Prof Hannah Daly
Biography
Hannah Daly is Professor of Sustainable Energy at the School of Engineering and Architecture. Her research, within the Energy Policy and Modelling Group, focuses on modelling national and global decarbonisation pathways, with particular expertise in energy systems, carbon budgets, and climate policy. She is Principal Investigator of multi-million-euro research projects, serves as the founding Programme Director of UCC’s new BSc Sustainability, and has served as a lead author of Ireland’s Climate Change Assessment.
Before joining UCC, Hannah worked at the International Energy Agency in Paris, leading the World Energy Outlook work on energy access and sustainable development. She is a recognised public voice on climate and energy, writing a monthly column for The Irish Times, and frequently advises government, the Oireachtas, civil society, and international organisations.
She was born when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were 351 parts per million; they now stand at nearly 430 parts per million.
Research Interests
Research projects are detailed here.
Publications
Academic papers can be found on Google Scholar
Other reports and articles are listed on her website.
Teaching Activity
Programme Director, BSc Sustainability (forthcoming, 2026).
Awarded the UCC President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2022.
Postgraduate research supervision
- PhD supervision (ongoing, as of 2025):
o Jeanne Spillane, UCC. ERBE (Energy Resilience in the Built Environment) 2023-27 (expected)
o Neha Jaggeshar, UCC. 2023-27 (expected)
o Weipeng Xie, UCC. 2023-27 (expected)
o Tianning Zhao, UCC. 2024-28 (expected)
Undergraduate and postgraduate lecturing
- NE3003, NE6013 and NE5003 module (Sustainable Energy, UCC) coordinator (since 2019)
- NE1001 (Introduction to Energy Engineering, UCC), module coordinator (2019-2022), contributor (since 2022)
- UWM Sustainability, guest lecturer (since 2019)
- NE4001, NE6007 (Energy Systems Modelling, UCC), module coordinator (since 2019)
Further education and training
- Delivering climate and energy training lectures for UCC’s Sustainability Academy, including to Department of Foreign Affairs Climate Diplomacy training (2024/25), Climate Leadership Training to UCC University Leadership Team (2023).