Professor

Steven J. Davis

Professor of Earth System Science

Steve Davis is a professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He leads the Stanford Sustainable Solutions Lab, a research group dedicated to quantifying how different human activities are affecting climate and air quality, how those environmental changes in turn jeopardize human wellbeing, and the relative priority of solutions.

He and his group have published seminal papers assessing carbon emissions, air pollution and water resources embodied in international trade, committed emissions related to existing energy infrastructure, the economic and biophysical limits of various carbon dioxide removal approaches, interactions among food-energy-water systems, global and regional drivers of agriculture land-use change emissions, and the opportunities and challenges for net-zero emissions energy and food systems.

Steve is a highly-cited researcher who worked as a lawyer to venture-backed companies in Silicon Valley prior to his science career. He holds a PhD in Geological and Environmental Science from Stanford University, a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law, and a BA from the University of Florida where he double-majored in Political Science and Philosophy.

Steve was a Contributing Author of two Working Group III chapters in the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), serves on the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Carbon Project, was the Lead Author of the Mitigation chapter in the recent U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment, and is a member of the Technical Council of the Science Based Targets Initiative. He was also the first Head of Climate Science for the Watershed enterprise sustainability platform, and currently serves as the Chair of the company’s Science Advisory Board.

Recent Publications:

Davis, S., Dumit, A., Li, M., Maldonado, Y., Steffen, M., Stevenson, M., Boldyreva, T., & Suh, S. (2025). The importance of multiregional accounting for corporate carbon emissions. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67759-5
Wongel, A., Freese, L., Virgüez, E., Davis, S., & Caldeira, K. (2025). Economic development, air conditioning and adaptation to warming. Environmental Research Letters, 20(12), 124045. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae1f2a
Zhang, Q., Wang, Y., Xiao, Q., Geng, G., Davis, S., Liu, X., Yang, J., Liu, J., Huang, W., He, C., Luo, B., Martin, R., Brauer, M., Randerson, J., & He, K. (2025). Long-range PM2.5 pollution and health impacts from the 2023 Canadian wildfires. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09482-1
Jiang, H., Yao, L., Qin, J., Bai, Y., Brandt, M., Lian, X., Davis, S., Lu, N., Zhao, W., Liu, T., & Zhou, C. (2025). Globally interconnected solar-wind system addresses future electricity demands. Nature Communications, 16, 4523. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59879-9
Cheng, J., Tong, D., Zhao, H., Xu, R., Qin, Y., Zhang, Q., Bhuwalka, K., Caldeira, K., & Davis, S. (2025). Trade risks to energy security in net-zero emissions energy scenarios. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02305-1
Seibel, S., Luarkie, R., Cardenas, D., Mayer, C., Sanchez, R., Dannenberg, M., Panek, B. ., Bond, A., Gordon, Z., Morishige, D., Hadrick, K., Stahnk, G., Fofrich, R., Davis, S., Tallman, R., Bowser, B., & Bazilian, M. (2025). A path to US Tribal energy sovereignty. Science, 387, 372. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adt7820
Roijen, E., Miller, S., & Davis, S. (2025). Building materials could store more than 16 billion tonnes of CO2 annually. Science, 387(6730), 176-182. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adq85
Wynes, S., Davis, S., Dickau, M., Ly, S., Maibach, E., Rogelj, J., Zickfeld, K., & Matthews, H. (2024). Perceptions of carbon dioxide emission reductions and future warming among climate experts. Communications Earth & Environment, 5(1), 498. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01661-8