Client Corner – Richard Furniss
Our Client Corner section focuses on the lives and achievements of some of our clients. In this piece, Castlefield’s Helen Tandy interviews Richard Furniss - a former wind turbine engineer, who is now using his vast knowledge and experience of renewable energy systems to help individuals and communities work towards a net zero future.
Richard has been a client of Castlefield for over ten years. We supported Richard and his family with ethical financial advice, including protection plans and pensions. With an engineering career spanning Alstom and then Nordex (one of the world's largest wind turbine manufacturers, which were instrumental in what was the largest onshore windfarm near where I live in Frodsham), he now works on a self-employed consultancy basis. As well as being a trustee with Possible, the climate change action charity (wearepossible.org), he still finds time to be active with his local community running club, Marple Runners - as chair, a coach, and as race director of their annual 10k Trail Race and Family Fun Run - and he is a run director of his local junior parkrun.
I asked Richard what made him want to be a trustee for Possible:
I had followed Possible (then called 10:10) from their foundation in 2009. Their whole ethos is to encourage agency in climate action. When they appealed for Trustees, I got in touch and we hit it off - not least because they wanted a trustee with an industrial / commercial background.
I support the team on organisational, project, and governance issues calling on my professional background in management, engineering, and renewables. In particular, I support their Riding Sunbeams project as a director of the legal entity we set up to demonstrate and then commercialise renewable generation directly connected to the railways, something now hardwired in Network Rail’s decarbonisation strategy, and highlighted as an example in the UK government's 10 Point Plan.
The link to Castlefield’s activities is clear - we believe that responsible business practices and sustainable products and services will allow companies to produce better investment returns over the long-term.
About Possible
Possible’s mission is to educate and inspire people to take more ambitious action on climate change. As summarised on their website:
“The sheer scale of action required means it will touch everyone’s lives. If we’re going to move at the speed required - and if we’re going to ensure the new world we build is a fair one - people and communities have to be involved. Politicians, corporations and other established institutions will have to play a key role too, but they will only move fast enough once they know their constituents and customers are on board.”
Possible concentrate on five key areas:
- Cleaning up energy - achieving zero carbon power and zero carbon homes.
- Changing how we travel - swapping cars for public transport and active travel, planes for trains - and electrifying everything.
- Changing what we eat and buy - switching to plant rich diets, ending waste, and learning to have more fun with less stuff.
- Working with nature - restoring nature to lock up carbon and protect us from climate impacts.
- Talking about the climate crisis - breaking the climate silence, and empowering everyone to understand the crisis we face.
So alongside running a series of community activities (such as tree-planting days, vegan feasts and heat-camera treasure hunts), they also get involved in other projects such as plugging community-owned solar into train lines, reimagining parks, or lobbying MPs about onshore wind. Other projects include:
- Badvertising - their campaign to end high-carbon advertising
- Tree Towns – supporting a 9 year old girl to plant trees all over her hometown
- Powering Parks – an innovative project to unearth the ground source heat potential from within the nation’s parks
You can read more about some of Possible’s notable past projects here:
https://www.wearepossible.org/past-projects