Steve Smith is the Executive Director of CO2RE. Based at the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, he is also Executive Director of the Oxford Net Zero initiative. Previously, he co-led the Climate Science Team at the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, where he played a role in the legislation of the UK’s net zero target, and on developing the Government’s approach to Greenhouse Gas Removal. He holds a PhD in atmospheric physics from Imperial College London and is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society.  

Steve’s research lies at the intersection of climate science and policy. He has published on topics including the governance of carbon dioxide removal, and metrics for comparing the emissions of different greenhouse gases. He is an author of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report and co-developer of https://zerotracker.net. Also active in communicating climate change to children and wider audiences, Steve helped write Climate Crisis for Beginners by Usborne Books and contributed to the Ladybird book on Climate Change.