New Baroness Brown revelations show scale of green lobbying
· An exposé by Unherd journalist, David Rose, shows the prominent climate advisor was paid over £100,000 a year by green energy interests.
· The revelations have rocked the Climate Change Committee, which is still without a new permanent chairman since Lord Deben stepped down.
· Brown has demanded that public funds are used to support the expensive green technologies being developed by the conflicted businesses in question, which include Ørsted and Ceres Power Holdings.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge, also known as Julia King, is a longstanding member of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), who the Government are legally obliged to consult with on its climate change policies. She also chairs the influential House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, an important parliamentary committee which makes regular recommendations to Government relating to Net Zero.
Brown was found to be receiving an annual salary of £74,000 from Ceres Power Holdings, to sit as a non-executive director. Ceres is a company which intends to become the world’s biggest source of “green hydrogen”. This is significant because it was this technology that her Science and Technology committee recommended in a major report. The government, it said, should commit to “no-regrets investments for hydrogen”, despite many energy experts criticising the technology.
She was also found to be receiving £40,000 a year from Ørsted, also as a non-executive director. Ørsted is one of the biggest players in offshore wind in the UK, a technology that is frequently promoted by the CCC. There is no suggestion that these interests have not been declared in the appropriate way, however many people are likely to question their compatibility with her role as a government adviser.
Brown was also found to have received undisclosed sums as a paid adviser to the nuclear industry company Holtec; as the chair of Frontier IP, a tech investment firm whose portfolio includes solar panel makers; and as the chair of the advisory board of BGF, another venture-capital outfit that invests in both wind and solar power. She has also declared she owns shares in Rolls Royce, which intends to build small nuclear reactors.
The CCC has faced multiple conflict of interest claims in the past. Most notably back in February 2019, when it was revealed that Lord Deben, its most recent chairman, was paid more than £600,000 by firms that stood to benefit from its recommendations. This was channelled through his family-run sustainability consultancy, Sancroft, and included payments from electric vehicle battery maker Johnson Matthey, and Drax, the largest recipient of renewable energy subsidies in the UK.
The new revelations come as the CCC struggles to appoint a new Chairman, over two years since Lord Deben first announced he was stepping down back in July 2022. When Brown was approached for comment, she replied that:
“My role as chair of the cross-party Science and Technology Committee draws on the knowledge and expertise gained from my non-parliamentary work, and rather than being a conflict, this background strengthens the work I carry out in Parliament.”
Read David Rose’s full report here