Allan is Chief Development Officer, Energy and Climate Change of the City of Sydney. Allan is also a Board member of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility. Prior to his appointment Allan was Chief Executive Officer of the London Climate Change Agency and prior to that Woking Borough Council’s Director of Thameswey Limited. Allan’s role at the City is to deliver its Green Infrastructure Plan and major energy and climate change projects, including trigeneration, renewable energy, advanced waste treatment, automated waste collection and decentralised water. Since his appointment 3 years ago the City has reduced Council’s overall greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and is well on the way to reducing Council’s overall emissions by 70% by 2030 as well as setting in place the green infrastructure to reduce emissions in its Local Government Area by 70% by 2030.

The National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility is a national facility based at Griffith University studying how Australia can adapt to the impacts of climate change such as more frequent and severe droughts, floods and sea level rise.

During his time in London Allan set up and ran the London Climate Change Agency, developed the energy and climate change elements of the London Plan, Mayor’s Climate Change Action Plan and the Mayoral Climate Change Statutory Duty as well as developing and implementing decentralised energy and renewable energy projects in London.

During his time at Woking, Allan reduced CO2 emissions by 77.5% from 1990 levels to 2004 and undertook groundbreaking work on energy efficiency, trigeneration, renewable gases from waste, alternative fuels for transport, renewable energy and fuel cells. Under Allan, Woking installed 81 private wire decentralised energy systems, nearly 10% of the UK’s total installed solar energy photovoltaics and the first fuel cell CHP in the UK.

Allan was appointed a Member of the British Empire in 1999 for services to energy and water efficiency and was instrumental in Woking Borough Council gaining the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Sustainable Development 2001 in the development of Local Sustainable Community Energy Systems, the only local authority ever to receive a Queen’s Award for Enterprise.