Professor Aled Jones

Aled is Director of the Global Sustainability Institute. His research focuses on risks and opportunities in finance and the geopolitics of global resource trends such as food, energy, and biodiversity.

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Background

Aled is the Inaugural Director of the Global Sustainability Institute (GSI) and helps lead the University’s efforts in sustainability including student experience and research.

The GSI is a high profile research institute within ARU, and has grown rapidly since its formation in early 2011. They are a dynamic group of researchers involved in a wide variety of research projects, collaborating with numerous external partners and departments across the university. In 2013 they launched a new Masters in Sustainability in partnership with the Eden Project. The GSI has received funding from UK Government, foundations, charities, European research programmes and business and 6 of the 7 UK Research Councils. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) the majority of our research was classed as world leading or internationally excellent and was highlighted for its impact.

Aled was chair of a working group under the Capital Markets Climate Initiative (CMCI) on behalf of the UK Minister for Climate Change in the Department for Energy and Climate Change and a member of the UK-US Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food Resilience for the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office. He is a member of the Expert Panel for the HRH Prince of Wales’ Accounting for Sustainability (A4S) and a member of the Science Advisory Group for the UK Global Food Security programme.

He is the lead for a £2 million BBSRC research project exploring food resilience in the UK awarded in 2024, and in 2020 was Co-Investigator on a project led by the University of Exeter, that won £4 million from the UK Government to explore energy policy modelling. In 2016 he was Co-Investigator of an ESRC Centre of Excellence, led by the University of Surrey, a £6 million investment over 5 years. He has also been Co-Investigator on the AHRC Debating Nature’s Value network, and a Royal Society APEX award.

Aled chairs the Biodiversity Working Party of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and was made an Honorary Fellow in 2017. He was an invited author on Chapter 7 (international dimensions of risk) for the UK Government’s 3rd Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3).

In 2015 Aled won the Highly Commended for Sustainability Professional of the Year as part of the Green Gown Awards and was a finalist for the Finance For The Future Awards 2018. In 2022 he won one of the Frank Reddington essay prizes of the Institute of Actuaries.

Research interests

Aled leads a number of research projects in food, biodiversity, climate, energy, and resource management. His research particularly focuses on the finance sector and government and how they will respond to the impacts of global resource trends, biodiversity, energy, and climate change.

Areas of research supervision

Aled supervises several doctoral researchers in a wide variety of areas. He currently has six doctoral researchers.

The following have completed their PhDs: Dr Pia Mukherjee, Dr Razvan Dinita, Dr Samir Saran, Dr Davide Natalini, Dr Efundem Agboraw, Dr Norbert Edomah, Dr Sanjay Chaturvedi, Dr Roberto Pasqualino, Dr Lauren Stabler, Dr Veronika Torma, Dr Sarah Hafner, Dr Ian Trim, Dr Danirla Nsame and Dr Rahul Chavan.

Aled has also been an external examiner for De Montfort University, Open University, University of Guyana and the University of Cambridge.

Teaching

• Major Project Module Leader, MSc Sustainability

Qualifications

• PhD, Cosmology, University of Cambridge
• BA/MA 1st class, Natural Science (Theoretical Physics), University of Cambridge
• PGCert (HE), Anglia Ruskin University

Memberships, editorial boards

• Honorary Fellow, Institute & Faculty of Actuaries
• Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
• Expert Panel Member, HRH Prince of Wales' Accounting for Sustainability (A4S)
• Member, Science Advisory Group, UK Global Food Security programme

Research grants, consultancy, knowledge exchange

• EPSRC Energy-SHINES (CoI): Energy Social sciences and Humanities Insights for Non-Energy Sectors (funded by UKERC) to foreground the voices of women SSH researchers, £75k (2022-2023) 
• Royal Society APEX Award (CoI): How to feed the UK amid catastrophic food system disruption?, Led by University of York, £45k (2022-2023) 
• EU Marie Curie PLEDGES (PI): Host for Ilaria Perissi building a model for the European net zero transition. (2022-2024)
• BEIS-CIFF EEIST (CoI): Exploring the use of modelling in energy transition policy development in Brazil, China, India, EU and the UK: Led by University of Exeter, £4 million over 3 years (2020-2023)
• STFC Food Network+ data techniques (PI): Exploring data techniques and their application for analysing historic food price shocks (2018 & 2019) 
• EU H2020 MEDEAS (CoI): A new socio-economic model for energy transitions in Europe (2016-2019)
• ESRC Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CoI): Led by University of Surrey, £6 million over five years. The GSI developed models of a transition to sustainable prosperity (2016-2020)

