Engineering Professor Julian Allwood (St Catharine’s), Cambridge Zero Director Professor Emily Shuckburgh (Darwin) and Cambridge Energy Policy Research Group Director Emeritus Professor David Newbery (Churchill) join a panel of 17 expert advisors on STAC, which has been created to provide robust, scientific, evidence-based information to support key decisions as the UK overhauls its energy system to reach clean power by 2030.
The Council is expected to also offer independent viewpoints and cutting-edge research on topics from climate science, energy networks and engineering, to the latest technologies and artificial intelligence.
“Evidence-based decision-making is fundamental to the drive for clean power and tackling the climate crisis, with informed policymaking the key to securing a better, fairer world for current and future generations,” UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in the Government’s announcement.
Professor Allwood is Professor of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Cambridge and directs the Use Less Group. Uniquely, his research aims to articulate a pathway to zero emissions based on technologies that already exist at scale. His projects include ground-breaking innovations such as electric cement.
Professor Shuckburgh is Director of Cambridge Zero, the University’s major climate change initiative. A mathematician and data scientist, Emily Shuckburgh is also Professor of Environmental Data Science at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Academic Director of the Institute of Computing for Climate Science, and co-Director of the Centre for Landscape Regeneration and the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training on the Application of AI to the study of Environmental Risks (AI4ER).
As a climate scientist, Professor Shuckburgh worked for more than a decade at the British Antarctic Survey where her work included leading a UK national research programme on the Southern Ocean and its role in climate.
Professor Newbery is the Director of the Cambridge Energy Policy Research Group, an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Economics and a Professorial Research Associate in the UCL Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, University College London.
STAC’s expert advice is expected to allow ministers to access the most up-to-date and well-informed scientific evidence, improving decision-making and effectiveness of policy implementation.
STAC is led by Professor Paul Monks, STAC Co-Chair and Chief Scientific Adviser & Director General, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ); and Professor David Greenwood FREng, STAC Co-Chair and CEO of Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) High Value Manufacturing Catapult Centre.
Read the government announcement here
Three Cambridge academics have been appointed to the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s new Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC), which met for the first time on Wednesday 9 July, 2025.
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