Salt Spring Community Energy is a group of local citizens concerned about sustainability, encouraging renewable energy and clean technology on Salt Spring. Our strategy includes developing partnerships with local organizations to create renewable energy projects that will inspire and educate our community. We are a registered non-profit society.
Current directors of the Community Energy Group are:
David Denning (Acting President) is a science educator, naturalist, and educational film-maker who is active with Nature Salt Spring and the Climate Action Council. He is a former member of the Advisory Environment Committee to the Trust.
Simon Wheeler (Secretary) left a 30-year career in transportation to take an MSc in Renewable Energy at the University of Reading. He has since worked for Solar Century in the UK, and spent three years as technical manager in the field of solar concentration arrays. Since moving to Salt Spring in 2010 he has been active in promoting solar energy and electric vehicles.
Kjell Liem, CCEM (Treasurer) was project manager for the GISS Solar Scholarship project and the coordinator of the Electric School Bus study. He is the founder of Saltspring Solar and he lived off-grid for over a decade. He is a Certified Community Energy Manager and past-chair of the BC Sustainable Energy Association’s BC Utilities Commission Task Force.
Ron Watts is a professional photographer and a passionate supporter of renewable energy. He and his wife Donna Hall recently completed a net-metered, super-insulated home with solar hot water, solar PV and heat pump technology. Ron is an alternate POD representative on the Emergency Commission.
Brian Smallshaw is a historian and web developer with a long interest in sustainability. He has done considerable research on the Japanese Canadian Uprooting, and together with several other historians, he and his wife Rumiko Kanesaka recently published a book on the historical charcoal production by Japanese Canadians in the southern Gulf Islands. Brian has constructed a number of kilns for the production of biochar -charcoal for use as a soil amendment and for carbon sequestration.
Tom Mitchell Born in Scotland Tom was trained as a millwright. He emigrated to Canada in 1970 and worked in the shipyards and steel fabrication shops. He has worked as an engineer in the merchant navy, taxi driver, shipbuilder, carpenter and caregiver. In 1984 he moved to Salt Spring Island where he has been a long-time member of the Salt Spring United Church’s Social Justice Committee.
Wade Cherrington Wade is interested in contributing to community projects that materially help people in the face of climate crises. A specific interest is community-scale renewable energy as well as resilient food, energy and water systems more generally. Wade has a background in physics, software development and telecommunications.
Kenn Danner Kenn is an industrial designer with a background in computer programming. He has an interest in deep sustainability and runs a farm in the Fulford Valley.
Tom Mommsen is a keen follower of renewable energies with focus on photovoltaics and distributed generation and critically examines sources and sinks for methane and carbon dioxide in the biosphere. Tom is a founding member of the Salish Sea Renewable Energy Coop.He published over 130 peer-reviewed papers in comparative biochemistry and physiology, coedited five books on Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Fishes and was co-editor of an international scientific journal for 22 years.