Gower Power

Chris’s career has combined his love of the outdoors, commitment to outdoor learning and development, and skills in education, training, facilitation and project management. After working as Kilvey Community Woodland officer, a trainer and development worker at Dynamix and a Forest School Leader, Chris trained as a teacher and worked in primary and secondary education whilst serving as a Director of Forest School SNPT. Since 2018 Chris has worked as a Project Manager at Down to Earth where responsibilities include fundraising, training and accreditation, and management of health and well-being programmes. Chris brings a wealth of skills to the board including critical and creative thinking and a keen interest in maximising benefits for both the environment and communities.

Mary’s work has mostly focused on supporting people affected by low income.  After numerous third sector roles, Mary delivered anti-poverty campaigns, development work and policymaking for Swansea Council, before serving a term as a local councillor with political roles combining her interests in poverty reduction and environmentalism.  She works as Director of Fairer Future, providing training and consultancy specialising in socioeconomic inequality, and as Gower Power’s Grants and Development Manager, ensuring community benefit funds we manage arising from renewable energy projects (locally and elsewhere) support relevant, worthwhile projects.

Ben Ferguson has over a decade of experience in community energy, serving as a founding member and director of Carmarthenshire’s Ynni Sir Gar project (delivering the county’s first ever community-owned wind turbine) as well as Community Energy in Pembrokeshire. With extensive technical knowledge of climate change, energy efficiency and renewable energy at all scales, Ben has worked with a range of stakeholders – from community groups through to statutory bodies, local businesses, and multi-national developers. He is currently Co-Executive Director of Community Energy Wales.

Ant has an MBA from Cardiff University and a background in community development.  He has enjoyed using this combination of skills to help small business owners, serving as vice-chair of the Swansea Rural Development Plan Partnership and working as a non-executive Board member of Cwmpas (formerly Wales Co-op Centre). He has set up and developed numerous successful social enterprises, including Gower Power and Gower Regeneration Ltd (Wales’s first community-owned solar farm), which won the 2017 Renewable Energy Project Award for being, “The most commendable sustainable electricity generation project undertaken by a community group in England and Wales.” 

John co-led the development of Wedmore solar co-operative, one of the first community-owned solar schemes in the UK (www.wedmorecpc.co.uk). He also founded an award-winning solar panel installation company, Ethical Solar, installing hundreds of photovoltaic systems during the solar boom around 2010. Whilst most of their work was domestic they installed larger systems on farms and community buildings. Their clients included Bristol City Council, Bristol Power CIC, Bristol Energy Coop and The Wildlife Trust.