Dr Radhika Khosla

Associate Professor

Profile

Dr Radhika Khosla is Associate Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment and Research Director of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Oxford. She is the Programme Leader in Zero Carbon Energy Use at Oxford’s ZERO Institute.

Radhika’s research portfolio includes being Principal Investigator of the Oxford Martin School's interdisciplinary and multi-country programme on the Future of Cooling, which examines rising extreme heat and the unprecedented increase in cooling energy demand in relation to the sustainable development goals. She is the Co-Investigator of Oxford Net Zero, an interdisciplinary research programme aimed at informing effective, equitable, and ambitious climate action, where she co-leads the workstream on inclusive and just net zero transitions.

Radhika works closely at the interface of research and policy. She is Editor-in-Chief of the high-impact peer reviewed journal, Environmental Research Letters. She has been Special Scientific Advisor to the UK’s House of Commons Environment Audit Committee for the inquiry on heat resilience and sustainable cooling (2023-24). She serves on the UK Government’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office UK-India Advisory Board.

She has supported authorship of a number of international scientific reports and is lead author of the UNEP’s spotlight report on the first Global Cooling Watch (2023). She has also been an author of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report (2020) and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (2022).

An urban climatologist by training, her work seeks to advance understanding of one of the most fundamental questions of our time: how can societies improve human well-being while preserving and enhancing the natural environment? Her interdisciplinary research examines the productive tensions between energy consumption trajectories, urban transitions, and climate change governance – in the context of development – that lie at the heart of this global challenge.

Radhika has led research agendas and international knowledge networks on cooling, urban energy demand, sustainable development, and climate change policy. Using socio-technical systems analysis she examines these themes across levels of governance. Her research priorities include interrogating how, when, and why does energy use change as households urbanize and lifestyles change? What forms of governance and political rationalities characterize the varied urban responses to climate change, given their (often competing) objectives to provide urban services? Whether, and how, can emerging economies accelerate energy demand transitions? And how can we understand and equitably shape the future of global cooling demand in response to unprecedented extreme heat?

In 2023, she received an Honourable Mention for the Bina Agarwal Prize in Ecological Economics for her work on energy consumption pathways. As Research Director of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, she helps bridge research and networks on India at Oxford and international and was recognized as one of the ‘most influential people’ in UK-India relations (2019).

Radhika's other current academic affiliation is at the University of Pennsylvania (USA). She is on the boards of various organizations, journals and book presses; and holds a range of advisory roles within and beyond Oxford. Previously, she has been a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (India), and Staff Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (USA). Radhika holds a PhD in the Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago and an undergraduate and master's degrees in Physics from the University of Oxford.

Projects

Teaching

Spaces, Infrastructure and Technology for Net Zero, Sustainable Development, for the MSc in Enterprise and the Environment

Current graduate research students

Media coverage

Radhika's research has been covered widely in over 2,700 articles across 53 countries since 2021, including by The New York Times, The Times, The Independent, Reuters, the FT, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, CNN, Time Magazine, Times of India, The Conversation and Carbon Brief. She has appeared on podcasts and broadcast television including the Sky News Daily Climate Show, Channel 5 News (1 million+ live viewers) and DW News (47,000 views).

The Conversation:

Carbon Brief (reposted at the World Economic Forum):

The Time Magazine:

‘Why India Has a Point at the Paris Climate Talks’

Publications

Journal (48)

Open

Majumdar R and others, ‘Using Norm Networks to Map Cultural Differences in Predictors of Proenvironmental Behavior in the United States and India’ [2025] Motivation Science

Palafox-Alcantar P and others, ‘Servitization for the Energy Transition: The Case of Enabling Cooling-As-a-Service (CaaS)’ (2024) 482 Journal of Cleaner Production 144190

Khosla R, ‘Q&Amp;A With Radhika Khosla: Taking the Heat Out of Warming Cities’ (2024) 7 One Earth 1335

Mazzone A and others, ‘Understanding Thermal Justice and Systemic Cooling Poverty from the Margins: Intersectional Perspectives from Rio De Janeiro’ (2024) 29 Local Environment 1026

Puttick S and others, ‘Knowledge, Crisis and (un)certainty in Climate Change Education in India’ [2023] British Educational Research Journal

