Laura Sandys runs a consultancy firm, Challenging Ideas, advising on new business models and innovative public policy solutions across the energy, food and resources sectors. Laura is Deputy Chair of the Food Standards Agency and runs the 21st Century Energy Regulatory Commission with Imperial College and the Energy Systems Catapult.  She was appointed as a member of the Advisory Panel for the Government’s Cost of Energy Review, is on the Council and taskforce for Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage and has a regular column in Utility Week.

 

She is also an advisory board member of the Carbon Capture and Storage Group at Imperial College, co-founder of POWERful Women, a Visiting Senior Fellow at Kings College and a Fellow of the Energy Institute.

 

She was previously a Member of Parliament for South Thanet and was a member of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee and Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Energy and Climate Change. Described by The Times as ‘one of the sanest of all MPs’ and as ‘lateral-minded, original and free-thinking’, when in Parliament she served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Energy and Climate Change.

 

Before politics, she founded and ran two companies in marketing, communications and public affairs; advised the Georgian Government regarding the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline; and worked for the consumer organisation, Which?  She was a Trustee of Open University and chair of OpenDemocracy.net.