NEW ZEALAND WIND ENERGY ASSOCIATION
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
The NZWEA Board is responsible for the governance and overall performance of NZWEA’s activities, as defined in the NZWEA Rules. The Chief Executive has overall responsibility for developing and delivering NZWEA’s strategy and business plan and reports directly to the NZWEA Board.
Directors are elected at NZWEA’s Annual General Meeting and serve two-year terms, unless they are ‘Additional Directors’, who are appointed for one-year terms. The Association holds its Annual General Meeting annually, typically in late October or early November of each year.
The Board structure is designed to represent the entire membership in a fair and unbiased manner. The Board consists of:
- Five directors from all Corporate Members, appointed for two-year terms by all of the Corporate Members.
- Three directors appointed for two-year terms by all of the Associate and Individual Members, and
- Up to two Additional Directors can be appointed for ‘one-year’ terms at the discretion of the Board.
The Chair can be selected from the current Board members by majority vote, or the Board can elect to appoint an independent Chair.
Chair
Peter is General Manager of Beca’s Power and Renewable Energy business across Australasia. Peter is an experienced electrical engineer and has been the Project Director on numerous wind farms for his clients. These have ranged from early works including consenting and AEE development through to construction and connection of wind farms to the grid.
He has 30 years’ experience in the Power Industry. After completing his PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 1991, Peter joined Westinghouse Systems in the UK. Until 2002 he worked for a number of Power companies living and working in the UK, The Netherlands, The Middle East and Southeast Asia. In 2002 he moved to New Zealand with his Kiwi wife Kate and joined Beca.
Since then, Peter has worked in the renewable energy sector. Meridian Energy’s Te Apiti 90 MW Wind Farm was the first wind farm project he worked on. It was the biggest wind farm in the southern hemisphere at the time (2004). Since then, Peter has worked on numerous wind farms in New Zealand and Australia.
Peter has been a Director of NZWEA since 2016 and is passionate about the ongoing growth and development of the wind industry.
Corporate Member Directors
Chris More is a senior manager with Meridian Energy responsible for operating 7 wind farms in NZ and Australia and developing new wind farms in NZ.
He is a professional manager backed with engineering and business qualifications and has worked in the NZ electricity industry for 26 years.
Prior to working in wind, Chris has also worked in hydro operations, market economic analysis, retail pricing and wholesale market development. Responsibilities included developing and positioning Meridian with respect to changes and improvements in the wholesale physical and forward financial markets.
Chris has a Master of Business Administration, Technology Management from Deakin University and a Bachelor of Engineering (1st Hons) Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Canterbury.
He has been Meridian’s representative on the NZWEA board since September 2018.
Jarek Pole has spent 14 years working in the wind energy sector including for energy giants EDP and Siemens on some of Europe’s most ambitious onshore and offshore wind energy projects.
He moved to New Zealand in 2015 and is currently the Senior Development Advisor APAC for BlueFloat Energy, a leading global developer of offshore wind projects. In this role Jarek oversees BlueFloat’s interests in Asia Pacific where, along with Elemental Group, the partnership has recently announced plans to develop up to 5 GW of offshore wind in Aotearoa.
Jarek has gained governance experience as President of the Polish Wind Energy Association (2012) and more recently as a Board Director for SEIAPA (Sustainable Energy Industry Association of the Pacific Islands). He is a qualified engineer who started his career in the automotive industry working for Nissan and GM. He holds a master’s in international business from Oxford Brookes University (UK) and a Diploma in Sustainable Business from the University of Otago.
Matthew Tolcher is a General Manager Generation Development at Mercury NZ, bringing extensive experience as a Senior Design and Project Manager at Tonkin + Taylor and Jacobs. Prior to that, Matthew served as a Senior Project Manager at Mighty River Power and Watercare Services Limited, where Matthew managed a variety of projects in the power generation and water treatment sectors. With a Masters’s degree in Engineering Science and a background in Biology, Matthew has a strong foundation in engineering and project managemen
Jim has over 30 years of project management experience in the energy industry (renewables and oil & gas).
Over the past 18 years he has been heavily involved in the New Zealand and Australian wind sector from scoping, through to consenting, procurement, construction and commissioning. He has an extensive track record in project delivery (wind and hydro) and is a project management expert (PMI Project Management Professional).
In the New Zealand and Australian market Jim has been involved in the construction of over NZ$1 billion of wind sector assets in the past 12 years.
