For Stoves is led by people with proven track records in successful project development and implementation. Each Director has over 25 years of experience, the team is dedicated and, through their experience, have connections globally.
For Stoves has been set up by Nicola Steen. Nicola worked in Ed Damazin, Sudan in 1986-88, living in Roseires. She cooked on a stove that used charcoal for two years. After coming back to the UK, she got a job at London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), in the Energy and Environmental Programme, working for Dr Michael Grubb. Michael was the first person to write about global greenhouse gas trading. He inspired Nicola: here was a way whereby anyone who changed their behaviour and reduced greenhouse gases could be rewarded. The good being traded, emission reductions, is the same anywhere in the world. This means each tonne of greenhouse gas emissions reduced has the same value to the environment. It’s a market where her friends in Sudan could be treated fairly.
Nicola’s biography is below but, in brief, she’s spent much of her career developing these environmental markets and is excited to be able to offer this PoA to be used to help communities improve their living conditions.
Throughout her career, Nicola has met some amazing people. Several, including Steve Drummond, have helped her create For Stoves. She would like to thank Steve, Alec Steen (her dad and first investor), Cressida Steen, Douglas Heydon, Ram Babu and the General Carbon colleagues Besty Vincent and Hari Prasad, Adriaan Korthuis of Climate Focus and Adriaan Tas of Carbon Africa, Robert Lange, Kisioki Moitiko, Viv Wilkins and Alison Rayner of Initial Design, Clive Allen, Westbrook Creative, Zoe Nelson, Robert Dornau, Alaa Alessa, Alice Kington, Frank Pitasio, Martin Alder, Divaldo Rezende, Iona Bradley, Robert Van Buskirk, Nick Haines, Hugh Somerville, Sheena Clark, Mahala Wall and Carolina Money and, in memory, great memories, Carlton Bartels, Adam White and John Willett and, at the foundation, her lovely, loving mum, Doreen Steen, who always encouraged and supported her, indeed providing the initial seed finance – and who made sure, with Alec, that she actually went to Sudan. Also, thanks to Michael Grubb for inspiring her back in 1989 and to Jonathan Stern and Rosina Pullman for opening the door and hiring her in EEP, the Energy and Environmental Programme.
Nicola’s very pleased that four very experienced and respected people have agreed to be directors of the company. Like Nicola they have spent many years working on sustainability and development issues. They are committed to providing this platform to help create positive change. The UN’s PoAs last 28 years. Each of the Directors has already committed that time – or almost that time – to sustainable projects during their careers to date. For Stoves continues our work. We are committed to sustainable solutions and will ensure that For Stoves is well-managed and robust over the years to come.
Directors
Paddy Coulter
Paddy Coulter is a specialist in media and development and is a partner in the Oxford Global Media consultancy. He is a Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford and works as Communications Director for the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) of Oxford University’s Department of International Development. He is also a core partner of CERES21 (Creative Responses to Sustainability), the international research venture of the Centre for Development and Environment of the University of Oslo and the Institute for Innovation and Economic Organisation at the Norwegian School of Management.
Paddy was formerly Director of Studies at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford where he directed the international journalism programme between 2001 and 2007. He was Director of the independent television production company, the International Broadcasting Trust (IBT), between 1990 and 2001, producing over a hundred television programmes for leading broadcasters on global development and the environment. Paddy was previously Head of Media for Oxfam.
Jonathan de Vries
Jonathan is currently CEO of Sastela, South Africa’s Association for Concentrated Solar Power. He’s been working on energy and environmental issues since 2004 when he co-founded Vuthela Recycling Solutions, Johannesburg, SA, an innovative company focusing on developing a recycling model and market for electronic waste in South Africa. He has worked as a consultant and entrepreneur on several green energy projects.
From 2010-12 Jonathan was Special Advisor to the Energy Minister of South Africa, leading the work on renewable energy.
Jonathan is a composer. In the 1990s he lived as a creative artist, running a music studio in Cape Town, producing soundtracks for the local TV and film industry. During apartheid in South Africa, he was a full-time political activist in the anti-apartheid resistance movement.
Professor Peter Head CBE FREng FRSA
Peter is a champion of sustainable development. He established the Ecological Sequestration Trust in 2011. He advocates that changing the way we invest public and private money in the built environment could be made very much more effective if the public and private sectors adopt sustainable development principles.
Peter is a civil and structural engineer who has become a recognised world leader in major bridges (he received an OBE for successfully delivering the Second Severn Crossing as Government Agent), advanced composite technology and now in sustainable development in cities and regions. He has won many awards for his work including the Award of Merit of IABSE, the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Silver Medal and the Prince Philip Award for Polymers in the Service of Mankind.
