David McCollum profile picture

David McCollum

Guest Senior Research Scholar

Energy, Climate, and Environment Program

Guest Senior Research Scholar

Sustainable Service Systems Research Group

Energy, Climate, and Environment

Guest Senior Research Scholar

Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Research Group

Energy, Climate, and Environment

Biography

David L. McCollum is a Senior Scientist in the Transportation Analytics and Decision Sciences (TADS) Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with expertise spanning energy-economics, engineering, public policy analysis, and corporate advisory services. His research attempts to inform state, national, and global energy and environmental issues on matters related to, among others, deep decarbonization, net-zero emissions pathways, energy-transport-climate policies, electric sector planning, end-use sector electrification (transport, buildings, industry), sustainable development goals (including inter-dependencies), financing needs for the energy system transformation, and human dimensions of climate change. He employs energy-economic systems and integrated assessment models in support of this work (e.g., MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM, TIMES-MARKAL, REGEN).

Before joining Oak Ridge National Laboratory, McCollum was a Senior Research Scholar with the Energy Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, and a Principal Technical Leader at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, California. He currently holds secondary appointments as Guest Senior Research Scholar at IIASA; Research Fellow in Energy and Environment at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee; and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London. The latter is in his capacity with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Technical Support Unit (TSU - Working Group III) for the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). He previously led activities within the Global Energy Assessment; IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5 - WG III); IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C; and other international, multi-stakeholder initiatives, such as for the World Bank and International Council for Science (ICSU).

McCollum received a PhD and MS in Transportation Technology and Policy from the University of California, Davis (USA), Institute of Transportation Studies; an MS in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the same institution; and a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tennessee (USA).


Last update: 22 NOV 2021

Publications

McCollum, D., Zhou, W., Bertram, C., de Boer, H.-S., Bosetti, V., Busch, S., Despres, J., Drouet, L., Emmerling, J., Fay, M., Fricko, O. , Fujimori, S. , Gidden, M. , Harmsen, M., Huppmann, D. , Iyer, G., Krey, V. , Kriegler, E., Nicolas, C., Pachauri, S. , Parkinson, S. , Poblete Cazenave, M., Rafaj, P. , Rao, N. , Rozenberg, J., Schmitz, A., Schöpp, W. , van Vuuren, D., & Riahi, K. (2018). Energy investment needs for fulfilling the Paris Agreement and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Nature Energy 3 (7) 589-599. 10.1038/s41560-018-0179-z.

Parkinson, S. , Krey, V. , Huppmann, D. , Kahil, T. , McCollum, D., Fricko, O. , Byers, E. , Gidden, M. , Mayor, B., Khan, Z., Raptis, C., Rao, N. , Johnson, N., Wada, Y. , Djilali, N., & Riahi, K. (2018). Balancing clean water-climate change mitigation tradeoffs. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-18-005

Jewell, J. , McCollum, D., Emmerling, J., Bertram, C., Gernaat, D.E.H.J., Krey, V. , Paroussos, L., Berger, L., Fragkiadakis, K., Keppo, I., Failali, N.S., Tavoni, M., van Vuuren, D., Vinichenko, V., & Riahi, K. (2018). Limited emission reductions from fuel subsidy removal except in energy exporting regions. Nature 554 (7691) 229-233. 10.1038/nature25467.