Affiliations

1. Director/Trustee Roles

See the Forum for the Future page for more info.

Back in 1992, the Prince of Wales asked me to investigate the degree to which Business Schools around the world were starting to incorporate sustainability into their degree courses – Undergraduate and MBA level.  The conclusion of my research was simple: very little!  (It’s not that much better today, by the way).

The decision was then taken to organise a week-long seminar for Senior Executives, and the Cambridge Programme for Industry was recruited to run the first seminar at Madingley Hall in Cambridge on behalf of what became the Prince of Wales’ Business and Environment Programme – now the Business and Sustainability Programme.

Since then, the Programme has become the pre-eminent initiative of this kind anywhere in the world, running seminars in the US, Europe, South Africa and Australia and the UK.  Thousands of senior business people are now alumni of the Programme.

I remain the Co-Director, although all the serious work to reinforce the Programme’s success is carried out by the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (see under Advisory Committees), under the inspired leadership of Polly Courtice, as pictured below.


 

Ten years ago, Sarah Butler-Sloss (see picture below) launched the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy. I’ve been a Trustee since 2005, and it’s one of the most inspiring initiatives I’ve been involved in since then.

Every year, an eminent panel of judges assesses submissions from a wide range of applicants, and selects a small number of winners under an international category and an UK category.

The Awards themselves are substantial (£20,000.00 for international Awards and £10,000.00 for UK Awards), but there’s a lot more to it than just picking up the cheque. A real differentiator of these Awards is the amount of advice and support that Award winners get, especially in the developing and emerging economies.

(The small team that runs the Awards are also actively involved in policy analysis and advocacy work).

But the highlight has to be the annual Awards Ceremony, which is just one of the most uplifting events of the year!
 

Richard Sandbrook (pictured) was a great friend of mine, and one of that small band of people that helped create Forum for the Future back in the mid 1990s.

Tragically, Richard died in 2005, after an extraordinary career in the environment and development world, going right back to the early 1970s. (If you check out the website, you’ll see a ‘timeline’ for Richard’s career, tracking his own endeavours against the growth of interest in environment and development issues).

His death was a terrible blow to all those who’d worked with Richard over the years, all over the world. The most fitting thing we felt we could do was to set up a Trust in his name, to help promote one of the things he did best throughout his life – bringing together people who would normally find it very difficult to talk to each other to help solve some of the world’s most pressing sustainability issues.

He did this with such humour and native wit that people couldn’t help but find the common ground between them!
The Trust is chaired by my Forum Co-Founder Director, Sara Parkin.

2. Business Engagement

Wessex Water is a regional water and sewerage company, covering an area of around 10,000km². After a rather torrid time when it found itself absorbed within Enron’s dysfunctional empire, Wessex Water was acquired by the Malaysian company, YTL Power International in May 2002, and that has proved to be an extremely benign relationship.

When the Forum got going in 1996, Wessex Water was the first company to sign up as a Foundation Corporate Partner. That Partnership lasted for nearly 10 years, and we worked closely with Chief Executive, Colin Skellett and his colleagues on establishing a long-term vision for Wessex Water, using the Forum’s Five Capitals Framework. This remains the boldest and most comprehensive vision of its kind in the water industry.

In 2005, it was agreed that we would wind down the Partnership and that I would become a Non-Executive Director, a position I’ve held for the last 6 years. It’s been a challenging and hugely enjoyable role – not least because of the challenge that Non-Executive Directors are expected to bring to bear on the Executive Team!

It’s a source of great collective pride that Wessex Water has come top of Ofwat’s league tables as the best performing, most efficient and most sustainable water company over many years.
 

Willmott Dixon is the second largest privately-owned company in the world of construction, regeneration and support services. It’s still very much a family enterprise: Rick Willmott represents the fifth generation of Willmott’s since the company was established in 1852!

It’s seen significant growth over the last few years, and is now generating revenues of around £1 billion a year.
Forum for the Future has done quite a bit of work with Willmott Dixon over the last 10 years, with a Partnership for 5 of them. I became a Non-Executive Director 2 years ago.

Construction and support services are critical economic sectors – both for the economy and for the whole sustainability agenda. We find ourselves right in the thick of today’s big debates about feed-in tariffs, the Green Deal, zero-carbon housing, Display Energy Certificates and so on. Willmott Dixon has set itself ambitious targets (carbon neutral and zero waste to landfill by 2012), and is working hard to build sustainability into every aspect of its operations through Re-Thinking – our ‘centre of excellence for sustainability’. We also produce an annual sustainability report: http://www.willmottdixongroup.co.uk/sustainability/sustainable-development-review-2010
 

I’ve been hugely enthusiastic about the role of innovation and cleantech entrepreneurs for years and years: sustainable technology breakthroughs may not provide all the answers to all of today’s converging crises, but we haven’t got a hope in hell without those breakthroughs. So there’s been plenty of banging the drum for cleantech – but no hands-on involvement!

And then I was introduced to Ceravision, and started to find out about its High Efficiency Plasma Lighting. Any technology that can help businesses reduce their energy consumption and emissions of CO2  by around 50% was bound to get my attention – and I’m so pleased it did. I’ve now become Ceravision’s Environment Advisor, both in terms of its own environmental performance (it’s already certified under ISO 140001), and the positioning of its high-bay luminaires and street lights.

The company’s production has been small scale so far (with the kit assembled in the same building as Ceravision’s offices on the Bletchley Park Campus!) but a factory has now been acquired in Milton Keynes and production is rapidly ramping up. Awards are being won, the competition is getting worried.

For me, it has been eye-opening to hear just how hard a journey it’s been for Chief Executive Tim Reynolds and Chief Technology Officer, Andy Neate (and their investors!) to get Ceravision this far. An endless succession of barriers and legal hassles.

All I can tell you is that it isn’t easy being a green start-up. But it’s certainly exciting – and Ceravision now promises much.
 

3. Advisory Committees (in alphabetical order)

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4. Other Advisory Roles

 

5. Patron (in alphabetical order)

6. Professional & Academic

 

7. Other
 

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