Professor Benjamin McLellan received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Queensland in 2007, and has been at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Energy Science since 2010. Ben’s research focuses on sustainability within the energy and resources sectors, with a particular interest in emerging resources and technologies. He has been involved in research into the technical, environmental, economic and social implications of deep sea mining since 2014. This research has focused on identifying the relative impacts of deep sea minerals as compared to terrestrial mining, and links to broader examination of the use of critical minerals (which can be sourced from the deep ocean) for clean energy technologies. He also examines other aspects of the energy-X-nexus (X being any other sector, e.g. water, minerals, land). Ben is also an Honorary Principal Fellow at the Sustainable Minerals Institute of the University of Queensland, where he maintains significant collaboration.

Professor Molly Scott Cato is a Professor of Green Economics at Roehampton University and speaks for the Green Party of England and Wales on Economy and Finance. She has expertise on climate finance, climate reparations and the carbon tax. She recently published a book on Sustainable Finance (Springer, 2022). Between 2014 and 2020 Molly represented South West England and Gibraltar in the European Parliament. As a member of the Parliament’s Economics and Monetary Policy committee and the Parliament’s rapporteur on sustainable finance she worked on legislation to use the power of finance to address the climate and ecological emergencies. She was a co-legislator on regulations relating to mandatory disclosure and climate benchmarks. Molly studied PPE at Oxford University and took a PhD in Economics from the University of Wales. She is an expert on resilient local economies, cooperatives and social enterprise, sustainable finance, monetary policy and tax policy.