Ian Duncan

Lord Ian Duncan of Springbank is a Life Peer in the United Kingdom’s House of Lords. Dr. Ian Duncan was Government Minister for Climate Change within the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) from July 2019 to February 2020. He was also Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Scotland Office from June 2017 to July 2019, and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Wales between June and October 2017.

In 2014 Lord Duncan was elected to the European Parliament. There, he served on the Environment & Public Health (ENVI) Committee, the Industry, Research & Energy (ITRE) Committee, and the Fisheries (PECH) Committee, and as a member of the Special Committees investigating the ‘Diesel-gate’ scandal and the implications of the ‘Panama Papers leak. During his time in the Parliament, Ian’s primary focus was climate change. He was a Parliamentary delegation to the UN Climate Change Conferences (COP) in Lima (2014), Paris (2015) and Marrakech (2016). He was the Parliament’s lead negotiator on reform of the EU’s carbon market legislation (the ‘Emission Trading Scheme’), the cornerstone of the EU’s climate change ambitions. The legislation completed its parliamentary journey in February 2017 He co-authored a further eight pieces of energy and climate-specific legislation.

Lord Duncan is the Chair of the English Speaking Union (Scotland), a post he has held since 2014. He is also a board member of the Schwarzenegger Institute (University of Southern California), established by former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ian holds a first-class honours degree in geology from St Andrews University and a doctorate in paleontology from Bristol University.