Jonathan Buonocore

Dr. Jonathan Buonocore, core faculty with the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health at the Boston University School of Public Health. Previously, he was a Research Scientist at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment. He received both his Sc.D. in Environmental Science and Risk Management and his Master’s in Environmental Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

His research mainly focuses on evaluating the health impacts of energy systems and modeling health “co-benefits” of climate mitigation strategies and energy policies, largely in the United States. His research links health impact assessment, risk and exposure assessment, life cycle assessment, and energy modeling to evaluate impacts. He has evaluated air pollution-related health impacts from a number of sectors, including electricity generation, transportation, buildings, and oil and gas production. He has also modeled the health co-benefits of strategies including further buildout of renewable energy in the United States, Federal carbon emissions standards on power plants, carbon cap-and-invest policies for transportation in the Northeast U.S., and consequences of building electrification. His current and future research includes building methods to better incorporate equity and environmental justice (EJ) concerns, energy supply, life cycle, and other unintended consequences of energy choices. He anticipates his future work to involve decarbonization of home heating and cooling, including modeling consequences to the energy system, and better understanding exposures and health risks in homes with fossil-based energy, largely focusing on indoor air quality and methane leaks. He also has interests in the health consequences of more “extreme” climate mitigation strategies, including carbon capture and sequestration, stratospheric aerosol injection, and other geoengineering interventions.

Pronouns: he/him/his