Our Team

Emma Bridge

Emma has been instrumental in developing the organisation since its creation by a group of community energy practitioners in 2014. Emma is a prominent figure within the community energy sector and her knowledge and expertise of community energy, as well as broader sustainability, climate action, and community empowerment issues, are sought by a wide range of local, national, and European organisations and events. Emma has almost twenty years of experience in sustainable development, working across the public, private, and community sectors, with on-the-ground experience of community energy from a previous role as General Manager at Sheffield Renewables. She also undertakes several voluntary roles such as sitting on the Yorkshire & Humber Climate Commission.

Phil Coventry

Phil is Head of Operations, overseeing Community Energy England's internal operations (finance, policies and procedures, IT etc) and helping manage our quarterly and annual board cycles He also oversees our key projects, research and collaborations, and represents Community Energy England externally. He joined the organisation in late 2019, shortly after completing his PhD in climate justice and international climate finance policy. Phil is particularly interested in innovation and capacity within the sector, as well as ensuring responses to climate change and community energy projects are equitable and just. He is currently a trustee for a grant-making charitable trust focused on building community, social justice and environment/sustainability.

Duncan Law

Duncan leads on our work to raise the profile of community energy benefits, needs, opportunities and policy obstacles. Since joining the Community Energy England team in 2019, Duncan has forged strong connections with government and regulators and throughout the community energy sector, increasing the strength and reach of our policy and advocacy work and securing several important impacts such as the extension to the feed in tariff installation deadline in April 2020. Duncan worked as an actor and director until 2006, when he changed his focus to climate change. He founded Transition Town Brixton and has been involved in developing many of its main projects, including Brixton Energy, which has put three community-owned solar arrays on social housing roofs since 2011 and gave rise to Repowering, a highly successful London community energy organisation. From 2013 Duncan worked as a campaigner for Biofuelwatch. He is a qualified permaculture designer and has conducted a full scale energy retro-fit on his Victorian house. He is passionate about people-led solutions to climate change and re-imagining the way we do everything.

John Taylor

John joined Community Energy England in September 2024 as our Head of Capacity Building. He will be leading our role within the Lottery funded Energy Learning Network, working with our members to create new training opportunities and career pathways, to design and share new delivery models, and to develop new partnerships across the industry, with the aim of helping the sector to maximise our scale and impact. He has worked for the past 16 years in local government advisory roles focusing on climate change action and community energy, including 6 years at the Greater South East Net Zero Hub where he oversaw the delivery of the Community Energy Fund. He lives in Ipswich, Suffolk, where he enjoys finding wildlife in the countryside, and volunteers for a woodland coppicing group as well as swimming in the sea (depending on the time of year!) He is a self declared Climate Optimist, who writes, teaches, and speaks regularly at conferences and events, and is a strong believer in the power of stories to inspire and motivate us through imagining more hopeful and positive visions of the future!

Kim Woodcock

Kim joined Community Energy England in January 2022 and leads on our Communications and Events. She has over 10 years experience of managing large scale events, including those attended by members of the royal family, and other high profile VIPs. Kim currently volunteers for the national Single Parent Rights campaign calling for the UK Government to add single parents as a protected characteristic to the Equality Act; to outlaw discrimination and allow single parents and their children to thrive.

Lisa West

Lisa joined CEE in September 2022 and brings administration and operations experience to the team from a career in university professional services. She is responsible for leading CEE's member relations within our network. She works closely with CEE's Head of Operations to manage our quarterly and annual board cycles and other internal processes.Lisa's passion for community and the outdoors, combined with her environmental ideals for her children’s future, inspired her to work with CEE.

Josh Barnes

Josh joined CEE in July 2023. As Policy and Advocacy Officer, Josh works to ensure that policy makers understand and act upon community energy organisations’ priorities. The policy and advocacy team work with politicians, civil servants, NGOs and community energy practitioners to help create an environment in which the sector can thrive and grow. Josh supports CEE’s working groups on energy efficiency, heat and ethical procurement. Before joining CEE, Josh worked in the environmental NGO and higher education sectors in research and public affairs roles.

Josef Davies-Coates

Josef joined Community Energy England in May 2024 as our Heat and Retrofit Coordinator. He’ll be working on the Net Zero Terrace Street project, the Community Heat Development Unit and the Energy Learning Network. He’ll also be hosting and convening our Energy Efficiency and Community Energy Heat Working Groups. Josef is very well networked in the open source, co-ops and sustainability worlds and has a wealth of comms and social media experience. He lived for 5 years at Sanford Housing Co-op, whose Carbon 60 project was one of the UK's first whole-street heat and retrofit projects, and previously worked to help improve UK National Planning Policy as part of the Merton Rule campaign. He lives in Bridport, West Dorset and as part of his work to get the bioregion into the Doughnut he organises a fortnightly film and food night, is starting a Transition Streets project, and is trying to get a new community bus route up and running! He’s a Dad of two and enjoys dancing to live music and going for long walks (and is supposed to be training for a triathlon!)