Lennard-Senior Prize 2021 Vote

The Lennard-Senior prize is awarded to an individual in recognition of outstanding individual achievement in the field of Marine Renewable Energy.

The Nominees for the 2021 Lennard-Senior Prize are: Neil Kermode, Andy Baldock, Henry Jeffrey, and Simon Forrest. Information about each nominee is below.

Please vote for your nominee on the form below. You can do this anonymously if you wish.

Voting has now closed for the Lennard-Senior Prize 2021

Your Nominees

Neil Kermode – Managing Director, EMEC

Neil was appointed as Managing Director in November 2005. He is directly accountable to the Board for all operations and is responsible for meeting the Board’s objectives for EMEC’s operational, environmental, financial and commercial performance.

Neil trained as a civil engineer and has had a long-standing interest in energy. After some years in municipal engineering that led to the Environment Agency he eventually struck out on his own and pursued the Churchill Barriers idea. This led him to Italy, where he worked with the developer of a tidal turbine that generated electricity while anchored in the Straits of Messina off Sicily. The same path brought him to Orkney, which had placed itself front and centre in the drive to make marine renewables work.

It’s been 10 years since he won in 2011 – and still – perhaps more than ever – deserves this accolade today. A true champion of enabling the marine energy sector!

Andy Baldock – Founder of Baldock Energy Ltd.

Andy Baldock, previously Renewable Energy Director at Consultants Black & Veatch and then founder of Baldock Energy Limited. Andy is passionate about wave and tidal energy. During his career in wave and tidal over the last c. 20 years he has maintained his enthusiasm but always used a pragmatic approach to assessing the viability of wave and tidal systems, developing a well-respected approach to carry out due diligence and lessons learnt for public and private commissions, doing everything he can to ensure lessons learnt are shared, influencing public funding decisions to prevent repetition and waste.

Henry Jeffrey – Co-director, SuperGen ORE

Henry Jeffrey is a specialist in ocean energy roadmaps, action plans and strategies. He is co-director for SuperGen ORE (Offshore Renewable Energy) UKCMER and leads the Policy and Innovation Group in the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Energy Systems. He also chairs the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) Ocean Energy Joint Programme (JP)and collaborates on numerous European ocean energy projects. He holds a position as the Chairperson of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Ocean Energy Systems (OES) programme, which is a government/government policy group responsible for supporting knowledge exchange and collaboration between countries and organisations active in the ocean energy sector.

Henry began his career in the energy business within the North Sea oil and gas industry and in 1998 he made the radical move into the emerging commercial marine renewables sector.

Henry has extensive energy sector experience accumulated over more than ten years working in marine renewable energy, both in academia and industry. He was a key member of the project team that installed the world’s first commercial, grid connected wave energy generator. In the ten years prior to that he gained extensive industrial training in the offshore engineering service sector that is key to his success to date.

Between joining his Institute in 2005 and now he has: * Co-written the UK Energy Research Centre road map for marine energy that has been widely adopted by the sector across Europe, Canada and the USA. * Won funds to support, co-write and co coordinate the production of the DTI Tidal Current Energy: Device Performance Protocol, which now forms a contractual obligation on developers within the 50m pounds sterling UK Government Marine Renewables Development Fund; * Played a key role in securing 6.3m pounds sterling continuation funding for the EPSRC SuperGen Marine Energy consortium, and been instrumental in its engagement with the evolving sector; * Won, managed and delivered over 200k pounds sterling of Scottish Enterprise Proof of Concept projects.

Henrys growing personal research portfolio in marine renewable energy has earned the Institute and him worldwide reputation and respect, as evidenced by the following high esteem roles and recognition: * The US Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI) US steering committee to design an approach for developing a vision, goal and objective for the American marine sector; * international coordinator of the IEC Standard for Tidal Energy Device Performance. Expert member of the UK Ocean Energy Standards Working Group, UK committee feeding into International Technical Committee TC114 for Ocean Energy. * Henry successfully proposed and won funds to develop the International Energy Agency RETD work in marine energy * Expert reviewer for Scottish Enterprise. * Expert review panel for the New Zealand marine renewables deployment fund (invited by New Zealand Energy Minister). He has won places on SDI and UK Renewables (DBERR) outward bound missions to represent the UK in New Zealand. * He has been twice invited by the US Department of Energy as one of three international merit reviewers.

Simon Forrest – CEO Nova Innovation

Simon Forrest has been beavering away for 11 years on behalf of Nova Innovations… As his LinkedIn profile says:

Simon Forrest is CEO of Nova Innovation, which he co-founded in 2010. He has over 25 years industrial experience, having worked with ScottishPower and Wood Mackenzie before setting up Nova Innovation. His previous experience includes hi-tech manufacturing with IBM’s world-wide organisation, and investment banking with Salomon Brothers in London and New York. Simon is a Chartered Engineer with a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh.

Nova is an award-winning global leader in tidal energy. They design, build and operate tidal turbines that generate electricity from the natural ebb and flow of the tide. Their underwater turbines have zero visual impact and work in harmony with the marine environment, with no barriers or barrages. In 2016, they installed the world’s first offshore tidal array – three turbines located in the Shetland Islands, Scotland. Their turbines have been generating clean electricity and exporting to the grid ever since. In 2018, they worked with Tesla to add energy storage to their tidal technology. This created the world’s first baseload tidal power station with the ability to deliver constant, steady-state power to the grid and deliver energy on demand to meet consumer needs. Nova is currently expanding operations in North America and across Europe.

Awards of two different types
On 7 September 2021 the company was in the news having received backing from the Scottish National Investment Bank:

Tidal energy pioneer Nova Innovation (Nova) has secured £6.4 million from the Scottish National Investment Bank to fund manufacturing and distribution of its innovative subsea tidal turbines. The investment will see the company increase its presence across the UK and expand into new global markets
Nova Innovation was also in the news in early October, announced as a finalist in the @Best Innovation Award’ in the 2021 Scottish Green Energy Awards (the winner will be announced on 2 December):
Nova Innovation’s world-leading M100-D tidal turbine which demonstrates the unique potential for tidal power to decarbonise island communities

They are no strangers to winning awards:

2016: won the prestigious Judges Award at the Green Energy Awards 2017: won a Shell Springboard award for low-carbon innovation
2018: won the European Commission’s European SME of the year
2018: won ‘Outstanding Project’ at the Green Energy Awards

Is it time to add the Lennard-Senior Prize to the roll call?