Alastair Dickie, has spent the last 30 years as a trader and analyst in the world's commodity markets. His experience includes trading in grains, soyabeans & meals, all vegetable oils (including managing softseed crushing plants, animal feed mills and poultry units), sugar, metals (ferrous & non-ferrous). He is also experienced in international foreign exchange and interest rate futures.

His experience in different commodity markets covered all aspects of the risks associated with the trading business and he specialised in Market Risk Assessment and the use of Futures and Options, lecturing to commercial audiences in Europe and the Far East.

He has been, since 1999, the Director of the Crop Marketing department of the HGCA, the statutory body responsible for the cereal and oilseed industries in the UK. His department is responsible for the provision of market information and training, market development of cereals and oilseeds at home and the promotion of exports. British Cereal Exports (BCE) is part of his Department.

Mr Robert Egli has been Managing Director of Buhler Ltd, the UK Sales and Service part of the Buhler Organisation for over 5 years. His original area of expertise is technical; within Milling and Process Engineering and his experience spans 36 years within Buhler.

Robert has made a personal pledge to drive the development of the Woodpelleting industry within the UK and Ireland and has been doing so for the last year with much enthusiasm and knowledge.

Philip has spent the main part of his working life founding and growing new businesses. In 2000 he pioneered new technology in air quality and odour control markets.

His patented worldwide Odour Control system is now installed in many fast food restaurant chains and also in waste to energy projects. The technology has now been Licenced to Franke Holdings AG, a company based in Switzerland, who now manufacture and distribute the technology for the catering market worldwide, under Licence.

In 2005 Philip set up a new business venture, forming
Reclaim Resources Limited. Following extensive R&D and personal funding, he built a full scale operational prototype
which has been successfully demonstrated to interested parties from the UK and overseas. His revolutionary 'continuous feed'
Vantage Waste Processing system is now patented worldwide.

The 'Vantage Waste Processor' not only offers a solution that can reduce the volume of municipal household waste by up to 60%, but it also processes the waste into a sanitized state, breaking down the cellulose and organics into a fibrous biomass that is suitable for a variety of uses, including conversion into valuable bio ethanol or electricity.

Tony Lesowiec is the Practice Leader for Pera's Environmental Technologies team, part of the Technology Division who have helped over 100 UK companies accessing over £200 million of funding in the last decade for new product development. His team are involved in developing a range of cutting-edge technical and commercial solutions in the environmental sector, areas covered include: novel approaches turning waste-to-energy; sustainable fuel development, land remediation; waste-water treatment; and clean air technologies. Tony has been at Pera for 14 years, and progressed within the organisation from managing projects, team mangement, and international business development to his current position.

Tony is the author of a number of Envirowise "best-practice"publications.

Tony, graduated with an Honours Degree in Applied Chemistry, he is a Chartered Chemist and a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Neil Lewis

Neil is a Director of the Waterman Group plc, an international engineering design consultancy predominantly supporting the construction industry. The Group is involved in many pioneering projects around the world, with sustainable solutions being at the forefront of their design philosophies.

Neil is a chartered engineer with over 30 years experience of design and management within the building services sector.
Whilst still practising as a design consultant, he holds a strategic role within the group advising on sustainable, low carbon engineering design and strategies.

In past years Neil has lectured on the subject of passive low energy solutions for both the Chartered Institute of Building Services and the Royal Institute of British Architects.

He has extensive experience of renewable technologies within the construction industry including biomass, solar, wind and geothermal energy. He also represents a specialist in-house group providing energy auditing and benchmarking using assessment tools such as BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Energy Assessment Method) and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)

Tim Peara

Mr. Peara is the founder and Managing Director of Alternative Energy Finance Ltd., a specialist financial advisory and strategic consultancy for early-stage renewable energy companies (www.altenergyfin.com). Last year AEF became part of Energy Invest Group (www.energyinvestgroup.com). Mr. Peara is a sought after speaker at renewable energy conferences and regularly evaluates novel technologies and projects.

Tim has 25 years experience in investment research, deal structuring and business development. He has worked extensively raising capital for and advising on the renewable, petroleum and power industries globally. Tim started his career with securities firms (Prudential Securities, Lehman Brothers) in financial futures, asset backed securities and emerging markets fixed income.  He then worked as a business developer for US private oil company Koch Industries, an oil & gas pipeline joint-venture of GE-Capital and Bechtel and a pipeline & power venture of United Technologies. Since 2002 Mr. Peara has consulted on strategy and arranged finance for early-stage energy companies.

Tim has lived in London since 1989, holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BA from Wesleyan University, Connecticut.

Graham is the economist in the research department of The Andersons Centre, part of Andersons the Farm Business Consultants.

He provides specialist business research services, training, briefings and project-work for all organisations, specialising particularly in arable and renewable energy sectors of agriculture.

