Valuation and risk as the rhetoric-action gap on climate mitigation closes

Julian Allwood is Professor of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Cambridge. From 2009-13 he held an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship, to explore Material Efficiency as a climate mitigation strategy – delivering material services with less new material. This led to publication in 2012 of the book “Sustainable Materials: with both eyes open” – listed by Bill Gates as “one of the best six books I read in 2015.”

Julian was a Lead Author of the 5^th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focussed on mitigating industrial emissions. Amongst others, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2017.

From 2019-24 he is director of UK FIRES – a £5m industry and multi-university programme aiming to explore all aspects of Industrial Strategy compatible with delivering zero emissions by 2050. ‘Absolute Zero’, the first publication of UK FIRES attracted widespread attention including a full debate in the House of Lords in Feb 2020, and has led to a string of other reports, research and impact.