Selected recent publications

Royston, S., Foulds, C., Pasqualino, R. and Jones, A. (2023) ‘Masters of the machinery: The politics of economic modelling within European energy policy’, Energy Policy, 173, 113386.

Perissi, I. and Jones, A. (2022) ‘Investigation on EU27 Member States' decarbonising strategies: barriers and opportunities to achieve EU carbon neutrality by 2050’, Sustainability, 14(8), 4728.

Bharadwa, B., Jones, A., Fifield, J. and Sutcliffe, S. (2022) ‘Biodiversity & justice’, British Actuarial Journal, 27, E13.

Jones, A., Allison, R., Bedenham, G., Bharadwa, B., Clyde, J., Darsley, A. and Spencer, N. (2022) ‘The importance of biodiversity risks’, British Actuarial Journal, 27, E9.

Hafner, S., Jones, A., Anger-Kraavi, A. and Monasterolo, I. (2021) ‘Modelling the macroeconomic implications of a ‘closing the green finance gap’ policy scenario within a low-carbon energy transition’, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 40, pp. 536.

King, N. and Jones, A. (2021) ‘An Analysis of the Potential for the Formation of ‘Nodes of Persisting Complexity’ during a Hypothetical Global Socio-economic ‘De-complexification’ Event’, Sustainability, 13(15), 8161.

Hafner, S., Jones, A. and Anger-Kraavi, A. (2021) ‘Economic impacts of achieving a net-zero emissions target in the power sector’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 312, 127610.

Clarke, F., Jones, A. and Smith, L. (2021) ‘Building Peace through sports projects: A Scoping review’, Sustainability, 13(4), 2129.

Perissi, I., Martelloni, G., Bardi U., Natalini D., Jones A., Nikolaev A., Eggler, L., Baumann, M., Samso, R. and Solé, J. (2021) ‘Cross-validation of the MEDEAS energy-economy-environment model in comparison to the Integrated MARKAL-EFOM System (TIMES) and the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning system (LEAP)’, Sustainability, 13(4), 1967.

Buchmann, K., Jones, A., Zhang, Y. and Schonecker, J. (2021) ‘Key challenges in crossborder interconnector finance’, Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2021.1872347

Jones, A., Taylor, N., Hafner, S. and Kitchen, J. (2021) ‘Finance for a future of sustainable prosperity’, AREA, 53(1), pp. 21. 

King, N. and Jones, A. (2020) 'An Assessment of Civil Nuclear Enabling and Amelioration Factors for EROI Analysis’, Sustainability, 12(20), 8414 

Sole, J., Samso, R., Buchmann, K., Jones, A. and Natalini, D. (2020) ‘Modelling the renewable transition: scenarios and pathways for a decarbonised future using pymedeas, a new open source energy systems model’, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 132, 110105.

Hafner, S., Monasterolo, I. Anger, A. and Jones, A. (2020) ‘Emergence of ‘new economics’ energy transition models: a review’, Ecological Economics, 177, 106779.

Jones, A., Taylor, N., Hafner, S. and Kitchen, J. (2020) ‘Finance for a future of sustainable prosperity’, AREA. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12631

Malesios, C., Jones, N. and Jones, A. (2020) ‘A change-point analysis of food price shocks’, Climate Risk Management, 27, 100208.

Hafner, S., Jones, A., Anger, A. and Pohl, J. (2020) ‘Closing the green finance gap: a systems perspective’, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 34, pp. 26.

Natalini, D., Bravo, G., Jones A. and Phillips, A. (2019) ‘Global food security and food riots - an agent based modelling approach’, Food Security, 11(5), pp. 1153.