ThomasWatson_2014Tom Watson joined the ERP Analysis Team in November 2014 on secondment from the Policy Studies Institute (PSI), where he works on a range of energy and climate change topics. These include the recent UKERC-funded project Scenarios for the Development of Smart Grids in the UK, which employed a range of social research techniques to develop sociotechnical scenarios for a smarter energy system to 2050, a rapid evidence assessment for Defra, which assessed the ways of evaluating the impact of complex policies on complex systems, and a report that examined the role that trade associations play in the formulation of European-level climate policy.

Tom will be at the ERP until April 2015, and will be conducting research into future options for the UK transport sector and their implications for both the wider energy system and the country’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Tom worked at the trading arm of a Big Six energy company before moving to PSI via the Association for the Conservation of Energy. He holds a master’s in Energy Policy from Exeter University and a BA in Philosophy from UCL.