James Spurgeon

James Spurgeon

Founder and Lead Consultant, Sustain Value

 James Spurgeon is the founder and lead consultant at Sustain Value. He has 30 years of experience in impact valuation -- quantifying and valuing natural, social, and human capital impacts and dependencies for businesses, financial institutions, investors, and governments. He has undertaken hundreds of environmental and social valuation studies and developed numerous decision-support tools for multiple sectors in the UK and worldwide. He now uses this deep experience to develop ESG and sustainability evaluation frameworks and advise clients on the topic.

Past projects have included developing and applying valuation coefficients and simple adjustment factors for multiple environmental and social impacts for several FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies. This has mainly been for project appraisals, developing company strategies, informing internal shadow costs, and producing company environmental and social profit and loss accounts.

James was a lead author of the Natural Capital Protocol and the Integrated Capitals Assessment Principles, and an author of the Natural Capital Protocol Finance Supplement. He has written many other business guides covering natural and social capital accounting, and ecosystem and water valuation.

James sits on the Advisory Panel of the Capitals Coalition. He was previously a technical advisor to the Prince of Wales’ Impact Value Working Group, and leader of the EU Business and Biodiversity ‘Natural Capital Accounting’ work-stream.

Prior to establishing Sustain Value he led and grew environmental economics teams at ERM, Jacobs and Posford Duvivier (now Royal Haskoning). Before that he began his career at KPMG training to be a chartered accountant. James has an MBA focusing on sustainability and environmental markets, an MSc in coastal resource management focusing on environmental valuation, and a BSc in Zoology.