About Chris

I've been in the energy industry for 25 years now, with a particular focus on renewables, especially solar and batteries. I'm passionate about communicating my knowledge to a wider audience, which I'm now doing on a freelance basis.

But first, let me tell you how this story began.

PV-Compare


A physical scientist by training, I reached the end of my DPhil in Chemistry in 2000, in a bit of a quandary. I was, by this point, passionate about the environment, but the jobs available were all petrochemicals, agrichemicals & biochemicals. There didn't seem to be a role that fitted my passions and morals.

It was then that I chanced upon the role that would change the course of my life. The Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University needed someone highly technical to run a study of solar PV in the UK, called the PV Compare project. Would it work under our cloudy skies? How much energy could it produce?

Well, we did indeed prove that solar power worked in the UK! The question then became - how do we make this happen? How do we bring this promising but expensive technology to market? That's when I started to get out of my science box, and become more multidisciplinary. It became a problem of social attitudes, economics, and policy support, not technology.

The Joju Solar Years


It's one thing sitting writing academic papers and reports, but quite another to get out there and do it. So, in 2006, I co-founded Joju Solar, a PV installation business. Since then, the business has grown organically to employing over 100 people and turning over £20m per year.

Highlights include:

  • The installation of 10% of all community renewables in the UK. It’s an astonishing amount as this was all building mounted, mainly on hundreds of schools, trather than solar fields or wind farms

  • Iconic Installations like Salisbury Cathedral and Wales Millennium Centre

  • 3 episodes of the Fully Charged Youtube Series, reaching over 3 million people

My roles at Joju have been many and varied as you would expect from working in a start-up, including sales, project management, business process, and marketing.

This broader perspective led me to take on the teaching of Energy to the department's MSc students, covering the whole breadth of this topic from a multidisciplinary perspective. I LOVE being on stage in front of an audience, and explaining complex material in simple and engaging terms.


If there is a common thread through all this, it's really one about communication and engagement - I like finding out new stuff, and then telling people about it! My teaching roles at the University, and marketing work at Joju Solar all fall under this same umbrella, and it's something I'm looking forward to continuing over the next decade in a freelance capacity.