He joined Arup in 2004 to create and lead their planning and integrated urbanism team which by 2011 had doubled in size. He directed work on the Dongtan Eco City Planning project which was voted by Chinese developers in 2005 as the most influential development project in China.
In July 2008 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in engineering at Bristol University, where he is a visiting Professor in Sustainable Systems Engineering.
In May 2011 he was appointed as a visiting professor in eco-cities at Westminster University. In 2009 he was awarded the Sir Frank Whittle medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering for a lifetime contribution to the well-being of the nation through environmental innovation.
In 2008 he was named by the Guardian Newspaper as one of 50 people that could ‘save the planet’. He was cited by Time magazine in 2008 as one of 30 global eco-heroes and has been one of CNN’s Principle Voices.
In 2011 he was awarded the CBE in the UK’s New Year’s Honours List for services to Civil Engineering and the Environment.
Colin Palmer
Colin originally trained as a naval architect and developed an interest in the diverse ways that small boats are used in developing countries – in livelihood generation and transport. From the early 1980s onwards he undertook a wide range of consultancy assignments, mainly linked to the energy efficiency of water transport and ways that this might be improved. He worked for many years in Bangladesh with the country boats, but has also worked in Brazil, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Vietnam, Madagascar and Nigeria. Over this time he developed a wider interest in the role of technology in development and in 1992 joined Intermediate Technology (now Practical Action) for a two-year period as Marketing Director.
In parallel with his interest in the role of technology and energy in development, he became interested in renewable energy and after working on wave energy development in the late 1970s, established his own wind energy development company, Windcluster Ltd in 1988. Windcluster developed and built one of the first commercial wind energy projects in the UK and continues to own and operate the 3.4MW project. Subsequently he co-founded another wind energy company, Wind Prospect Group Ltd, which currently employs around 250 people and is active in markets around the globe. Wind Prospect has recently diversified into solar energy and undertakes every aspect of renewable energy generation, from project identification through to construction and operations management.
Recently Colin has wound down his day-to-day involvement in these companies in order to pursue other interests, in particular finding ways to invest (both time and money) in clean technology projects in developing countries. His investment company, Ginko Investments has a small investment in a solar lighting company based in East Africa.
Nicola Steen
Nicola Steen is developing a Programme of Activities under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations. The CME of the PoA is CME For Stoves, and Nicola is a founder and director of this not-for-profit company.
Together with Robert Lange and Kisioki Moitiko, Nicola has also established Nyumbani Innovations (Innovations for the home) as a limited company in Tanzania to manage the intial planned efficient stove project with the Maasai. Kisioki Moitiko is the Maasai General Manager of the project Professor Lange’s charity, the International Collaborative on Science, Education and the Environment is running currently.
Nicola Steen has been involved in designing market solutions for environmental and sustainable concerns since 1989. She worked at the Energy and Environmental Programme, Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA, Chatham House) for five years, at the UK’s Association of Electricity Producers for seven years and was head of business development for Cantor Fitzgerald’s green arm, CantorCO2e for eight years. She now runs her own business, trading as For Real Returns.
Nicola first worked on greenhouse gas emissions when assisting Dr Michael Grubb at the Energy and Environmental Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) in London in 1989, having just spent two years teaching in Sudan. She was inspired by Michael’s work, realising capping and trading emissions would meet an environmental goal and at the same time provide resources for Africa and other developing countries.
At the AEP, representing generators in the UK using all types of fuel and processes, she helped design and instigate the UK’s Emissions Trading Scheme and the UK’s Renewables Obligation. She won an award in 2005 from the AEP for having introduced emissions trading to the electricity industry.
From 2001 to 2009 she was Senior Vice President, Business Development at CantorCO2e, helping develop the company to be a leading global environmental brokerage firm. She initiated the company’s presence in India, providing the business plan that led to it establishing three offices there. She worked on voluntary carbon markets from their inception, closing deals first in 2002, and was responsible for the company’s work related to UK renewable energy and power, helping place several hundred megawatt of renewable generation and working in the early biomass for co-firing markets. In 2008 she was focusing on realising carbon reduction opportunities in Africa, building on her interest and connection with the continent from her time in Sudan.
Nicola has strong contacts in Africa. She has commitment from several to develop stove projects that will sit under the For Stoves PoA, creating a pipeline of Social Carbon CERs.
Company Secretary
Douglas Heydon FCA
Douglas Heydon is a chartered accountant and has worked extensively in the UK and overseas in both commercial and professional sectors, including Coopers and Lybrand, Cadbury Schweppes Ltd and Co-operative Bank plc. Since 1985 he has run his own accounting practice, providing a consulting, accounting and taxation compliance service. This work has included, since the mid-nineties, the management of the financial operations of several not-for-profit businesses and organisations.
