CURRENT
Steven J. Davis
Director, Professor of Earth System Science
Steve Davis is a Professor of Earth System Science at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute of Energy, and Director of the Sustainable Solutions Lab.
Background
Prior to his science career, Steve worked as a lawyer to venture-backed companies in Silicon Valley, and holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of Virginia School of Law and the University of Florida, where he double-majored in Political Science and Philosophy.
Steve spent 11 years as a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine and a year as the first Head of Science at Watershed before joining the faculty at Stanford in 2024. He has been a highly-cited researcher (top 1%) since 2019 and is well known for his work in earth system science, emissions and energy scenarios, climate impacts and solutions, and corporate climate strategy.
He and his group have published seminal papers assessing carbon emissions and air pollution impacts embodied in international trade, committed emissions related to existing energy infrastructure, the economic and biophysical limits of various carbon removal approaches, interactions among food-energy-water systems, drivers of agriculture and land-use change emissions, and the key challenges and opportunities for net-zero emissions energy systems.
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 U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment, and is an active member of the Technical Council of the Science Based Targets Initiative.
Contact
- In the lab
- Since 2012-10
- Site
- earth.stanford.edu/people/steven-davis
PUBLICATIONS · 4 of 185
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FEATURED · Science · 2026 · FOOD · MITIGATION
Assessing the net climate benefit of improved grazing intensity in global rangelands
Robert S. Powell, Steven J. Davis, David G. Encarnation, Johannes Piippoonen, Jinfeng Chang, Courney M. Currier, Karl-Heinz Erb, Samuel Eze, Chaopeng Hong, Pierre Ploton, Shuai Ren, Pete Smith, Jishuai Su, Giuseppe Tempio, Cesar Terrer, Dominik Wisser, Fengwei Xu, Adam F.A. Pellegrini
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FEATURED · Nature · 2026 · CLIMATE · WATER · IMPACTS
Forest carbon protocols underestimate climate-driven carbon loss risks
Chao Wu, Grayson Badgley, Michael L. Goulden, James T. Randerson, Anna T. Trugman, Jonathan A. Wang, Linqing Yang, Nezha Acil, Susan C. Cook-Patton, Danny Cullenward, Steven J. Davis, Christopher A. Williams, William R. L. Anderegg
Existing buffer pools in U.S. forest climate mitigation projects are too small by an average factor of 6.3 to protect against reversal risks of natural disturbances like drought, pests, and fire.
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Science · 2018 · ENERGY · MITIGATION
Net-zero emissions energy systems
Steven J. Davis, Nathan S. Lewis, Matthew Shaner, Sonia Aggarwal, Doug Arent, Inês L. Azevedo, Sally M. Benson, Thomas Bradley, Jack Brouwer, Yet-Ming Chiang, Christopher T. M. Clack, Armond Cohen, Stephen Doig, Jae Edmonds, Paul Fennell, Christopher B. Field, Bryan Hannegan, Bri-Mathias Hodge, Martin I. Hoffert, Eric Ingersoll, Paulina Jaramillo, Klaus S. Lackner, Katharine J. Mach, Michael Mastrandrea, Joan Ogden, Per F. Peterson, Daniel L. Sanchez, Daniel Sperling, Joseph Stagner, Jessika E. Trancik, Chi-Jen Yang, Ken Caldeira
2018 2,704 cites 2026 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2010 · ENERGY · MITIGATION
Consumption-based accounting of CO₂ emissions
2010 2,493 cites 2026In the news: New York Times·Nature Climate Change·BBC·The Economist·NPR, All Things Considered, “For Developing Nations, Exports