Christian Brand

Oxford University Centre for the Environment

Christian is a Senior Researcher, sharing this responsibility with Dr Jillian Anable. His research focus is on transport and the environment with particular emphasis on climate change mitigation, policy assessment and analysis and strategic technology assessment within the transport sector.

He has over ten years' experience in both consultancy and academic environments, focusing on integrated analysis of the interface between transport, energy and the environment as well as seven years experience in strategic transport-energy-environment modelling to provide policy support to national and local governments and the wider research community. His extensive experience in conducting feasibility studies based on techno-economic assessment of transport technologies and measures and the many years experience in developing complex models and evaluation tools using spreadsheet, relational database and web-development software are vital for the research undertaken in UKERC's Demand Reduction Theme.

For UKERC he is working on scenario development, carbon modelling of the UK transport system and related policy analysis, done in close collaboration with Dr Jillian Anable at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. Apart from UKERC, Christian is also the main researcher at Oxford on the TSEC-Biosys project, which aims to conduct innovative multi and inter-disciplinary research from a whole systems perspective. TSEC-Biosys provides authoritative and independent answers on technical, economic, environmental and social issues related to the development of bioenergy in the UK. Christian is working specifically on demand segmentation of the transport sector, scenario development, multi-criteria decision analysis of bioenergy supply chains and related policy analysis. Other work includes research for the European Environment Agency (with TRL) as well as for Sustrans on carbon assessment and monitoring of the organisation's sustainable transport projects.

Previously, Christian completed his DPhil at Oxford University on "Personal Travel and Climate Change: exploring greenhouse gas emissions from personal travel activity of individuals and households". Prior to this, he was working on a series of research projects for the TSU and ECI. His main responsibilities included a number of research projects on Integrated Travel Emissions Profiles, Tools for Evaluating Strategically Integrated Transport (TEST) and Transport and Access to Health Care - The Potential of New Information Technology. From 2001-2004, Christian ran the Transport & the Environment option of the ECI led MSc in Environmental Change and Management. He continues to supervise MSc students on their Masters thesis projects, with focus on transport related topics.

Prior to 2001, Christian was employed in the private sector as a Senior Consultant in Transport and Environment with AEA Technology Environment, as a Transport Analyst with the former government energy agency ETSU (5 years, mainly EC funded transport and environment research and project management) and in IT support with Ernst & Young and IBM (3 years). He holds a DPhil (OXON) in Geography (OUCE, Oxford University) and two MSc degrees in Environmental Technology (ICCET, Imperial College) and Physics (University of Heidelberg, Germany).

Christian's current main research interests are in:
Sustainable solutions to transport's negative environmental (air pollution, climate change, noise) and economic (congestion, energy source depletion) impacts
Lower carbon technologies and policies in transport and domestic energy to mitigate climate change
Climate change mitigation policies in transport and energy sectors, including personal carbon allowances and domestic tradable quotas
Awareness raising and education in transport and environment