He is also the editor of the John Nix Farm Management Pocketbook.

Before joining Andersons, Graham was the economist for a major agricultural merchant, focussing chiefly on grain marketing providing guidance to the grain trading and grain procurement teams. Prior to then, he worked for a farm management consultancy in Central and Southern England.

Gideon is the founder and CEO of Consulting With Purpose Ltd, a consultancy company, established in 1996 and has been dedicated for the last 5 years to the sustainability, energy, energy from waste (efw) and environmental sectors.

Gideon has consulted across a wide range of industry and public sectors, for both large and small organisations as a change, business development manager and environmental management consultant. 

Gideon is the Heating and Cooling Sector Advisors to the UK's leading renewable energy trade association, the Renewable Energy Association (REA).
 
Gideon Richards, is currently the chair of BSI's PTI/17 Technical Committee for Solid Biofuels and Solid Recovered Fuel Standards and sits as a member of the European Standards Development Technical Committees TC335 Solid Biofuels, WG2 and TC343 Solid Recovered Fuels WG1. He will soon be involved with the start up of the CEN /ISO TC238 Solid Biofuels Standards and the Biofuels Sustainability Standards.

Consulting With Purpose advises government departments, public sector organisations and commercial entities on various strategic, regulatory, legislation and biomass issues.

Gideon sits on the steering group for the Microgeneration Certification Scheme and REAL Assurance Scheme, the consumer assurance scheme for microgeneration in the UK.
 
Gideon also writes as an insider for the Green Building Magazine and Green Building Bible.

Tom Swithenbank has been CEO of Energem Biofuels since October 2007. He was previously CEO of Aricom plc, the London listed Anglo-Russian mining company, which developed iron ore mining operations in the Far East of Russia. Prior to this, he spent six years as an investor in the EMEA equity markets, initially as a proprietary trader with West Merchant Bank and subsequently as a fund manager with WestLB Asset Management.

Tom holds a Masters in Finance from London Business School and a BA (Modern Languages) from Durham University. He speaks fluent French, German and Russian.

On EBL:

Energem Biofuels Limited is the alternative energy division of Energem Resources Inc, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and London's AIM. EBL is focused on the development of biofuels and alternative energy projects, with a focus on Africa. The company owns a majority interest in the 60,000 litre per day ethanol plant in Kisumu, Kenya and has been developing two further projects in Mozambique and Malawi for the cultivation of jatropha curcas. In Mozambique, where EBL has been granted the right to 60,000 hectares of suitable land, the company is focusing on a large-scale plantation model. In Malawi, the
model focuses on small scale farming nuclei with associated outgrower schemes.

William Thurmond is the President and founder of Emerging Markets Online, a global energy and biofuels intelligence firm started eleven years ago in 1997. Mr. Thurmond is also the author of Biodiesel 2020: A Global Market Survey.

Mr. Thurmond's work been cited in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Biodiesel Magazine, Swiss Derivatives Review, the Futurist, BBC Radio, Fox News, Reuters TV, and his business has received Forbes Magazine's "Best of The Web" award seven years in a row. Mr. Thurmond is also a columnist for Biofuels International journal, Renewable Energy Access, Biofuels Digest, and speaks regularly at biofuels and renewable energy conferences.

Mr. Thurmond is a member of The International Association for Energy Economics, and the Association of Professional Futurists, and serves the American Biofuels Council as Chairman of Development, the National Algae Association as Chairman of Research and Development, and serves the University of Houston as a lecturer and adjunct faculty and where he teaches Technology Forecasting for Entrepreneurs. Mr. Thurmond has participated in graduate courses towards a PhD, Alternative Futures, at The University of Hawaii at Manoa; earned an M.S., Studies of The Future, from The University of Houston; and a B.A, International Relations and Economics from Rollins College.

Mike Webb

Mike originally trained as an electricity distribution engineer. He has spent a long career in many industries including electricity supply, the motor industry, manufacturing and consultancy both in this country and abroad.

In 1995 he joined Telford & Wrekin Council as Energy Manager, which started his interest in sustainability and reducing fossil fuel carbon emissions. He was responsible for installing two of the first biomass heating schemes in the area at Oakengates Leisure Centre and Oakengates Theatre. This gave him early experience of the issues that can befall biomass systems from a client perspective.

Having overcome the initial difficulties with these pilot installations, Mike was convinced of the future for biomass heating since he had concluded that after energy conservation measures; there was probably no more cost effective way of reducing carbon emissions and at the same time bringing into use local resources and labour.

He left about the council to help set up a local biomass business which expanded very rapidly as an Econergy distributor and local fuel supplier. Econergy is one of the leading national biomass installers and was founded in 1999. It now installs biomass systems (including district heating) from 10kW to 10mW across mainland Britain. Mike now heads up the Sales and Marketing function at Econergy.