Trotter P and others, ‘The Role of Supply Chains for the Sustainability Transformation of Global Food Systems: A large‐scale, Systematic Review of Food Cold Chains’ (2023) 27 Journal of Industrial Ecology 1429

Mazzone A and others, ‘Understanding Systemic Cooling Poverty’ (2023) 6 Nature Sustainability 1533

Miranda N and others, ‘Change in Cooling Degree Days With Global Mean Temperature Rise Increasing from 1.5 °C to 2.0 °C’ (2023) 6 Nature Sustainability 1326

Miranda N and others, ‘Metrics for the Emissions of F-Gas Refrigerants’ (2023) 58 Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments

Khosla R and others, ‘Can ‘Net Zero’ Still Be an Instrument of Climate Justice?’ (2023) 18 Environmental Research Letters

Lizana J and others, ‘Overcoming the Incumbency and Barriers to Sustainable Cooling’ (2022) 3 Buildings and Cities 1075

Steg L and others, ‘A Method to Identify Barriers to and Enablers of Implementing Climate Change Mitigation Options’ (2022) 5 One Earth 1216

Palafox-Alcantar P and others, ‘Circular Economy for Cooling: A Review to Develop a Systemic Framework for Production Networks’ (2022) 379 Journal of Cleaner Production

Mazzone A and others, ‘Indigenous Cosmologies of Energy for a Sustainable Energy Future’ (2022) 8 Nature Energy 19

Khosla R and others, ‘Sustainable Cooling in a Warming World: Technologies, Cultures, and Circularity’ (2022) 47 Annual Review of Environment and Resources 449

Fankhauser S and others, ‘The Meaning of Net Zero and How to Get It Right’ (2021) 12 Nature Climate Change 15

Khosla R, Jani A and Perera-Salazar R, ‘Health Risks of Extreme Heat’ (2021) 375 British Medical Journal

Miranda N and others, ‘Bibliometric Analysis and Landscape of Actors in Passive Cooling Research’ (2021) 149 Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

Mazzone A and Khosla R, ‘Socially Constructed or Physiologically Informed? Placing Humans at the Core of Understanding Cooling Needs’ (2021) 77 Energy Research and Social Science

Khosla R and others, ‘The What, Why, and How of Changing Cooling Energy Consumption in India’s Urban Households’ (2021) 16 Environmental Research Letters

Renaldi R and others, ‘Patent Landscape of Not-in-Kind Active Cooling Technologies Between 1998 and 2017’ (2021) 296 Journal of Cleaner Production

Khosla R and others, ‘Cooling for Sustainable Development’ (2020) 4 Nature Sustainability 201

Khosla R, Kamat A and Narayanamurti V, ‘Successful Clean Energy Technology Transitions in Emerging Economies: Learning from India, China, and Brazil’ (2020) 2 Progress in Energy

Creutzig F and others, ‘Systematizing and Upscaling Urban Climate Change Mitigation’ (2020) 15 Environmental Research Letters

Bhardwaj A and Khosla R, ‘Superimposition: How Indian City Bureaucracies Are Responding to Climate Change’ (2020) 4 Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1139

Ürge-Vorsatz D and others, ‘Advances Toward a Net-Zero Global Building Sector’ (2020) 45 Annual Review of Environment and Resources 227

Khosla R and Dubash N, ‘Development Challenge Around Multiple Objectives: Rethinking India’s Energy Policy’ (2020) 55 Economic and Political Weekly

Kamat A, Khosla R and Narayanamurti V, ‘Illuminating Homes With LEDs in India: Rapid Market Creation towards Low-Carbon Technology Transition in a Developing Country’ (2020) 66 Energy Research and Social Science

Khosla R, Sircar N and Bhardwaj A, ‘Energy Demand Transitions and Climate Mitigation in Low-Income Urban Households in India’ (2019) 14 Environmental Research Letters

Khosla R and Bhardwaj A, ‘Urbanization in the Time of Climate Change: Examining the Response of Indian Cities’ (2018) 10 Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change

Bhardwaj A and others, ‘More Priorities, More Problems? Decision-Making With Multiple Energy, Development and Climate Objectives’ (2018) 49 Energy Research and Social Science 143

