David has been a member of the Sustainable Transport Unit in the Institute for Energy & Transport of the Joint Research Centre (Petten, The Netherlands) until retirement from the European Commission in August 2016.
He was part of a team providing scientific and technical support to the development and maintenance of sustainability schemes for biomass and bioenergy, including biofuels.

In addition, he was a member of the European Bioenergy Industrial Initiative (EIBI) team which is operates within the frame of the Strategic Energy Technologies (SET) Plan. He is also a former leader of the International Energy Agency Bioenergy Biogas Task 37, promoting economically and environmentally sustainable management of biogas production and utilisation from agricultural residues, energy crops and municipal wastes.

David Baxter is a materials engineer who joined the European Commission Joint Research Centre in 1991 after working in an industrial company supplying components for power generation and transport. He also spent 5 years at Argonne National Laboratory in the USA in the 1980s carrying out research into materials for fossil energy technologies.