Rate My Professor Richard Wood

Professor Richard Wood is a part-time professor at the School of Environment and a casual senior consultant at the Institute for Regional Futures at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Sydney. His research focuses on understanding the socio-economic drivers of global environmental change, with particular emphasis on quantitative modelling and policy-relevant applications. Wood is a co-developer of the EXIOBASE global multi-regional input-output (MRIO) database, widely used to quantify environmental pressures across global supply chains. His expertise includes carbon footprints, encompassing Scope 3 accounting and applications in sustainable finance and investment; emissions embodied in trade, including border carbon adjustments; sustainable consumption and equity analysis; and circular economy assessment and modelling. He is proficient in multi-regional input-output analysis, life-cycle assessment (LCA), carbon footprint and environmental indicator modelling, and scenario development and systems modelling. XIO-SA, where he serves as director, has released a Scope 3 (spend-based) emission factor dataset for Australia. Additionally, Wood is an adjunct professor at the Industrial Ecology Programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Industrial Ecology. He previously held a professorship at NTNU from 2016 to 2022.

Richard Wood has over 100 publications, including highly influential works such as 'EXIOBASE 3: Developing a time series of detailed environmentally extended multi-regional input-output tables' (Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2018), 'Environmental impact assessment of household consumption' (Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2016), 'Agricultural and forestry trade drives large share of tropical deforestation emissions' (Global Environmental Change, 2019), 'Input-output analysis and carbon footprinting: an overview of applications' (Economic Systems Research, 2009), and 'Increasing impacts of land use on biodiversity and carbon sequestration driven by population and economic growth' (Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2019). His research has advanced fields like environmental-economic accounting and climate policy. Wood has been named a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher (top 1% globally) for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2025.