Ben Goldsmith (Partner, Wheb Ventures)
With 8 years’ clean technology investment experience, from originating, analysing and executing venture investments to ongoing value addition to investee companies, Ben Goldsmith is recognised as a leading clean technology investor and a pioneer in the sector. After spending several years leading a group of private investors backing clean technology businesses at an early stage of their development, Ben co-founded WHEB Ventures with Rob Wylie and Kim Heyworth. Ben sits on the board of companies both on behalf of WHEB Ventures and within the WHEB group of companies, which includes Ruston WHEB (http://www.rustonwheb.com/) alongside WHEB Ventures. Ben is also actively involved in environmental philanthropy through the JMG Foundation which funds campaigning and advocacy work around a small number of key environmental issues. In 2003, Ben founded the Environmental Funders’ Network (http://www.greenfunders.org/) which now brings together more than 80 grant-making organisations with a combined annual budget of more than $80m.
Dr Douglas Parr (Chief Scientist and Policy Director, Greenpeace UK)
Dr Douglas Parr is Chief Scientist and Policy Director at Greenpeace UK, looking after the science and political functions. Currently working on climate change policy in the power, heat and transport sectors, he has previously worked on a number of issues including GM crops, chemicals policy, green refrigeration, marine conservation, biofuels and nuclear power. He obtained a D.Phil in Atmospheric Chemistry from Oxford University in 1991.
Lord Oxburgh
Ron Oxburgh (Lord Oxburgh) served as a Non-Executive Chairman of Shell Transport and Trading plc from 2004 to 2005. He is an accomplished scientist involved with a number of all-party parliamentary groups, chairing the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee from 2001 to 2004. He trained as a geologist/geophysicist (Oxford and Princeton) and has worked in teh Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Cornell, Stanford and Caltech. From 1982 to 1988 he was President of Queens' College Cambridge; 1987 to 2001 he was Rector of Imperial College, London. He is a fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the US Academy of Sciences. He was appointed to the House of Lords in 1999 where he serves as an independent member. His research and publications have largely been tectonophysics and the thermal behaviour of the Earth's crust and mantle; current interests are climate change, energy and water futures, and global development. He is currently Chairman of D1 Oils plc, Falck Renewables and blue-ng and is President of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association. He advises the Government of Singapore on Energy, Environment and Research Strategy.
Tom Delay (Chief Executive, the Carbon Trust)
Tom was appointed as the first Chief Executive of the Carbon Trust in 2001. Over the last eight years, the Carbon Trust has helped UK businesses cut £1bn from their energy bills and the UK to cut its carbon emissions by more than 17 million tonnes. It is running world leading projects aiming to reduce the costs of key technologies such as offshore wind power and marine energy.
He has overseen the launch of the world’s first Carbon Label, which is now used by companies including Walkers, Pepsi and Tesco as customers, and has forged agreements with countries China and Qatar to support UK business by helping to invest, develop and deploy low carbon technologies.
He is a member of the government’s Renewable energy Advisory Board, the UK Energy Research Partnership, the UK Energy Research Centre and the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership.
A chartered engineer with extensive experience of the energy sector, Tom began his career with Shell, working with them for 16 years in a variety of commercial and operations roles including four years as General Manager of Pizo Shell - a Shell subsidiary in Gabon, Africa. He moved into management consultancy with McKinsey and Co and then as a Principal with the Global Energy Practice of AT Kearney before joining the Carbon Trust.
Tom gained a first class honours degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Southampton in 1981 and completed an MBA at INSEAD, Paris in 1988.
Chris Tchen (Partner, Carbon Limiting Technologies)
Chris Tchen is one of the founding partners of Carbon Limiting Technologies, a company that supports the commercialisation of new cleantech businesses. His previous experience was over 20 years in strategy consulting with Strategos, Gemini Consulting and Bain. Chris’ particular areas of interest are company strategy, business model design and changes in industry structure. Since its founding in 2006, CLT has supported over 70 new cleantech businesses.
Andy Deacon (Energy Savings Trust)
Andy is currently Head of Regional and Local Delivery for the Energy Saving Trust having joined them in October 2008. He is working with the Energy Saving Trust’s Heads of Regions, local authority and community teams, supporting regional bodies, local authorities and community groups to cut carbon emissions across their areas. Prior to joining EST, Andy held posts in central, regional and local government dealing with a range of environmental and climate change issues. He holds an MSc in Applied Meteorology and Climatology from the University of Birmingham, is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and the RSA.
Nigel Burton-White (Renewables East - the renewable energy agency)
As Technology Director at Renewables East, Nigel is currently responsible for the early stage support of approximately 20 innovators within the East of England, through the Renewables East Technology Commercialisation Scheme. He is also developing a number of major solar PV projects across the region and leads 4 project managers working in such diverse areas as Fuel Poverty, Low Carbon Development, Biofuels and off-shore renewables. He has experience working within large multi-nationals, mid-sized global engineering consultancies (Lotus Engineering) and a number of smaller organisations including his own small engineering company in 2005. Key areas of responsibility have included management of research activity, business development and product development across a diverse and global client base. With extensive experience of product and business development within the Asian region, he is interested in understanding and supporting the UK engineering sector as it competes in a global market place.
Professor Abigail Bristow (Loughborough University)
Professor Abigail Bristow leads the Transport Studies Group in the Department of Civil and Building Engineering at Loughborough University. Her main research interests are related to the environmental externalities of transport with a focus on carbon emissions and noise. She has recently completed studies on the potential to reduce carbon emissions from the freight sector in London; the potential response to personal carbon trading schemes in terms of public acceptability and behaviour and advised the Commission for Integrated Transport on cost effective reductions in carbon emissions from transport. Professor Bristow sits on the board of The Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (LowCVP). LowCVP is an action and advisory group, established in 2003 to take a lead in accelerating the shift to low carbon vehicles and fuels in the UK and to help ensure that UK business can benefit from that shift.
