Jonathon Porritt

picture of Jonathon Porritt

Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder and Programme Director of Forum for the Future, is an eminent writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development. Established in 1996, Forum for the Future is now the UK's leading sustainable development charity, with 70 staff and over 100 partner organisations, including some of the world's leading companies.Jonathon was appointed by the Prime Minister as Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission in July 2000. This is the Government's principal source of independent advice across the whole sustainable development agenda. In addition, he has been a member of the Board of the South West Regional Development Agency since December 1999, and is Co-Director of The Prince of Wales's Business and Environment Programme which runs Senior Executives' Seminars in Cambridge, Salzburg, South Africa and the USA. In 2005 he became a Non-Executive Director of Wessex Water, and a Trustee of the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy. He is also Vice-President of the Socialist Environment Resources Association (SERA). He was formerly Director of Friends of the Earth (1984-90); co-chair of the Green Party (1980-83) of which he is still a member; chairman of UNED-UK (1993-96); chairman of Sustainability South West, the South West Round Table for Sustainable Development (1999-2001); a Trustee of WWF UK (1991-2005).

Ashden Awards

The Met Office is going to be publishing its detailed projections for the impacts of climate change on the UK today – in unprecedented geographical detail. It’s not going to be pleasant reading.
So I’ve been cheering myself up by reminding myself, all over again, of the power of positive thinking. Just a week ago, […]

June 18th, 2009 by Jonathon Porritt

Nuclear comes clean

The Cheltenham Science Festival is now in full swing, and on Wednesday I went along to listen to Jeremy Leggett of Solar Century. Great talk.
However, we didn’t get the full value of Jeremy’s insights, as the festival organisers had stuck him on a panel with four other people, one each for nuclear, coal, wind […]

June 5th, 2009 by Jonathon Porritt

Good times, bad times

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m finding it mighty difficult trying to work out whether these are good times or bad times for the renewable energy sector here in the UK.
On the one hand, all the ‘big boys’ (Shell, BP, Scottish and Southern, and so on) have more or less given […]

May 21st, 2009 by Jonathon Porritt

UK is right to trial carbon capture

Whatever you may feel about Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), at least we now know where we are here in the UK. Ed Miliband’s statement to Parliament yesterday announced three things:
1. that the Government has signalled its support for up to four
demonstration plants, of up to 300 Mega Watts each, at about a billion pounds […]

May 21st, 2009 by Jonathon Porritt

The budget - green vs sustainable

There’s a world of difference between a “Green Budget” and a “Budget for Sustainability”.
On the “green front”, it could have been a lot worse, but it could have been better too. (See yesterday’s press release from the Sustainable Development Commission below). Not exactly the mega-recovery package that has been called for but not […]

May 21st, 2009 by Jonathon Porritt

Transport and the budget

I skimmed the newspapers this morning to pick up on any unexpected ‘green vibes’ around the Budget. Every indication is that there isn’t going to be any big “New Deal” brought forward, as part of a larger recovery package, although lots of ‘green lollypops’ will no doubt be there in the shop window.
And almost certainly […]

May 21st, 2009 by Jonathon Porritt

Government and the low carbon economy

The response to Peter Mandelson’s rather obvious point that Government is going to have to take a more hands-on role in shaping a low-carbon industrial strategy has been extraordinary.
As if this marked some ideological reversion to old Labour at its command-and-control worst back in the 1970s!
Work it out, guys. In the shortest possible period of […]

May 21st, 2009 by Jonathon Porritt

Sustainability on the political agenda

This is going to be one hell of a week. Big announcement on industrial policy from DECC today, followed by the Budget on Wednesday. And despite the fact that most of the discussion will – understandably – be focussed on the state of the public finances, budget cuts and projected rates of growth […]

May 21st, 2009 by Jonathon Porritt

Renewables

With the best will in the world, one must sometimes despair of the completely inexplicable decisions of certain government departments.
Last week, I posted a piece about the difficulties that Labour now faces if it’s going to be brave about a serious “green recovery package”.
At which point, all sorts of stuff began to surface about […]

March 31st, 2009 by Jonathon Porritt

Pre Budget Talk

With one month to go before the Budget, the debate is hotting up about the desirability of the Chancellor announcing some kind of “green recovery” initiative.
There are all sorts of signals coming from the Treasury that there’s nothing left in the pot – but all sorts of initiatives urging the Chancellor to seize hold of […]

March 31st, 2009 by Jonathon Porritt