Jonathan Lonsdale

Jonathan has more than 25 years of experience developing European public policy in environment, energy, and climate change. He leads our European work on sustainable finance and climate-neutral value chains. Jonathan is an expert in designing and assessing financial instruments for funding the commercialization and deployment of climate-neutral innovations. He has successfully delivered numerous assignments for European Commission services. Since 2015, Jonathan has advised the European Commission on the design and implementation of the Innovation Fund and Modernisation Fund, two of the key funding instruments contributing to the European Green Deal’s objectives. This work has contributed to our support of the Directorate-General for Climate Action. Jonathan provides ongoing advice to applicants and independent evaluators under the first calls of the Innovation Fund. Jonathan has also completed a project for the Czech Ministry of Environment, funded by the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support, where he and his team designed implementation modalities for the Modernisation Fund in the Czech Republic.

Jonathan leads our work to support the European Commission in further developing the EU Taxonomy for sustainable activities. He also leads a significant Commission-funded project in close collaboration with the Italian government to design sustainable finance strategy for 2050.

Before joining us, Jonathan was a senior investment analyst for a £55m low carbon venture capital fund, where he evaluated over 300 low carbon products and processes from the EU and North America. Jonathan has also advised the UK government on innovation challenges in the environmental industries sector and helped deliver action programs to overcome barriers to innovation. These efforts include addressing critical funding needs for new low carbon technologies and the financing and support of environmental industry start-up companies.