In our last blog, we shared the ways we’re working to facilitate a just transition, from using our business as a force for good to supporting community owned renewable energy projects. As part of our 30th birthday celebrations, we asked influential climate campaigners for their thoughts on what the wider sector needs to do to achieve a just energy transition by the end of the decade. 

James Vaccaro  

Catalyst, strategist and thought leader in sustainability and positive impact finance, CEO of RePattern and former Thrive Executive Director.  

1. Integrating smarter design into energy infrastructure to help deliver multiple positive social and environmental impacts. That can include greater community ownership and social benefits, but also schemes such as agri-solar. 
2. The community-of-interest ownership model, alongside cooperatives and other shared-ownership models, offer a balanced solution to support investment in key assets – including nature restoration sites, transmission and storage infrastructure etc. 
3. It is important for leadership within the industry to integrate adaptation and mitigation solutions (efficiency measures plus generation) to support community resilience– in conjunction with well-designed local development plans that address other areas of vulnerability.

Emma Howard Boyd CBE 

Previously Chair of the Environment Agency and an ex-officio board member of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Currently Chair of ClientEarth, Chair of the London Climate Resilience Review and former Thrive Non Executive Director.  

We are entering a new era. The world’s warmest year on record was 2023. Europe is warming at around twice the global rate.  

This June to August, in 2024, is currently on course to be the world’s hottest on record, even as El Niño fades. And wherever you are in the world, it’s the most vulnerable – those who’ve contributed the least to this catastrophe – who are forced to shoulder the heaviest burden of its consequences. A recent paper in ‘Nature’ said: “Given how close 2023 was to the ominous 1.5°C warming threshold, it is imperative that we prepare for previously unthinkable and unseasonal heat extremes.”  

With a new national government taking power, now is the time to emphasise that making smarter, more resilient choices to achieve a just energy transition is in the long-term interest. 

1. Simply put, adaptation is non negotiable and ensuring the most vulnerable benefit from adaptation should be a guiding principle. 
2. Action must prioritise those who face the greatest harm and those least able to cope with climate impacts. 
3. Finally, failure to prepare for climate impacts heightens risks and threatens efforts to reach net zero. Without due regard to climate adaptation, risk is “baked-in” to the lifetime of assets, projects become less viable, and the benefits reduce over time. It’s a choice between building in climate resilience or locking in climate vulnerability.

Jonathon Porritt CBE  

An eminent writer and campaigner on sustainable development and President of Population Matters.  

1. For wind, solar and storage to accelerate at the speed that is now so desperately needed, we need, first, to kill oil. And then to kill gas. This terminology will offend some people. “Oil Kills” is the latest slogan from Just Stop Oil, and many disagree with JSO’s combative, uncompromising tactics. But the time for cohabitation is long gone. Our continuing addiction to oil (as President George Bush put it back in 2006!) is already literally killing tens of thousands of people now – and will kill tens of millions in the future. 
2. That’s why people need to hear the whole truth about climate science – we don’t have time for mealy-mouthed niceties any longer. It’s already too late to avoid horrendous costs as we pump more and more CO2 into the atmosphere. But it’s not too late to avoid total breakdown. 
3. Even as we bring an end to the big oil and gas companies, we must protect the economic well-being of all those who work for them – apart from their senior executives, who’ve already benefited enough to last them several lifetimes! We must therefore be prepared to invest in re-skilling these key workers to play their part in the new energy economy emerging so dynamically in our midst.