Khosla R and Janda K, ‘India’s Building Stock: Towards Energy and Climate Change Solutions’ (2018) 47 Building Research and Information 1

Dubash N and others, ‘Erratum: India’s Energy and Emissions Future: An Interpretive Analysis of Model Scenarios (Environ. Res. Lett. (2018) 13 (074018) DOI: 10.1088 1748-9326 Aacc74)’ (2018) 13 Environmental Research Letters 089501

Dubash N and others, ‘India’s Energy and Emissions Future: An Interpretive Analysis of Model Scenarios’ (2018) 13 Environmental Research Letters

Dubash N and others, ‘India and Climate Change: Evolving Ideas and Increasing Policy Engagement’ (2018) 43 Annual Review of Environment and Resources 395

Cruetzig F and others, ‘Towards Demand-Side Solutions for Mitigating Climate Change’ (2018) 8 Nature Climate Change 268

Lamb W and others, ‘The Literature Landscape on 1.5 °C Climate Change and Cities’ (2018) 30 Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 26

Cohen B and others, ‘Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis in Policy-Making for Climate Mitigation and Development’ (2018) 11 Climate and Development 212

Khosla R, Sagar A and Mathur A, ‘Deploying Low-Carbon Technologies in Developing Countries: A View from India’s Buildings Sector’ [2017] Environmental Policy and Governance

Dubash N and others, ‘India’s Energy and Emissions Future: A Synthesis of Recent Scenarios’

Creutzig F and others, ‘Beyond Technology: Demand-Side Solutions for Climate Change Mitigation’ (2016) 41 Annual Review of Environment and Resources 173

Dubash N and Khosla R, ‘Recovering Key Strategic Concepts in India’s Climate Policy’ (2016) 51 Economic and Political Weekly 127

Khosla R, ‘Closing the Policy Gap: Building Energy Code Lessons from Andhra Pradesh’ (2016) 51 Economic and Political Weekly 66

Khosla R and others, ‘Towards Methodologies for Multiple Objective-Based Energy and Climate Policy’ (2015) 50 Economic and Political Weekly 49

Dubash N and Khosla R, ‘Neither Brake nor Accelerator: Assessing India’s Climate Contribution’ (2015) 50 Economic and Political Weekly 10

Knowlton K and others, ‘Development and Implementation of South Asia’s First Heat-Health Action Plan in Ahmedabad (Gujarat, India).’ (2014) 11 International journal of environmental research and public health 3473

Frederick J and Khosla R, ‘The Energy Balance of an Urban Rooftop: A Case Study Addressing Cloudiness and Evaporative Cooling’ (2014) 8 Advances in Building Energy Research 97

Khosla R and Dubash N, ‘Rethinking India’s Energy Policy: Development Challenge Around Multiple Objectives’ Economic and Political Weekly: a journal of current economic and political affairs

Dataset (2)

Open

Miranda N and others, ‘Changes in Cooling Degree Days (CDD) Between the 1.5ºC and 2.0ºC Global Warming Scenarios’

Miranda N and others, ‘Changes in Cooling Degree Days (CDD) Between the 1.5ºC and 2.0ºC IPCC Scenarios.’

Conference paper (2)

Open

Miranda N and others, ‘Metrics for the Emissions of F-Gas Refrigerants’, Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments (Elsevier 2023)

Kapur D, Khosla R and Mehta P, ‘Climate Change: India’s Options’, Economic and Political Weekly (2009)

Pre-print (5)

Open

Lizana J and others, ‘Citizen Data for Global Mapping of Atmospheric Urban Heat Islands’

Miranda N and others, ‘From 1.5ºC to 2.0ºC: The Global Increase in Cooling Degree Days’

Miranda N and others, ‘Global Warming from Refrigerant HFCs Is Underestimated by Their CO2 Equivalent Emissions Within the Century’

Fanaian S and others, ‘‘Too Little, Too Much, Too Dirty’: The Evolution of Water Risk Governance Networks in the Intermediate City Of Guwahati, India’

Hepburn C and others, ‘Opening (Policy): A New Perspective on the Global Energy Transition’