In retrospect, the main benefit from many of the awards I have been privileged to receive has been that they have introduced me to different communities and networks of similarly motivated people. This section was a last-minute addition to the revamped website, so we will fill in more detail over time. But the list below suggests the very different forms of recognition our work has attracted over the years.
- 1973: University College London, travel fellowship to the USA
- 1981: Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship, again taken to travel to USA, feeding into my 1985 book, Sun Traps: The Renewable Energy Forecast
- 1989: United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honour, alongside Julia Hailes
- 2006: 3-year, $1 million grant from the Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, which covered work both at SustainAbility and later at Volans
- 2008: Fast Company Social Capitalist Award (on behalf of SustainAbility)
- 2010: American Society for Quality Spencer Hutchens, Jr. Medal for champions of quality and social responsibility
- 2011: Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship, used to write part of The Zeronauts
- 2013: Inducted into the Sustainability Hall of Fame by The International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP) in honor of “extraordinary contribution” to the field through research, publication, teaching and innovation.
- 2014: Honorary Doctorate, University of Essex
In addition to such awards, I have featured in a numbers of surveys, for example:
- In 2004, BusinessWeek described me as “a dean of the corporate responsibility movement for three decades.”
- In 2008, The Evening Standard named me among the ‘1000 Most Influential People’ in London, describing him as “a true green business guru,” and as “an evangelist for corporate social and environmental responsibility long before it was fashionable.”
- In 2009, a CSR International survey of the Top 100 CSR leaders placed me fourth: after Al Gore, Barack Obama and the late Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, and alongside Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank.
- In 2011, I was named among the ‘100 Global Sustain Ability Leaders for 2011’ by ABC Carbon and the Sustain Ability (nothing to do with SustainAbility) Showcase Asia, based on nominations and recommendations received from around the world.