Six years after the failure of the climate negotiations at Copenhagen, agreement has at last been reached in Paris. Can we call this success? Weighing up the outcome, the outcome is emphatically yes, but in some senses no, and in large part it depends – on how the agreement is received, and what happens next.

The success is clear and undeniable. After years of tortuous negotiations, it’s truly remarkable that one hundred and ninety-five countries have agreed a common framework for action on climate, and that each has agreed to take action. This alone makes the Paris deal historic and » Continue Reading.

I write this in the aftermath of Storm Desmond, which battered my home town of Kendal this weekend. I am lucky to live up a hill, and over the weekend, our house filled with flood refugees. We hunkered down to watch films as the wind howled outside. Today, a sizeable portion of my town is still under water. Schools are closed, which my kids obviously think is brilliant. But across the county of Cumbria, the devastation is truly terrible. It is only this morning, as the waters subside, that the extent of the damage to homes, livelihoods, transport and infrastructure » Continue Reading.

Amber Rudd’s speech today was nothing if not politically shrewd. A phase-out of coal-fired generation is very welcome news; the backtracking on renewables has been announced in several waves over the last few months, and is no surprise at all. So reaction to Rudd’s announcement has been surprisingly positive.

But yet again, we’re playing the technology game. Coal v gas v renewables v nuclear. It’s all about kit, and not about people. In fact, Rudd emphasised this, by saying straight out that “energy policy shouldn’t be noticed”. We should be able to go about our daily lives without so much as a » Continue Reading.

With renewables policy in a state of flux (I think that’s the polite way of putting it) it’s really important to make the case for community-based initiatives, which offer much more than megawatts – contributing to local regeneration, social cohesion and engagement in climate change. So I’m really pleased to be working with the British Academy on a project which really gets under the skin of these projects. Working with colleagues Pete Capener, of Bath and West Community Energy, and Neil Simcock at Lancaster University, we’ll be delving into the all-important cultural factors which influence these projects, and seeing what the » Continue Reading.

This month marks the beginning of my collaborative research project with Lancaster University and Green Alliance.

How often have you heard the lament amongst environmentalists, “what’s lacking is political will”? If only politicians understood enough, and cared enough, to confront and act on environmental issues like climate change, the argument goes, they could implement the solutions (green the economy, fine the polluters) and lead the transition to a sustainable society.

But is it as simple as that? What is this elusive quality, ‘political will’? Put another way, what is it that motivates politicians to take action on climate change, and » Continue Reading.

I’ve written before about the fantastic Energy Mentoring Project that I’ve been working on with Co-operatives UK.

One of the things we built into the project from the start was a report-back function, whereby we help the community energy pioneers talk to government about how policy could help the sector achieve its potential. (Imagine if all projects supporting social entrepreneurs had a properly resourced talk-to-government-about-your-experience element to them. It would be a brilliant antidote to corporate lobbying.)

So to help with this, over the past couple of months I’ve talked to our brave energy pioneers about » Continue Reading.

I blogged a little while ago about the Peer Mentoring Scheme for community energy projects that I helped to design, and which has been run brilliantly by Petra Morris at Co-operatives UK. Over the past few months, I’ve spoken in detail to the projects who have received support from the scheme, as well as the mentors who’ve offered their support, both moral and technical. The results of these conversations, and other outcomes from the scheme, are now summarised in this pretty (and mercifully short) publication that Petra put together. Let me know what you think.

I’m really pleased to have been appointed to the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Research Councils UK Energy Programme, as a representative of Green Alliance.

The Energy Programme  invested £625 million in research and skills to pioneer a low carbon future. It’s a joint initiative, led by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and bringing together the work of five Research Councils, including the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), for whom I’ve served as a Council Member over the past four years.

With massive changes in energy technology, systems and businesses afoot, and ambitious carbon targets to meet, it’s » Continue Reading.

I had a great time last week at the Powering Up North conference, a Manchester gathering of community energy projects and enthusiasts. It was lovely to see so many people that have been colleagues and allies in my past few years’ worth of work on such an interesting issue.

But what I  really appreciated was seeing the results of something that had been long in the planning. When I started working with Co-operatives UK to support community energy, back in 2010, it was clear that changes to policy and regulation were needed if community energy was to » Continue Reading.

October 1991. Bryan Adams tops the charts (Everything I Do…) closely followed by The Scorpions with Winds of Change. I’m excited but nervous, in my flowery corduroy trousers (yes really). It’s Freshers week.

Roll on a few years, and here I am again. And while I may not be approaching the extracurricular side of Freshers week with quite such brio this time round, I’m just as excited to be heading back to university.

I’ve spent my working life trying to crack a series of knotty environmental issues, from climate change to chemicals regulation. What I’ve learned, above all, is that » Continue Reading.