a Senior Research Associate in the Energy Analysis program at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, USA.

He was a lead author for the IPCC special report on Climate Change and Land. He has served as an advisor or expert for international initiatives or programmes run by UNIDO, FAO, SCOPE/UNESCO and the European Commission. He has developed projects and case studies in more than twenty different countries in Europe, Africa and Asia and has managed or coordinated several international networks and programmes. He has been co-editor of three books and two conference proceedings, was editor for eight years of the periodical Renewable Energy for Development and has been co-author on more than forty peer-reviewed publications.

He holds a B.S. in Systems Science and Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. in Operations Research from the George Washington University and an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He completed the pre-dissertation phase of Ph.D. studies in Geography and Environmental Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University and wrote his Ph.D. dissertation in Energy and Climate Studies at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.