SolarAid’s founding director and clean energy campaigner, Jeremy Leggett, has been awarded the highly prestigious Gothenburg Award for his work with solar energy.
Jeremy set-up the UK’s leading solar company, Solarcentury, back in 1998 and drew plans to donate 5% of its net profit to a solar charity. In 2006 Solarcentury turned a profit and SolarAid was born. Under Jeremy’s stewardship we’ve evolved from a fledgling charity installing PV panels in village schools to a highly innovative, award winning organisation improving the lives of 10 million people in Africa.
Jeremy is also non-executive chairman of the award winning Carbon Tracker Initiative, a not for profit think tank aimed at aligning financial markets with climate reality and an acclaimed author of several notable books. His most recent musings, The Winning of the Carbon War, is currently being serialised by Virgin and is available for free download here.
The Gothenburg Award for Sustainable Development was established in 2000 and is the City’s international prize recognising work towards sustainable development. Jeremy finds himself in esteemed company, joining the Gothenburg hall of fame alongside Al Gore, Paul Polmon (CEO of Unilever) and Kofi Annan. The award comes with a large cash prize which Jeremy has donated to SolarAid.
Jeremy added, “It is an honour to be recognised for work on climate change, particularly among predecessors who are my heroes. Let us hope that all our work, and those of our many compadres, can yet lead us to a good outcome at the Paris climate summit and ultimately to winning the Carbon War.”
On his decision to donate his prize to SolarAid he added “SolarAid are a fantastic organisation with a sustainable, economical and scalable solution that is currently improving the lives of 10 million rural Africans, offering them a future free from the shackles of costly, pollutant, unstable kerosene supplies. But they need help to keep momentum going. If you want to help create a cleaner future, I urge you to support SolarAid today.”
You can donate online here or contact [email protected] to talk further.