David Toke is a former Reader in Energy Politics at the University of Aberdeen. He worked for the University until October 2019. He was a late starter in academia. Previously he worked in journalism and school teaching. He studied for a Ph.D. at the Department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS) at Birmingham University before becoming a Research Fellow and then Senior Lecturer there. He joined the University of Aberdeen in 2013 as Reader.
He has had over 50 papers published in refereed journals as well as six monograph books (all but one single-authored). He has had over 3500 citations according to ‘ResearchGate’. He has engaged in many funded programmes through the ESRC (5), the EU (3), the Leverhulme Trust (2) British Academy, and Scottish Insight.
In 2023 he became Principal Investigator for the ESRC-funded project ‘Solar Power in the UK –Planning for a Sustainable Future’. He continues to work on this project. See https://www.abdn.ac.uk/socsci/research/projects/solar-planning-in-the-uk/
In 2026 he was, with Paula Duffy, successful in winning an EU COST grant, ‘Smart Practice in Large-scale Solar PV Projects in Europe ‘.
He has also published three public interest books on energy policy. He has written many influential reports for different NGOs. His work, including a report published by the World Future Council, proved to be a prime early influence (in 2007-2008) leading to the adoption of a system of feed-in tariffs for smaller renewable energy projects in the UK. He also has produced reports published by Friends of the Earth, ‘Possible’, The Green Parties of England and Wales and Scotland and has written a number of articles for newspapers and magazines ranging from The Guardian to New Statesman and Society.
His ‘green energy blog’ has been highly regarded since 2010. See https://davidtoke.substack.com/. He has led the formation of 100percentrenewableuk, see https://100percentrenewableuk.org/. His new public interest book is ‘Energy Revolutions – profiteering versus democracy’ (Pluto Press) – see https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745349268/energy-revolutions/