Bryony Worthington, Baroness Worthington

Bryony Katherine Worthington, Baroness Worthington, (born 19 September 1971),[1][2] is a British environmental campaigner and Labour life peer in the House of Lords. She has promoted change in attitudes to the environment, and action to tackle climate change, and founded Sandbag, a non-profit campaign group designed to increase public awareness of emissions trading, in 2008.[3]

Biography

Bryony Worthington was born and grew up in Wales,[4] and graduated in English literature at Queens' College, Cambridge,[5] before joining Operation Raleigh as a fundraiser. In the mid 1990s, she worked for an environmental charity, and by 2000 had moved to work for Friends of the Earth as a climate change campaigner. She then worked for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, implementing public awareness campaigns and helping draft the Climate Change Bill, before becoming head of government relations for the energy company, Scottish and Southern Energy. She left to form Sandbag in 2008.[6]

She was created a life peer on 31 January 2011 with the title Baroness Worthington, of Cambridge in the County of Cambridgeshire,[7] and sits on the Labour benches.[8]

Thorium

The Baroness was once "passionately opposed to nuclear power,"[9] but came to advocate the adoption of Thorium as a nuclear fuel[10][11] following the 2009 Manchester Report,[12] an event on climate change mitigation held by The Guardian. Worthington hosted and served as a judging panel member for the Manchester Report;[13] there she met Kirk Sorensen who presented arguments for using Thorium.[14] Sorensen intends to develop a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) based on the 1965-1969 Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment.

Weinberg Foundation

Worthington is patron of the Weinberg Foundation, a British non-profit, non-governmental organization dedicated to the promotion and development of molten salt reactor (MSR) technology.[15][16][17] It was formally launched on 8 September 2011 in the House of Lords, is based in Somerset House in central London, and is named in honour of Alvin M. Weinberg (1915–2006), a nuclear physicist who pioneered peaceful nuclear technology and advocated Thorium energy.[13][18][19][20]

"The world desperately needs sustainable, low carbon energy to address climate change while lifting people out of poverty. Thorium based reactors, such as those designed by the late Alvin Weinberg, could radically change perceptions of nuclear power leading to widespread deployment." — Baroness Worthington[21]

All-party parliamentary group

On 29 February 2012 a Thorium all-party parliamentary group was formed; its officers were Worthington, Julian Huppert and Ralph Palmer, with twenty other members at founding.[22][23] Worthington is no longer listed on the APPG registry however.[24]

References

  1. ↑ Geoffrey Lean (26 November 2010). "Fur will fly as green peer takes ermine". Daily Telegraph.
  2. ↑ Dods (Group) PLC. "Democracy Live - Your representatives - Bryony Worthington". BBC Online. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
  3. ↑ Sandbag: Who We Are
  4. ↑
  5. ↑ Financial Times Sustainable Banking Conference, 2009: speaker details
  6. ↑ Leo Hickman (12 September 2008). "Sandbagged: Dealing a blow to carbon trading interview with Bryony Worthington". The Guardian.
  7. ↑ The London Gazette: no. 59689. p. 1849. 3 February 2011.
  8. ↑ www.parliament.uk: Baroness Worthington
  9. ↑ Business Daily - The nuclear renaissance? (click "More Programme Information" for a text summary of the audio)
  10. ↑ Bryony Worthington (4 July 2011). "Why thorium nuclear power shouldn't be written off". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
  11. ↑ Bryony Worthington (9 March 2012). "Post-Fukushima world must embrace thorium, not ditch nuclear". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
  12. ↑ The Manchester Report
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Thorium advocates launch pressure group
  14. ↑ Duncan Clark (13 July 2009). "Manchester Report: Thorium nuclear power". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
  15. ↑ Weinberg Foundation
  16. ↑ Thorium: the element that could power our future (Wired UK)
  17. ↑ New life for forgotten fuel
  18. ↑ London: Weinberg Foundation to heat up campaign for safe, green, nuclear energy
  19. ↑ New NGO to fuel interest in safe thorium nuclear reactors
  20. ↑ Flibe Energy in the UK, part 3: Weinberg Launch
  21. ↑ Launching The Weinberg Foundation
  22. ↑ New Parliamentary Group Formed to Consider Thorium
  23. ↑ House of Commons - Register Of All-Party Groups as at 22nd March 2012: Thorium Energy at the Wayback Machine (archived 4 May 2012)
  24. ↑ "House of Commons - Register Of All-Party Groups as at 17 January 2014: Thorium Energy". Retrieved 5 February 2014.

External links