Charity and company Green Alliance's mission is to promote sustainable development by ensuring the environment is at the heart of decision-making. Russell oversees the development and delivery of Green Alliance's policy programme, responsible for project development and delivery, fundraising and representing Green Alliance to its stakeholders: senior decision-makers in government, business and NGOs. He has contributed to a number of recent Green Alliance reports on energy and water policy. Prior to joining, Russell was Head of Policy at the UK Business Council for Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Policy Officer at WWF-UK.

Tell us about what are you working on right now.

"My time is split between ensuring we deliver our current projects on time and developing new work for next year. My focus at the moment is on three issues: our climate work, looking at what policies are needed to get us to the targets the government is legislating for through the Climate Change Bill; developing work around the carbon impact of food; and getting our waste programme funded."

What are your proudest 'green' achievements?

"Being involved here in a piece of work that has really challenged the political parties to up their environmental game and move beyond rhetoric; our work on waste that is having a visible impact on government policy; and work I did at WWF-UK that was instrumental in getting the Government to introduce the Climate Change levy."

What are the biggest challenges you face in your role as head of policy and how do you deal with them?

"The biggest challenge is juggling my various responsibilities - project delivery, project development and organisational management, and trying to have a life outside work. At any one time we can have five or six projects on the go and keeping up with them all and everything else can be difficult. To stop me going insane, I rely on my team of policy officers to keep their projects on track, focussing on the detail so I don't have to. This job would be a lot more difficult without the exceptional and committed team that I have working with me."

In which ways is Government leading the way in mitigating the effects of climate change and in which ways is it lagging behind?

"The government has done a great job in keeping the international debate alive. Tony Blair in particular made climate change a priority for his government. I think it is fair to say we wouldn't be where we are today globally without the work of the UK Government. But there hasn't been the same focus on delivery of domestic reductions. Our emissions have been steadily rising for the last few years and look set to continue rising without tough government action. There is a very clear and obvious inconsistency between the Government's political commitments and the policies (or lack of) that follow."

Could you name the key ingredients for a successful low carbon initiative in any sector?

"Three words - clarity, certainty and confidence. For any sector to take successful action they need to know what they need to do; when they need to do it by; and be confident that the underlying policy framework will remain in place for a reasonable timescale."

Are current UK Government climate change targets realistic?

"Yes. There is plenty of evidence that we can get to where the Government wants to be, the challenge is whether the government is prepared to make the decisions needed to get us there."

How can the costs of installing renewable energy sources stop being prohibitively high?

"Part of the answer depends on how you define prohibitively high. Are you comparing the costs with current electricity prices? current fuel prices? the carbon price? or the costs of the damage caused by climate change? Which metric you use will influence your view as what prohibitively high means.

"The other part of the answer is to ensure you have a policy framework that brings forward the full range of renewable energy technologies (in heat electricity and transport) that allows the most appropriate and cost-effective technology to be used for each situation. Renewable energy policy in the UK currently focuses on electricity and transport but ignores heat. One of the most cost-effective sources of renewable energy is being ignored, and in some cases actively dis-incentivised."

What energy usage trends do you predict?

"It's difficult to make predictions as they are nearly always wrong, but I find it hard to see a near future with dramatically decreasing energy usage, making it even more important to bring forward those technologies that will de-carbonise energy supply."

What trends in terms of technologies do you predict?

"Predicting the technologies of the future is even more risky than predicting future energy usage. With increasing global focus on climate change and a growing expectation that we will need to completely de-carbonise our electricity system, if not our total energy system, by 2050 to meet the sort of targets being talked about as necessary to tackle climate change, we are likely to see ever more innovation and development of supply-side technologies. Of course for this to happen, governments will need to put in place the right frameworks and financial support to bring the technologies to market."

What would you advise someone taking on a role similar to yours?

"Be flexible, prioritise, don't try and focus on the detail and build a good team around you."