Dr Adrian Williams

Areas of expertise

• Carbon, Climate and Risk
• Digital Agriculture
• Energy and the Environment
• Natural capital
• Soil
• Soil Resources
• Sustainable Land Systems
• Waste Management and Resource Efficiency

Background

Adrian started his career at the National Institute of Agricultural Engineering at Silsoe, Bedfordshire (later becoming Silsoe Research Institute). This started with research into odour control from animal manures (following his PhD at the University of Glasgow) and then progressed into a wide range of experimentally-based agri-environmental research including: biological treatment systems, silage conservation, gaseous emission measurement and control and improved manure management methods. He later concentrated more on mathematical modelling, initially using process models. He later joined the Biomathematics Group leading work in whole-farm agri-environmental modelling and more recently moved into environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

He moved to Cranfield University in January 2006 to develop the LCA work, which has expanded rapidly since then and addressed subjects from livestock health to national dietary change. Much work is directed towards GHG emissions, but he likes to remind the world that there are other features of our effect on the wider environment that need quantification.

Current activities

Dr Adrian Williams' project portfolio includes projects for Defra and others in which Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and systems modelling of agricultural and horticultural commodities is applied and developed. This includes the effects of improving health in cattle on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, improving pig husbandry.

He is Science Director in the UK Agricultural GHG Platform (www.ghgplatform.org.uk), which is improving the science to support the UK agricultural GHG inventory. He is also in project team that is delivering the working inventory. He also recently became involved with the water footprinting of livestock production.

He is a member of the Food Climate Research Network (www.fcrn.org.uk) steering group.

He recently completed work for Defra on the economic and environmental effects of moving to healthier diets.

 

Research interests include:

• Development and application of Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for agricultural and horticultural commodities and the food system
• Whole system agri-environmental modelling
• Effects of dietary change on the environment
• More environmentally benign waste management
• Modelling and measuring ammonia and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from agriculture
• Multi stakeholder and ecosystem services evaluation
• Water use and impacts in agriculture and food.

 

Recent supervised student work includes:

Impacts of 100% organic conversion of agriculture in England

Developing a framework for sustainable agricultural development in the Niger Delta

Improving the environmental performance of beef cattle through LCA

Comparing diesel and petrol cars using LCA

Using LCA to derive more insight into the benefits of the nitrification inhibitor, DCD

Development of a new method of calculating land use change (LUC) emissions

Timing of GHG emissions from using whole trees as biofuels

The environmental cost of an email

LCA of a micro-brewery

The valuation of soil carbon

The carbon footprint of watching digital television

Clients

• Defra
• BBSRC
• The Committee on Climate Change
• EU
  
• The Welsh Government
• The Austrian Government
• WRAP
• EBLEX
• DairyCo
• Potato Council
• Bord Bia
  
• Alltech
• DSM
• 
  
• World Flowers

Publications

• Articles in journals
• Conference papers