Jonathan Brearley

This article is part of the Nuclear Spin project of Spinwatch.

Jonathan Brearley was the director of energy strategy and futures for the Department of Energy and Climate Change(DECC) until summer 2013.

His resignation announcement in April 2013 was viewed as a 'serious blow' for the Coalition government at a time when its controversial 'electricity market reform' (EMR) scheme was moving through the legislative process via an energy bill. Brearley was the most senior official working on the EMR scheme, which aims to promote investment in energy infrastructure.

Background

Brearley was Joint Chair of the reconstituted Electricity Networks Strategy Group.

Jonathan Brearley is also director of the Office of Climate Change (OCC). It was set up in September 2006 and works across Government to support analytical work on climate change and the development of climate change policy and strategy.

In a meeting of the Select Committee on Environmental Audit, Jonathan Brearley explained the role of the Office of Climate Change:

Mr Brearley: First of all, just to be clear the OCC is not part of Defra but actually stands between departments. We do not lead on policies.

 Q90  Mr Chayter: 'You are not formally part of Defra?'

 Mr Brearley: 'For pay and rations we are.'

 Q91  Mr Chayter: 'You are located in the same building.'

 Mr Brearley: 'We are located in the same building but are governed by six departments and funded by six departments. Our business is to support those departments to work together. We do not run policy as, for example, Defra does in parts of the Climate Change Policy, as does the DTI. I think what the OCC offers is a much more coordinated approach by Government. If you think about what we have done on the Government's arrangements, we have created a single energy environment group which is going to be supported by two cross-departmental groups to allow that to happen. I think essentially the work of the OCC should lead to a rationalisation and a simplification of what is there, rather than a duplication.' 

Prime Minister's Strategy Group

In addition, Jonathan Brearley is Senior Policy Adviser in the Prime Minister's Strategy Group. In the past he has done consultancy work for Bain, among others.

In a Select Committee on Environmental Audit meeting held on 24 April 2007, Jonathan Brearley argued against the UK including greenhouse gases from aviation or shipping in any future climate change legislation prior to there being international agreement on this issue:

here is an issue for both shipping and aviation in the sense that these are international and, as yet, there is no agreement on how we allocate emissions between countries. One of the risks of including these within the Climate Change Bill, for example, is that we have perverse effects on policy-making itself. For example, in shipping, do we end up with ships being registered elsewhere rather than being registered in the UK? I would argue, until we have an international agreement that would allow us to understand better how we allocate emissions, it is quite a challenge for us to include those within our domestic targets."

In the 2008 UK Climate Change Act greenhouse gas emissions from international aviation and shipping were included in the calculation of the UK total.