For many years Richard was a partner with leading regional law firm Foot Anstey LLP. He specialised in corporate law advice including governance, raising finance and business mergers and acquisitions.
Richard is on the board of South West Investment Group, a non profit making company which provides funding to businesses across the South West.
Neil has extensive experience in a wide range of infrastructure projects, ranging from house building to renewable energy. He has specialised in the planning, development, procurement, construction, and operation of renewable energy developments and has broad knowledge of the financing, implementation, acquisition and disposal of such undertakings. He has been responsible for wind energy, solar PV, tidal power and battery storage projects in the U.K., the rest of Europe, North Africa, North America and the Far East.
He is a Chartered Engineer, Chartered Builder, and Chartered Construction Manager and is a Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers, the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Chartered Institute of Building.
Cheryl was one of the founders of CfR and was instrumental in setting up Regen, where she worked for 14 years. She is a specialist in spatial planning, distributed energy and stakeholder engagement. In June 2017, Cheryl joined Pell Frischmann and assumed responsibility for the company’s energy and environment sector strategy. She is now Director of Energy Capital at West Midlands Combined Authority driving forward the delivery of the Regional Energy Strategy and energy devolution ask, to ensure the West Midlands meets its clean growth, climate change and local industrial strategy goals.
Cheryl is an economist and geographer by background and is motivated by bringing these two elements together to support the development of low-carbon, climate-resilient economies. She holds an MSc in Sustainable Environmental Management where she completed a thesis on the insurance industry’s response to climate change. Cheryl chairs the Entrepreneurial Women in Renewable Energy network, established by Regen to support the renewable energy sector to harness talent from across the sector.
Merlin is the chief executive of Regen SW and was previously director of the Environmental Industries Commission (EIC), where he championed the views of the environmental technology and services industry to the government. Merlin has a track record in influencing positive policy for renewable energy, and community energy in particular.
Jonathan is a highly experienced corporate finance professional, who has been involved in the renewable energy and low carbon sectors for over 30 years. He secured the finance for the first wind farm in the UK, the first community wind project in the UK and a number of other wind, solar and biomass projects. He also developed a Windfarm on his own account. Jonathan was founding partner of the Ernst & Young Global Renewable Energy Group instigating the influential Ernst & Young renewable energy country attractiveness indices. He is experienced in large-scale social enterprise and helped raise the initial finance for the Eden Project. He is a past Treasurer of the predecessor to UK Renewables, the British Wind Energy Association and the Renewable Energy Association and was a non-executive director of Regen SW. As Climate Change Matters, Jonathan advises NGOs and commercial enterprises in the renewables sector.