Adrian Smith (Programme Director, EPIS)
Adrian is responsible for the overall development of the Edinburgh Pre-Incubator Scheme (EPIS) and is Secretary to the EPIS Selection Committee that awards EPIS placements on behalf of the funding bodies. Adrian joined Edinburgh Research and Innovation in September 2003 after several years developing new company spin-out companies for Heriot-Watt University and other clients. Prior to this, Adrian trained in accountancy with Deloitte's and then had a number of roles as finance director and managing director of both public and privately owned companies. He graduated from Salford University in 1983 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering Science, specialising in Medical Engineering. After a career in the Health Service he retrained in accountancy in 1987 becoming a Fellow of his Institute in 1996.
Professor Patrick Corbett (Head of Energy Academy, Heriot-Watt University)
As Head of the Energy Academy within Heriot-Watt University, Patrick is responsible for growing and strengthening the institutional academic base across all areas of energy. He was previously Head of Institute of Petroleum Engineering and Heriot-Watt and sits on the pan-Scottish University Energy Technology Partnership board. He is the Total Professor of Petroleum Geoengineering and has published widely in petroleum geoscience and engineering and also on the links between the petroleum and renewables industries. He is currently involved in Carbon Capture and Storage research activity through the Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage.
Jeremy Creswell
Jeremy Cresswell is editor of Energy, a satellite to the UK's oldest daily newspaper - the Press and Journal of Aberdeen. Cresswell is also: Founder/chairman of Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group; a director of Aberdeen Offshore Windfarm Limited; an honorary professor at Aberdeen Business School - Robert Gordon University; honorary research fellow at the School of Geoscience - Aberdeen Univesity; and a Burgess of the City of Aberdeen.
Beverley Gower-Jones
Beverley Gower-Jones is one of the founding partners of Carbon Limiting Technologies, which supports the commercialisation of clean tech businesses. Her previous experience is with Shell International where Beverley was a production geologist in Aberdeen, Brunei, Egypt and The Netherlands before she joined Shell Technology Ventures as Vice President for commercialising Drilling and Completions technologies. In 2002 Beverley moved back to the UK as Performance Director for the New Business Accelerator at QinetiQ where she was responsible for the operational performance of a portfolio of start-up companies. Beverley’s particular areas of expertise are business incubators and corporate venturing programmes, joint venture and licensing models and general management experience running a start-up. Since its founding in 2006 CLT has supported over 70 new clean tech businesses.
Greg Archer
Greg Archer is Managing Director of the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (LowCVP), a multi-stakeholder partnership of over 350 organisations. He is also a member of the Board of the UK Renewable Fuels Agency and in this capacity co-authored the Gallagher Review examining the indirect effects of biofuels. Greg is also a Director of Cenex, a public-private centre of excellence for low carbon and fuel-cell technologies which he oversaw the creation of in 2005. An environmental chemist by training he has wide ranging experience in environmental: policy, research, businesses and programme management.
Professor Erik Bichard
Erik is Professor of Regeneration and Sustainable Development at the University of Salford’s School of the Built Environment. He has spent his entire career working on sustainability issues and has degrees in environmental sciences, noise control and land use planning disciplines. He was Cheshire County Council's first 'Environmental Planner' and went on work as a sustainability consultant for Entec and ERM. Later he was appointed Chief Executive of Sustainability Northwest and the National Centre for Businesses & Sustainability. Erik has been a non-Executive Director of Greater Manchester Waste Ltd, and is on the Board of the social enterprise FRC Group. His most recent book, ‘Positively Responsible’, written with the psychologist Cary Cooper, addresses the way in which human behavior towards sustainable change can be influenced and accelerated. His current research projects in this area are with the Environment Agency and the registered social landlord sector.
Mark Lawrence
Mark Lawrence is one of the founding partners of Carbon Limiting Technologies, a company which supports the commercialisation of new clean technology businesses. Since its formation in 2006, CLT has supported over 70 clean technology ventures. In over 20 years of business experience Mark's career has spanned venture capital, with 3i, commercial management in rapidly growing international professional services businesses and consulting to industrial spin-outs and SME's raising funding for expansion. Mark's particular areas of interest include fund raising, organisational design and management team development. He is a qualified business coach and in the distant past gained a doctorate in Chemistry from Oxford University.
Dr Martino Picardo
Dr Martino Picardo is Managing Director at UMIC. He has a PhD in Biochemistry from Cardiff University and spent 4 years at Baylor College Of Medicine, Houston, TX in Cardiovascular research. Martino joined Amersham International in 1991 and subsequently went on to manage the R&D Technology Transfer Group, based in Cardiff. Following the merger of Amersham with Pharmacia Biotech, Martino became the Science Director for the Cardiff site before becoming a Business Manager for Manchester Biotech Ltd. and subsequently Manchester Innovation Ltd. in June 1999. When the Universities of Manchester and UMIST merged, a new company (University of Manchester Incubator Company, UMIC http://www.umic.co.uk/) was created by the University to manage all Incubation facilities with provision of business support. The portfolio of SME’s and start-ups is now in excess of 60, across all Incubation activities and including graduates, having generated in excess of £100m VC investment and resulting in well over 500 jobs. Martino is Managing Director of UMIC and MICL. Martino recently provided consultancy expertise to the World Bank on behalf of the Argentinian Government in advance of direct infrastructure and project related funding ($300M) being allocated to the Biotechnology sector.