In the years ahead, the battle of ideas will be waged using the arcane language of energy policy. But make no mistake – these are matters of life and death. Many millions of lives hang on the outcome of the decisions that will be made.
Posts by Jeremy Leggett
Drawing The Line
Published in
Given that so many of our political leaders have been caught with their fingers in the petty cash, now would be a useful time for some prudent action by business leaders. A naive thought, perhaps, given the number of business leaders caught with their fingers in more than the petty cash in recent years. But in these labile times, wise corporate voices are vital if we are to achieve the necessary and related tasks of re-engineering capitalism and arresting the slide towards ecological catastrophe.
Starting Over
Published in
I am the founder of a Swiss bank’s private equity fund, chairman of one of the UK’s fastest-growing private companies, winner of Entrepreneur of the Year awards and an Institute of Directors’ Director of the Month. I am also an anti-capitalist. Or so you would have to conclude, if you listened to the broadcast media’s blanket classification of the G20 summit protestors’ concerns.
Energy Payback
Published in
Fixing our dangerously fragile energy infrastructure has to start with energy demandmanagement. Here we know enormous reservoirs of efficiency exist,pumped full of carbon to be saved, simply waiting to be…
Elemental Force
Published in
Since my last column, the world has turned on its axis. Watching the world’s finances spin into meltdown in a matter of weeks, the idea that catastrophe can lie just around the corner must suddenly seem horribly tangible to many people. For the banking executive, catastrophe lies in the mammoth hole in his balance sheet and the collapse of his institution. On top of this horror, some bankers find themselves the subject of criminal investigation by the FBI.
Banking On The Sun
Published in
As North Sea gas depletes and global-warming impacts snowball, the choices the world makes about energy economics are increasingly going to look like life-and-death decisions. The more we rely on Russian gas imports for electricity, the more homeowners are likely to have the lights turned off on them if their government displeases a resurgent Kremlin.
Mining The Future
Published in
Today, many of us realise that in burning all that coal, and encouraging the rest of the world to follow suit, industrialising Britain was unknowingly stoking humankind’s biggest single problem: global warming. Burning coal, like oil and gas, produces carbon dioxide, and other gases that slowly trap heat in the atmosphere.
Light At The End Of The Tunnel
Published in
Climate scientists in government and universities run simulations of future climate that show a very sobering piece of arithmetic. If we are to avoid tipping the planet over the widely…
Black Arts
Published in
Sundsvaal, summer 1990, the lobby of a Swedish hotel. An American lobbyist for the coal and oil industries, a former US government official, sits surrounded by diplomats from OPEC countries.…
