About US

Dr James Glynn, PhD.

James is Founder CEO of Energy Systems Modelling Analytics Limited (ESMA Ltd.), incorporated in Galway, IRELAND in 2024-Q4.

Prior to ESMA, James was a Senior Research Scholar (Research Professor) at Columbia University’s SIPA Center on global energy policy in New York City, where he built and led the Energy Systems Modelling Analytics Program for 3 years with an annual budget of $1.6M. His team, provided quantitative modelling & analytics capabilities across both the centre’s research initiatives (Power Sector and Renewables Research, Nuclear for Climate Impact, Critical Minerals, Carbon Management, Non-Technical Barriers, Hard to Abate Industry, & Energy Opportunity Lab) and Columbia’s Climate School. He co-supervised SIPA grad students capstones, Columbia Earth & Environmental Engineering PhD students and Energy Engineering PhD students in University College Cork, IRELAND. He has previously held Research Fellow and Post-doctoral positions at EPMG-MaREI & an honorary School Fellow of Engineering awarded for teaching, PhD supervision, mentorship and funding awards won (Capacity Ph1 (€2.5M). and Chimera Projects (€1.2M)) in University College Cork, IRELAND.

He has 20 years of applied experience in energy technology research, development, and deployment, and energy systems analysis, collaborating with government departments (Energy, Environment, Finance, Taoiseach's, Foreign Affairs, State), universities, international development agencies, community leaders (Harlem & Ireland), inventors, investors, utilities, technologists, banks, NGO’s, modelling consultants, management consultants and energy analysts in Ireland, Europe, United States, China, Japan and Asia. 

He is an invited expert by European Commission, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the United Nations (UN), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Irish Government, Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), and an invited expert reviewer for the International Energy Agency's Energy Technology Perspectives (IEA-ETP) report. James has provided expert witness testimony to Government committees on energy systems decarbonisation pathways, carbon budgets and carbon capture & storage. James has provided capacity building to Irish government, United States Foreign Service Institute, Chinese, Korean and many other nations civil servants and executive education to various global management consulting firm. James published the first carbon budget Paris aligned pathways analysis for Ireland in 2018 and engaged extensively in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Irish Climate Action and Low Carbon Development  Bill 2021. During the covid pandemic James provided the first data rich analysis of the covid19 impact on Irish Electricity and transport GHG emissions.

James collaborates within the IEA-ETSAP modelling community, co-creating innovations to the TIMES Code functionality. He is leading IEA-ETSAP TIMES research projects, has lead the global ETSAP-TIAM model development, has held lead developer roles in the TIMES Ireland Model development (Irish-TIMES and TIM), global TIMES models, Chinese TIMES models, and US TIMES models.

His research publications are trans-disciplinary using integrated energy system models as a method to find insights in complex datasets & integrated systems focusing on carbon-neutral and secure future scenarios.

Dr. Glynn’s publications are available via his Google Scholar profile here:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=T8KQVOwAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

He holds a PhD in Energy Engineering (UCC), two master's degrees, Renewable energy systems and the environment (M.Sc - Strathclyde) and Economic and Environmental Modelling (M.A. Econ - UoG), and a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering (UoG), all which relate to deep technical and financial understanding of energy systems analysis across engineering, science, environment and economics. 

Dr. Glynn’s energy policy, community engagement, government, and industry policy interactions are visible via his LinkedIn profile here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesglynn/

An AI generated audio summary of his CV is here.