The son of Colin Hill Skea and Margaret Ferguson Skea, he was educated at the Grove Academy, Broughty Ferry, then at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated Bachelor of Science with first class, and finally at Clare College, Cambridge, where he gained his Doctor of Philosophy in 1979.
He was Director of the Global Environmental Change Programme of the Economic and Social Research Council from 1995 to 1998, then was at the Policy Studies Institute from 1998 to 2004, and at the United Kingdom Energy Research Centre, 2004–2012. He has held an appointment as Professor of Sustainable Energy at the Centre for Environmental Policy in London since 2009, and since 2012 has been a Fellow of the Research Councils United Kingdom Energy Programme, Imperial College London. He is also Vice-President of the Energy Institute and sits on the Advisory Board of the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie-Mellon University.
In Who"s Who he states his recreations as "walking the South Downs, mountain biking, losing keys".
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, 2000 Officer of the Order of the British Empire, 2004 Fellow of the Energy Institute, 2005 Certificate of Commendation, Japan, 2009, for work as Company-Chair of Japan-United Kingdom Joint Research Project "Roadmap to a Low-Carbon World" Honorary Fellow of the Society of Engineers, 2011 Melchett Award of the Energy Institute, 2010 Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 2013.
Skea has also served as a non-executive director of Blackrock New Energy Investment Trust Plc since 2009 and has been a Member of the Committee on Climate Change and of the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2008.
