Chris White
Senior Environmental Economist
Chris is a Senior Environmental Economist providing specialist economic input into a wide range of projects, specialising in natural capital and ecosystem services.
Chris has presented his work at a number of events, including the Royal Society, Royal Geographical Society and the World Forum on Natural Capital, and was recently shortlisted for Business Green’s 2016 Young Sustainability Leader Award. Chris is a Founding Member of the Food, Energy, Environment and Water (FE2W) Network and has published several books on water economics, security and governance.
His work delivering natural capital assessments for National Grid was awarded the National Grid Chairman’s Award (2015), and he is now applying this thinking to the management of Yorkshire Water’s assets.
Chris will be speaking on Day 3, Thursday 30 March, between 14:00 – 15:30 in Conference Room 1
Valuing National Grid’s natural capital assets
We have worked with the electricity and gas company National Grid to value, manage and generate investment in the natural capital across their land. We developed a tool to identify the different types of natural capital on their sites, including water and wetlands, looked at what condition they are in and developed ways that the company can maximise the flow of ecosystem services from their land, such as natural flood defences, into the future. The approach was awarded the National Grid Chairman’s Award and was shortlisted for the Finance for the Future Awards.
Integrating natural, human and social capital into Yorkshire Water’s decision making
To help Yorkshire Water meet their vision to ‘take responsibility for the water environment for good’, we are working with them to develop a set of physical metrics and financial valuation methods for natural, human, and social capital. This will enable Yorkshire Water to compare the environmental and social values generated as part of different investment scenarios and make more informed investment decisions across their entire asset base.