David Schiele

Director

David joined The Agency from an Innovative SME technology company​. He brings a wealth of commercial experience from the Clean-Tech, EV Charging, Renewable Energy, and Waste Management sectors​. His specialist project management experience includes: local, regional and large scale energy infrastructure projects​. David has a proven track record of leading teams, driving strategy and delivering high value strategic innovation and infrastructure projects for demanding stakeholders.

Daniel Dickinson

Business Development Lead

Dan joined The Agency from a role tasked with growing the Green Technologies and Services sector within Greater Manchester. He specialises in market positioning, service development and partnership facilitation across the low carbon sector, with a focus on renewables, energy storage and smart grids​. Daniel has a demonstrable record of achieving sales growth for SMEs through direct support and network creation​. He is experienced in supporting innovators to bring their products and services to domestic and international markets, and in the project management of renewable site developments.

Gary Bateman

Business Development Lead for Low-Carbon Housing Innovations

Gary joined The Agency to support us with an exciting new project with our partners at The University of Salford, working on industry-facing research and innovation activity focused on the technical and scaling-up challenges of Net-Zero and future homes. Gary will work with innovation companies, supporting them in developing their business and scale up emerging low-carbon products and services - enabling them to access the market more rapidly.

Karina Mironyuk

Senior Administrator

Karina joined The Agency after a career in Ukraine, where she showcased her versatility across various sectors, including aviation, agriculture, state-sector housing services, logistics, and waste collection and processing. As a lawyer and financier, she brings in-depth legal and financial analytical knowledge and experience in event organization and team management. Karina excels in precise and timely administrative duties, client relationship management, and fostering effective collaborations with colleagues and partners.

Kevin Aisbitt

Innovation Project Manager

Kevin joined The Agency following a role managing the Growth Hub in Worcestershire, supporting the growth of small and medium enterprises. He values the importance of innovation and brings a great deal of domestic and international business engagement experience from Asia, Europe, and North America. He specialises in the development of strategic business / research links and attracting inward investment to help organisations take advantage of trade and investment opportunities in new markets.

Tahir Ali

Partnerships Manager

Tahir joined The Agency having come from a commercial sales background, specialising in Energy Management Systems, Bio Fuels & Carbon Reduction. He has over 30 years’ experience in the commercial sector and brings with him a wealth of business connections across many areas. Tahir has a proven track record in assisting businesses develop and implement their Carbon reduction strategies as well as project management of those solutions.

Amer Gaffar

Manchester Metropolitan University

Amer is the director of the £4.1m Manchester Fuel Cell Innovation Centre at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and a sustainability professional with more than 23 years’ experience in the environmental sector. In 2013, Amer founded the Greater Manchester Hydrogen Partnership to develop and build the strong and diverse network of SME, industry, researchers and public sector stakeholders integral to the work of the Centre today.

In addition to his role at the Centre, Amer continues to lead a number of projects to make Greater Manchester a centre of excellence in hydrogen and fuel cells. He is also leading the Net Zero skills pathway for NetZero North West and has led the development and authored the now formally adopted Greater Manchester Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Strategy alongside working with the UK Government to establish key deliverables for the UK hydrogen opportunity.

Beverly Taylor

Bruntwood

Bev Taylor is the Director of Environment at Bruntwood. Having headed up Bruntwood’s energy business for nine years, Bev has now transitioned her role to focus on environmental efforts as the business aims for long-term sustainable growth and begins its journey to becoming net zero carbon.

Carly McLachlan

University of Manchester

Carly is the Director of Tyndall Manchester - an interdisciplinary team working on policy relevant climate change research based within the School of Engineering at the University of Manchester. Carly is chair of the Greater Manchester 5 Year Environment Plan Implementation Forum and sits on the GM Green City Region Partnership. She is the academic lead for carbon for the University of Manchester, and is the Associate Director of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformation.

David Green

Hitachi EU

David leads Hitachi Europe’s Sustainability R&D activities.  This area covers a broad scope from energy systems and decarbonisation, to environment and sustainability research and solution development.  David also leads Hitachi’s collaboration centre with Imperial College London, the Hitachi-Imperial Centre for Decarbonisation and Natural Climate Solutions.  Prior to joining Hitachi in 2020 David had worked at Shell for 10 years, followed by time within technology start-ups and at the consultancy Arup.

David brings experience covering technology, research, commercial and venturing principally within the energy and mobility sectors.

Mark Atherton

Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Mark has been engaged as Director of Environment for Greater Manchester since 2012. In this role, Mark provides strategic support to the Greater Manchester Green City Region Board and Partnership by leading the development and delivery of strategies, policies, research and demonstration projects for environment and low carbon work areas.

Mark Hughes MBE

The Growth Company

Mark was appointed Group Chief Executive of The Growth Company in 2013. Prior to this Mark was Chief Executive at the North West Regional Development Agency, and was awarded an MBE for services to business in the North West in the 2013 New Year's Honours. Mark has also worked in corporate and economic development consulting at DTZ Pieda Consulting and Ernst & Young (EY) Management Consultancy, where he was responsible for the creation of the European Investment Monitor that established EY as a leading commentator on European inward investment.

Nathan Sanders

SSE

Nathan is the Managing Director of SSE Distributed Energy [Energy Solutions] which looks to help companies and organisations on their decarbonisation journeys by providing whole system thinking solutions. Having first joined as an apprentice, Nathan worked his way through the business as a technical trainee, a contract engineer, a district contracts manager before becoming a regional director.  

Will Swan

University of Salford

Professor Will Swan is the Director of Energy House Laboratories (EHL) at the University of Salford, where he has led the energy and buildings research for more than10 years. The labs include the award-winning Salford Energy House, a whole Victorian house in a climate-controlled chamber, the Smart Meters Smart Homes Lab and the £16m Energy House 2.0 research facility, which is currently working with Barratt, Bellway, and Saint Gobain on developing demonstrators for the new Future Homes Standard. He has published a wide number of papers on retrofit and building performance and has advised on a national and regional policy level, including a recent appointment to the National Energy Efficiency Taskforce. He is also Director of Sustainability at the University of Salford.

Contact us

Please get in touch if you would like to work with the Agency and learn more about the support available to help accelerate the deployment of low carbon solutions.

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