Who we are

Our Directors

Baroness Worthington is an experienced climate campaigner who has worked for Friends of the Earth, the government and in the private sector. Bryony developed the concept of ‘carbon budgets’ whilst at FOE and was a key member of the team that drafted the UK’s Climate Change Bill. She has a detailed understanding of emissions trading policy and has experienced first hand the lobbying that surrounds this important policy which is why she was inspired to set up sandbag.

Ed Gillespie is the founder and co-director of Futerra, a sustainability communications agency. His interesting career history includes working for the Natural History Film Unit, as a marine biologist in Australia, New Caledonia and Orkney and on environmental issues for Transport for London. Ed has Masters degrees in both Marine Conservation and Sustainable Development and writes regularly for the Guardian. Ed was also recently appointed as a London Sustainable Development Commissioner.

Jane Burston leads the Climate Science and Low Carbon Technology work at the National Physical Laboratory. In 2008 she co-founded Carbon Retirement, a social enterprise taking an innovative approach to carbon offsetting. For this she won several awards, including being named in Management Today’s ’35 high-flying women under 35′ list and as Square Mile magazine’s ‘Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ for 2011.

Jill Duggan has worked in the private and public sector on climate and energy policy for many years. Jill has led the cross-government UK policy team for the EU ETS, served as a visiting Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute in Washington DC, worked with the European Commission DG Climate Action, acted as an advisor for the Western Climate Initiative in North America, and given expert testimony to a Congressional Committee in the US.
Jill currently holds the position of Director of Policy at Doosan Power Systems, and Director at Carbon Policy Associates Ltd.

Tomas Wyns was the director of the CCAP Europe office in Brussels, Belgium until 2013. From 2007-11 Tomas was the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme Policy Adviser of Climate Action Network Europe and NGO representative in European Climate Change Policy working groups on the EU Emission Trading Scheme. Tomas coordinated the NGO campaign on the 2008 EU Climate and Energy package. Prior to that, Tomas worked as a climate change policy adviser for the Flemish Ministry of the Environment with a focus on the ETS. Tomas was the Flemish negotiator at the ENV Council Working Group and represented the Flemish Government within the EU Working Group III in the Climate Change Committee.

Adrien Assous is a Director at Natixis where he has been working on carbon asset management and renewable energy financing. He has worked with the Climate Markets & Investment Association, the Climate Group, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. He has been involved in the carbon market since 2004 and in financial markets since 2000. Adrien has an MSc in engineering from Ecole Centrale de Lyon, and a Masters in International Economic Policy, specialising in climate change, from Buenos Aires.

Our Staff

Damien Morris is Sandbag’s Senior Policy Advisor. He is the lead author of Sandbag’s annual report on the environmental outlook for the EU ETS and has represented Sandbag in Chatham House roundtables, European Parliamentary Hearings and UNFCCC side-events. He also led our UN research and lobbying ahead of COP15 in Copenhagen, including the public campaign “One Giant Leap”. Prior to working at Sandbag, Damien specialised in environmental behaviour change, both as a researcher at the New Economics Foundation and as a Programme Manager for Waste Watch.

Alex Luta is our Campaigner and Policy Analyst. His work covers outreach to the MEPs in Brussels and keeping abreast of climate mitigation policies outside Europe. In the past he has been a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, where he covered the dynamics of the UNFCCC negotiations and also Japanese domestic climate and energy policy, and has acted as a freelance consultant on a variety of research projects on European and Japanese climate and energy policy. Additionally, he has also acted as the Tokyo representative Enersense International, a resource management company for large-scale energy-related construction projects. In parallel to his work at Sandbag, Alex is finalizing his PhD on comparative renewable energy policy at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Phil MacDonald is a Policy Officer, assisting with research, and dealing with fundraising and administration. Phil has previously worked as a political campaign organiser, and helped create People and Planet’s ‘Green League’ of sustainable universities. He has an academic background in evolutionary biology.

Laurence Watson is our data, web and technical expert. He has spent the years since his physics degree working and campaigning on energy policy and climate change, most recently with the UK Youth Climate Coalition. He has worked at organisations including Verus Energy, a Waste to Energy developer, and the British Embassy, Prague.

Dave Jones focuses on power sector decarbonisation. Dave spent thirteen years at the power company E.ON, analysing electricity and carbon markets. This research has lent new depth to Sandbag’s knowledge of the ETS. Dave is currently involved in a multi-environment-group campaign to bring an end to unabated coal in Europe.

Patricia Buckley joined Sandbag on a part-time basis in 2014 and supports the team with data collation and management, policy analysis and other lobbying activities. Previously, Tricia was working on carbon and energy data management, supporting UK Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme participants. Tricia gained extensive data management and analysis experience in the UK and across Europe while working in electronics manufacturing.

Aleksandra Mirowicz Aleksandra (Ola) is our European Climate Policy Campaigner. Her work focuses on the EU ETS reform, covering Sandbag’s policy development and lobbying in Brussels. Ola is also a lead on Sandbag’s outreach to Spain and Poland. In the past she has worked on sustainability research and policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she graduated with an MSc in Social Policy. Ola has specialised in campaigning through volunteering for organisations in the field of environment, international development and human rights.

Wilf Lytton joined Sandbag in 2015, working as Policy Analyst and decarbonisation researcher with a focus on CCS. He holds a master’s degree in Geology from UCL and has worked in consultancy and with NGOs. Wilf spends his spare time working with startups in London.