Francis X. Johnson

Francis X. Johnson is Senior Research Fellow and Climate Lead at the SEI-Asia centre in Bangkok. He has more than thirty years of experience in socio-economic and environmental analysis related to sustainable energy transitions, climate policy, land/biomass use, and bioeconomy pathways. He served as a Lead Author for the IPCC AR6 Special Report on Climate Change and Land (August 2019) and was a member of the writing team for the IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report (March 2023). He was a Contributing Author to the IPBES Special report on Sustainable use of wild species and the UNCCD Global Land Outlook. During 2015-2017, he was seconded to the SEI-Africa centre in Nairobi, and has otherwise been based at SEI-HQ in Stockholm. Prior to joining SEI, he was a Senior Research Associate in the Energy Analysis program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA.

He has project or field experience in over twenty countries in Africa, Asia and Europe, working with a wide range of stakeholders on energy, climate, land use, carbon removal, and/or biomass strategies. He has led over thirty international projects and has been Principal or co-Principal investigator in research funded by the European Commission, SIDA, and other public and private donors. He has led or co-led expert groups and/or publications for international initiatives associated with UNIDO, FAO, UNEP, SCOPE/UNESCO, UNCTAD, the European Commission and the Environment Committee of the European Parliament. He has been an author on more than 80 peer-reviewed publications, has edited five books or proceedings, and has given more than 100 invited talks at conferences, workshops and seminars.

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 Johns Hopkins University and wrote his Ph.D. dissertation in Energy and Climate Studies at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.