Jeremy Leggett, a geologist by training, began his career as a consultant for the oil industry, while teaching at the Royal School of Mines . His research on earth history was funded by oil companies BP and Shell, among others. He later became an environmental campaigner for Greenpeace, before evolving into a social entrepreneur and author.
He has written several books including Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis (Portobello, 2005: also published in the US as The Empty Tank) and The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era (Penguin, 1999). These books examined the issues of oil depletion and global warming.
He spent the 1980s in the service of Big Oil, as a geologist and faculty member of the Royal School of Mines in London, and the 1990s as top campaigner for Greenpeace International. Jeremy Leggett later became the founder and is currently executive chairman of Solarcentury the UK’s largest independent solar electric company. Leggett is one of a number of entrepreneurs who have started a renewable energy business. Other successful self-starters in the sector include Shi Zhengrong, Tom Dinwoodie and Tom Lerner.
He also serves as a founding director of the world's first private equity fund for renewable energy. From 2002 to 2006, Leggett was a member of the UK Government Renewables advisory board. He was a campaigner on climate change for Greenpeace International from 1989 to 1996. He was the recipient of the President's Award of the Geological Society, and in 1987 the Geological Society's Lyell Fund.
He has called for a mass withdrawal from fossil fuels and advocates that coal should be left in the ground. Leggett has been critical of the lack of reporting by the British mainstream media on the economic imperatives of climate change abatement. Leggett is known for his support of microgeneration technology in the fight to abate global warming.
In his 2009 book, The Solar Century, Leggett is critical of nuclear power, saying that it cannot come online quickly enough to make a difference with climate change, and that the nuclear industry still hasn't found a way to deal with its radioactive wastes. He also says that investing in nuclear power would mean less money for other initiatives involving energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. Leggett also states that carbon capture and storage has a "substantial timing problem" as it will take fifteen to twenty years to introduce the technology.