Tim is a Lead Engineer and Team Lead in the Renewables team at Aurecon, based in Auckland. As an Electrical Engineer and an APM PMQ accredited Project Manager, Tim has over 9 years’ experience in the renewable energy industry, working on projects across New Zealand, Australia, UK, Europe, Africa and Vietnam.
Prior to joining the team at Aurecon, Tim was a Senior Project Manager and Team Lead at Mott MacDonald in the UK, managing projects in the UK, Ireland, Europe and Africa.
Tim has experience working on a range of technologies, supporting developers, asset owners and lenders from preconstruction through to commercial operation, with significant experience in the project management and delivery of Owners Engineer, Technical Advisor and Due Diligence projects. He has contributed to the delivery of over 1.2GW of now operational onshore wind projects and supported on due diligence and feasibility exercises on a further 5GW of renewables projects.
Applying his skills and expertise in onshore and offshore wind development and construction, Tim is excited to support the New Zealand Wind Energy Association as a Board Director and further contribute to the decarbonisation of New Zealand’s energy system.
Associate and Individual Member Directors
Peter is General Manager of Beca’s Power and Renewable Energy business across Australasia. Peter is an experienced electrical engineer and has been the Project Director on numerous wind farms for his clients. These have ranged from early works including consenting and AEE development through to construction and connection of wind farms to the grid.
He has 30 years’ experience in the Power Industry. After completing his PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 1991, Peter joined Westinghouse Systems in the UK. Until 2002 he worked for a number of Power companies living and working in the UK, The Netherlands, The Middle East and Southeast Asia. In 2002 he moved to New Zealand with his Kiwi wife Kate and joined Beca.
Since then, Peter has worked in the renewable energy sector. Meridian Energy’s Te Apiti 90 MW Wind Farm was the first wind farm project he worked on. It was the biggest wind farm in the southern hemisphere at the time (2004). Since then, Peter has worked on numerous wind farms in New Zealand and Australia.
Peter has been a Director of NZWEA since 2016 and is passionate about the ongoing growth and development of the wind industry.
Alistair has over 20 years’ experience in heavy industrial engineering, project development and delivery in New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia. Alistair’s project experience has been largely in the pulp and paper, steel, mining, chemicals and manufacturing sectors, all of which are large power consumers and are now looking to decarbonise their supply chain and actively looking to access large scale renewable electricity.
Alistair is currently Principal Engineer at Hiringa Energy. Hiringa are using Green Hydrogen as a vector to decarbonise sectors such as heavy transport industrial feedstock which are otherwise difficult to decarbonise. They are developing several projects that couple green hydrogen and green ammonia production facilities to utility scale renewable generation including wind farms in New Zealand and Australia and includes three separate wind farms in New Zealand. Hiringa believe the flexibility of green hydrogen production will play a significant role in balancing the volatility and excess generation associated with renewable energy and can help unlock constrained generation assets. Alistair brings the viewpoint of large variable load consumers as well as private wind farm development.
Will Thorp heads up the Power and Renewables team at Elemental Group in New Plymouth. He has a background in wind energy consulting and engineering and has worked on many of the wind farms operating in New Zealand today. He provides consultancy and project development services from concept design through to implementation management and monitoring of operations for developers and owners of wind, solar and battery-hybrid projects in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.
Will has over 20 years’ experience in the New Zealand Renewable Energy industry. Having extensive knowledge of New Zealand’s excellent wind resource, and the important role wind energy needs to play in the decarbonization of New Zealand’s electricity supply and its major industries, he is focused on providing technical solutions for large-scale renewable energy developments. This includes offshore wind development through the BlueFloat Energy / Elemental Group partnership that is developing 5 GW of offshore wind capacity in New Zealand waters.
Additional Directors
Paul has worked in the wind energy industry for a continuous period of 28 years. He graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Mechanical Engineering degree and Masters in Energy Studies, which had a focus on renewable energy generation. He worked in the UK for both a wind turbine manufacturer and wind farm developer before moving to New Zealand in 1994.
In New Zealand he has worked for a number of consultants and most recently, 15 years at Meridian Energy. He then setup Roaring40s together with Graeme Mills and Steve Harding with a focus on assisting new wind farm developments in New Zealand.
He has previously been a NZWEA board member (Meridian representative) and was the NZWEA representative on the New Zealand Standards Committee responsible for the wind farm noise standard.
Paul is a member of both the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) and the Institute of Acoustics (IOA) and is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer.
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