Dr Ruth Wood is a Senior Lecturer in Environment and Climate Change, a Research Fellow with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and Director of the EPSRC Power Networks Centre for Doctoral Training. Her research interests include the relationship between zero carbon, society and infrastructure and its effect on demand, justice and resilience to future climate change impacts. She was a contributing author to the Infrastructure Chapter of the Evidence Report for the Climate Change Risk Assessment 2017, for which she reviewed climate risks to the UK energy system and was a lead author of the 2022 Infrastructure Chapter.
Ruth’s work includes research with the Centre for Climate and Social Transformations, interpreting outputs of global mitigation scenarios for lifestyles, and working with BEIS and Ricardo AEA to develop adaptation indicators for power networks. She was a co-I for the EPSRC funded projects MYStore which examined energy storage options and RESNET (Resilient Electricity Networks for Great Britain) for which she led a work package to develop and apply a scenario tool to explore future scenarios of spatially resolved diurnal electricity demand profiles in Great Britain. The scenarios were used to assess the resilience of the transmission network to future climate impacts.
While at Tyndall Manchester she has also been involved in a range of projects: examining overheating in buildings due to climate change; evaluating demand side response measures undertaken by distribution network operators; identifying research methods for modelling energy and water demand; applying input-output consumption based emissions modelling to assess the greenhouse gas impacts of food consumption; evaluating the greenhouse gas emissions from shale gas extraction, and the development of a new emissions apportionment method for aviation for application at a sub-national scale. Her work on aviation emissions accounting won a best paper prize at the European Transport Conference 2008.
Ruth originally trained as a Chemist specialising in environmental science at the University of Bristol graduating in 2001 with a 1st Class (Hons) MSci. After graduating she worked as a civil servant in policy development before joining the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia to undertake an interdisciplinary environmental science PhD. Her PhD research, completed in 2007, explored the co-benefits of greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions reduction for cities and regions. She has published her research findings through peer reviewed journals, industry publications and conferences, more widely through public seminars and lectures and through the medium of comedy appearing at Bright Club in Manchester, the Green Man Festival 2012 and Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013.
