Professor Jim Penman

A physicist by training, Jim Penman has over thirty years’ experience in science, energy and the environment - firstly in university research and consultancy, and from 1990 to 2012 for the UK government. For nearly twenty years he led the UK’s greenhouse gas response strategies programme, covering evaluation and assessment of greenhouse gas mitigation for UK Climate Change Programmes. He is a principal architect of the treatment of land-use, land use change and forestry in the climate negotiations and was the EU’s lead negotiator on LULUCF in Durban. He played a large part in establishing and developing REDD+ under the UNFCCC, including the guidance negotiated in Bali in 2007 which set the initial guidance for results-based payments. He supported the initiative that led to the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and negotiated the 2008 Poznan Statement that increased political momentum of REDD+. He retired from DECC in January 2012 and become an Honorary Professor in the Environment Institute at University College London. His current interests include greenhouse gas inventory methodologies and the future development of the climate negotiations. He was awarded an OBE in 2009 in recognition of work on establishing the UK emissions mitigation evidence base, and in the international negotiations.

Contact: Jim Penman