Resources, Security and Prosperity

Resources, Security and Prosperity
Webinar

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Background: In this discussion Hugh Morris, who has had a very long career in the City of London, will invite panellists to identify the three threat areas which each of them sees as most critical to the future security and prosperity of the UK and allied Western countries. The conversation will then turn to the principal worries of participants in the webclave, and at the end Hugh will invite comments on emergent threats that will then be covered in the spring 2024 Cityforum Resilience Assessment under preparation with help from the Cabinet Office and the National Preparedness Commission.

Speakers:

Candida Whitmill is the Managing Director of Penultimate Power UK, leading a UK Consortium in an international collaboration. The mission is to build a domestic and export market for the innovative, ultra-safe High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor, creating and sustaining jobs across the UK nuclear fuel cycle and supply chain.

Candida has previously been an energy advisor to three Secretaries of State for energy and has had many papers and articles published on various energy sectors including gas, renewables and nuclear. She has lectured at universities across the UK and in Europe and has media experience on both radio and TV. Formerly the Chairman of the UK Tidal Forum, she worked extensively with her team on a £9m feasibility study for the £20bn Severn Barrage.

Candida is an energy professional with an entrepreneurial business background. Her interests include extracting economic and social benefits from decarbonisation, rather than allowing it to become another financial burden for businesses and consumers. She has been working on Small Modular Reactors and Advanced Modular Reactors since 2011.

Tim Lang is Professor Emeritus of Food Policy at City University of London’s Centre for Food Policy which he founded in 1994 and directed until 2016. In the 1970s, after a Phd in Social Psychology at the University of Leeds, hill farming in Lancashire formed his interest in the relationship between food, health, environment, culture and political economy. He is co-author of many articles, reports and books such as Sustainable Diets (2017), Food Wars (2015), Unmanageable Consumer (2015), Ecological Public Health (2012) and Food Policy (2009). He was policy lead on the influential 2019 EAT-Lancet Commission report modelling the planetary diet to show it is possible to feed the world ahead without destroying ecosystems. His Feeding Britain (Pelican, March 2020) explored the UK as a case study of fault-lines in a rich country’s food system. He has spent his working life analysing the affluent world’s food system dynamics and building arguments about how to improve them, proposing a multi-criteria approach. He has been advisor to many bodies at UN, European, UK and local levels. He’s a member of the London Food Board. Currently he is working on a report for the National Preparedness Commission on how to improve civil food resilience.

Jay Turner is the author of Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future (2022). HIs research focuses on the clean energy transition, critical minerals supply chains, and the history of related industries and policies. He is a professor in the Environmental Studies Department at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. With students at Wellesley, Dr. Turner is tracking the response of industry to the Inflation Reduction Act. That tracking can be viewed here. Dr. Turner's commentary has appeared in The New York Times, Science magazine, and Lapham’s Quarterly. His book Charged was awarded the Glasscock Book Prize and was a finalist for the Cundill History Prize.

Mike Steinmetz was, until 2019, the State Cyber Security Officer for the State of Rhode Island and Governor Gina Raimondo’s Homeland Security Adviser. He is also a Venture Capitalist occupying both General Partner and Director positions at College Hill Ventures, a Public Benefit Corporation based in Rhode Island. College Hill PBC funds advanced technology in the areas of AI, ML, Cybersecurity, Advanced Analytics, B2B solutions and Clean Energy. Mike is also the Founder and President of Digital Executive Ltd., a company providing independent consulting services to senior executives in the private and public sector regarding digital risk and cybersecurity. His diverse professional background includes twenty-five years with the US Navy where he was a decorated combat pilot and, in later years, as a senior leader of a cyber organisation within the National Security Agency. Mike spent approximately eleven years within the international aerospace defence arena and over two years at National Grid working on the digital risk and security challenges facing global critical infrastructure. Mike is a distinguished graduate of the National Defence University, is on the Board of Boston College Woods College of Advancing Studies, is an associate at the Oxford Martin School and a contributing author to the new Oxford University Press Cybersecurity Handbook, now in prepublication.

Dorothy Wickham is a local journalist who has worked in the media industry in Solomon Islands for the last 30 years. She has also written for various international news organisations.

Date
Monday, 08 January 2024

Time
15:00 - 16:00 GMT

Cost
Free