On 18 June, ahead of the election of the new Labour government, Nick Godfrey, Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Grantham Institute, chaired a panel at the CSaP Annual Conference at The Royal Society in London. The panel included Dimitri Zenghelis, Niva Thiruchelvum, and Anna Valero, who discussed whether green investment for the UK is really a growth strategy?

In March 2024, the Cambridge Zero Policy Forum met with Juan-Carlos Ciscar, Scientific Officer at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC), to discuss the challenges and opportunities in assessing climate and biodiversity risks.

The need to redevelop the UK’s housing stock is one of the most pressing challenges facing the nation today. Housing accounts for 16% of the UK’s total carbon emissions, making it the second highest sector overall, after surface transport.

In February 2024, Dr Jolyon Medlock, Head of Medical Entomology at the UK Health Security Agency, met with the Cambridge Zero Policy Forum to discuss ecological and environmental drivers of vector borne disease.

The roundtable on geopolitics of climate impacts and their implications for the UK’s foreign policies was hosted by Emily Shuckburgh, Director of Cambridge Zero, and Peter Hill, former Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister and CEO of COP26.

On 23 March, Cambridge Zero Darwin College David MacKay Research Associate Dr. Jinying Xu organised a Cambridge Festival event at the Department of Engineering as part of the family weekend.

Members of the Sustainability Taskforce at the Competition and Markets Authority - including their Director, David Middlemiss - met with the Cambridge Zero Policy Forum to discuss current and future issues in UK markets relevant to the taskforce’s work in facilitating the UK’s net zero transition.

In September 2023 the Cambridge Zero Policy forum met with Zoe Guijarro, Principal Policy Manager, Net Zero Homes, at Citizens Advice to discuss the transition to net zero homes, with a focus on the role of Citizens Advice.

Richard Gleave, UK Health Security Agency, and Professor Sharon Peacock, Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, discussed the wider implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting on the success of the UK’s COVID-19 Genomics Consortium (COG-UK) in pandemic response and, more broadly, on the evolving role of scientific advice in times of public crises.

In June, the Cambridge Zero Policy Forum met for the first of four reading group sessions, on Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change, by Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute, Simon Sharpe.