I take climate tech and energy projects from site to ready-to-build. 12 planning consents, 0 refusals.
Independent project development consultant · Solar · BESS · e-methane · UK & Europe
"Getting things built in renewable energy is mostly paperwork, politics, and pushback. Everything moves if you know which lever to pull."
Ten years of senior development experience, available without a full-time hire. I work with founders and development leads at energy transition companies who need project origination, UK or European permitting, land rights, or embedded development leadership on a contract basis. Engagements are scoped around specific deliverables. Day rate on request.
Identify, screen, and score candidate sites for renewable energy or synthetic fuel facilities. Deliverables include a scored shortlist with constraint maps, infrastructure proximity analysis, and planning risk assessment.
Planning route assessment, EIA screening and scoping, environmental survey programme design, and pre-application engagement with the consenting authority. UK and Spain. See also: UK Pilot Project Permit Checker — a free tool for early permit scoping.
Heads of terms drafting, option to lease structuring, and landowner negotiation support. Often delivered alongside site search as an end-to-end origination mandate.
Independent review of a project's milestones, dependencies, risk assumptions, and DEVEX budget. Useful for boards, investors, or incoming development leads taking over a live programme.
Embedded senior leadership for companies that need to build or run a development function without a full-time hire. Typically 2–4 days per week, structured around your milestones and team needs.
Flexible advisory time (typically 2–5 days per month) for companies building their in-house development function who want on-call access to senior expertise.
Based in London. Happy to work remotely or in person across the UK and Europe.
Get in touch →From site origination to planning consent, and everything in between. Planning applications, environmental permits, grid connections, land agreements. I manage the complete stack across solar, BESS, and e-methane without losing sight of what makes a project viable.
I do my own GIS work: site filtering, spatial analysis, location plans. I've written scripts to pull data others couldn't easily access, and built dashboards to make complex analysis legible to non-technical stakeholders. Faster decisions, fewer expensive surprises early in a project. The UK Pilot Project Permit Checker is a public example of this kind of work.
The planning system has more routes than most developers use. Full applications, minor and non-material amendments, planning conditions, permitted development rights, etc. Knowing when to deploy each is what separates a good application from a fast one. I know how to navigate the full spectrum.
Twelve planning applications led, submitted, and consented. 100% consent rate, from 15MW to 50MW, across Scotland and England.
More than 1GW of projects taken from land agreement through to early development across solar, BESS, and e-methane.
Sole permitting lead on two first-of-kind projects, including the UK's first commercial-scale solar-powered e-methane development.
Managed up to six live projects simultaneously, coordinating consultant teams of more than twelve people per project.
Lead permitting experience on a 500MW project in Spain, building international permitting knowledge from scratch in a non-UK system.
Project Starwell was a 15MW solar development with an integrated e-methane plant. It was the first of its kind in the UK, which meant no planning precedent, no established use class, and a statutory consultee list that had never been assembled for a project like this before.
Read the full case study →If you're developing something the planning system hasn't seen before, I can help.
Development work is mostly unglamorous paperwork in service of getting things built. That means brokering compromise between investors who want certainty, engineers who want elegance, planners who want compliance, and communities who just want to know what's going on. The job is finding the middle ground everyone can live with, without losing sight of why it matters. I coordinate consultant teams, track regulatory changes closely, and keep client stakeholders honest about programme progress. Less straightforward than it sounds.
I don't take "no" as a final answer. I work through problems more thoroughly than strictly necessary, as that's usually where the answer lies. I've taught myself GIS, picked up enough coding to be dangerous, and get genuinely interested in how other countries permit the same projects we're struggling to build here. Under pressure I'm calm. Observant rather than reactive. I tend to notice things others don't. In this field, that's usually where the real problem is hiding.
Too many applications try to get consent on the minimum possible information, e.g. vague drawings, delayed assessments, documents designed to obscure. It erodes trust with the very people you need on your side, and the industry is paying for it. High-quality, transparent submissions aren't just the right thing to do. They move faster in the long run.
The developer-community relationship is broken, and both sides share responsibility. What's needed is genuine dialogue: developers who answer real questions honestly without overpromising, and communities who engage with what's being proposed rather than what they fear might be. We can't build what the UK needs by talking past each other.
What once took years to learn can now be done in weeks. There's no excuse for not exploring what's available, e.g. a better way to visualise site data, a faster route through a technical problem, understanding how another country permits the same technology. I'm always looking.
Pushing things through without proper review is a false economy. Building in time for rigorous input from engineers, planners, and neighbours (and presenting technical information clearly enough that people can actually engage with it) adds weeks to a programme but saves months later.
Articles and tools built as a byproduct of doing the work. Updated as new things get made.
A 'plain-English' guide to navigating the English planning process: from preparing a valid application to getting a decision. Written from the field ✍️
ToolA free browser-based tool for early-stage energy and industrial pilot project developers. Answer questions about your site and substances — get an instant summary of which permits you likely need.
I came to renewable energy during COVID, when the gap between the urgency of the climate crisis and the pace of the transition became impossible to ignore. The logic was simple: this is the most important problem of our generation, and getting projects built faster is one of the most direct ways to help. Planning seemed like the right place to contribute.
Renewable Connections gave me a rigorous grounding in how solar and BESS projects actually get built, from origination through to consent. It also gave me a front-row seat to the grid connection crisis (with some connection dates pushed back 5–10 years) forcing the industry to rethink fast. Amberside offered a clear, proprietary response to that problem. Renewco broadened my exposure across project types and geographies.
The move to Rivan was the most deliberate. E-methane offered a different answer to the grid crisis entirely: clean gas produced with cheap solar, injected directly into the existing network, no connection required. The technology was novel. More importantly, the problem it solved was real and urgent. I joined as their planning lead, took two first-of-kind projects through the system, and submitted what became the UK's first consented solar-powered e-methane development.
In June 2026, I moved to independent consulting. I now work directly with energy transition companies on site origination, UK and European permitting, land rights, and fractional development leadership.
The clients I work best with are founders and technical leads at early-stage climate tech and synthetic fuel companies who are facing the UK planning system for the first time. They typically have a site in mind, a technology a Local Planning Authority has never seen before, and no in-house development resource. I work alongside them from site selection, assessment, and land rights negotiation through to planning consent and ready-to-build status, on a fractional or project basis. I work independently, which means engagements are scoped around specific projects or phases rather than a permanent hire.
I also work with more established developers who need a senior freelance lead on a live project, or an independent review of a programme they have inherited.
Based in London. Available for remote engagements across the UK and Europe, and in-person work where the project demands it.
Based in London. Happy to work remotely or in person across the UK and Europe.
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