Our commission.

Georgia Berry directs The Countryside Conference 2023 for the Countryside Alliance Foundation and was formerly Chief Policy Officer at Sward, a technology platform that helps farmers measure, develop and sell natural capital assets.

Prior to this, Georgia was Director of Sustainable Business and Communications at OVO Group, heading up policy, communications and long term sustainable business strategy for the Group, and working closely with the senior team across the company.

Before joining OVO Georgia worked for former Prime Minister Theresa May in the Policy Unit in Downing Street - as Special Advisor for Energy and Infrastructure - and for Centrica - as Head of Corporate Responsibility.

Professor Sam Fankhauser is Professor of Climate Change Economics and Policy at the Smith School and the School of Geography and the Environment.

Before moving to Oxford, Sam was Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Director of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, both at The London School of Economics and Political Science, where he remains a Visiting Professor.

Before joining the Grantham Research Institute, he served as Deputy Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Until 2016 he was a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change.

Professor Fankhauser also served as a Non-Executive Director of CDC Group, the UK’s Development Finance Institution, and is an Associate Director at economics consultancy Vivid Economics

Lord Turner is the Chairman of the Energy Transitions Commission, which is currently leading research into routes to decarbonisation, and aims to limit global warming to well below 2˚C by 2040.

Lord Turner holds numerous other high-level posts across the financial, business and environmental sectors, including his role as Chairman of the insurance group Chubb Europe, and his position on the Advisory Board of Envision Energy, a Shanghai-based group focussed on renewable energy, batteries and digital systems.

Lord Turner served as the Committee on Climate Change’s (CCC) first Chairman from 2008-12, where he was influential in guiding the CCC’s analysis, and in encouraging Government to strengthen its approach to tackling climate change. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society.

Nick Butler is an energy expert and commentator who frequently contributes to the Financial Times’ Energy and Power blog. Nick is also a Visiting Professor at King’s College London, and the Chairman of three businesses - information consultancy firm Promus Associates, Ridgeway Information and the Sure Chill company, which specialises in innovative refrigeration technology. His is also editor of the Energy Agenda for the Norwegian-based energy organization ONS.

Nick previously spent 29 years with BP - including five years as Group Vice President for Policy and Strategy Development from 2002-06 - and was a Senior Advisor to Equinor, the Norwegian state energy company.

Nick also served as a Senior Policy Adviser to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as the Chairman of the Centre for European Reform and as the Treasurer of the Fabian Society.

John Sauven was Executive Director of Greenpeace from 2007 until 2022, when he stepped down to focus on his work with NANN-K Trust – a charity he set up with the Senegalese musician and UN ambassador Baaba Maal working in the Sahel on desertification and sustainable development.

John’s first campaign at Greenpeace was helping to protect the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada in the mid-90s. Since then John has been instrumental in many campaigns, some of his achievements include: securing a moratorium on forest destruction in the Amazon by soya producers; forming a coalition between energy companies to promote offshore renewable energy and steering the creation of the Rang-tan video, exposing deforestation for palm oil, which was watched by over 70 million people.

Professor Paul Ekins is Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy at University College London, and Director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources.

He has been an adviser to the UK Government and the European Commission, and is a member of the UN Environment Programme’s International Resource Panel. In 2016-19 he was a co-Editor of UNEP’s flagship report, the sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6).

Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas is the first Chief Executive of the Green Finance Institute, which was launched in July 2019 as the UK’s principal forum for public and private sector collaboration in green finance. It is uniquely placed to mobilise capital to accelerate the domestic and international transition to a sustainable, net zero carbon economy that is also climate resilient.

Dr Thomas previously served as the former Global Head of Green Banking, and was the Founder and Chair of the Green Banking Council at Barclays.

Dr Thomas is also a member of the Global Advisory Council for Oxford University’s Sustainable Finance Programme and sat on the FSB’s Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), the UK Government’s Green Finance Taskforce and the Banking Environment Initiative’s Fintech Taskforce.