An independent energy consultant, and a network of people who actually do the work.
Years on both sides of this industry, spent working out what buildings need and what they do not. Nothing to sell you at the end of it.
Jim Thomas · Worfield, Shropshire
On site, mid-assessment
Jim Thomas
I am an independent energy consultant. What that means day to day is that I look at a building, work out what is genuinely worth spending money on and in what order, and then either hand you the plan or manage the work through to completion. I do not manufacture, sell or install anything.
Most weeks I am out assessing properties for housing associations, local authorities and private homeowners, which is a fast education in what actually makes a building expensive to run and what merely looks like it should. Before that I spent years on the commercial side of renewables: solar, battery storage and heat pumps, including power purchase agreements for national retail estates, and air conditioning and cooling during a spell working in Spain.
I have written the proposals and modelled the paybacks, and I have sat on the selling side of the table. I do not hide from that. It is precisely why I can tell you which figures in a quote are solid and which have been quietly flattered.
Assessors can rarely tell you what things cost. Salespeople cannot tell you not to buy. I can do both, because I have no product to protect.
The network behind me
A one-man consultancy is only as good as the people it can call on, and this is the part that has taken longest to build. Renewables installers covering solar, battery storage, heat pumps, EV charging and air conditioning, so the heating and cooling sides of a job stay with one team rather than being split between two. Certified electrical contractors for commercial and domestic works and testing. A qualified commercial assessor for non-domestic EPCs. Consultants who handle tenders, frameworks and certifications for businesses without the time.
Small, and deliberately so. These are people I have watched work, whose pricing I understand and whose corners I know they do not cut. I would rather have a handful of trades I trust than sixty names I have never met. If your job needs someone I do not have, I will tell you that rather than making one of mine fit.
The half of the problem most people miss
For years, energy efficiency in this country has meant one thing: keeping buildings warm. That is changing. Overheating, ventilation, shading and cooling now matter as much as insulation in a great many properties, and very few people are looking at both halves at once.
Working in Spain taught me a good deal about the cooling half of it. As summers here get hotter, that is becoming a live question for UK homes and workplaces rather than a continental one, and it changes what a sensible plan looks like.
Why the sequence matters
Improvements rarely work in isolation. Before recommending solar, batteries, heating, air conditioning or insulation, you have to understand the building itself: how it is built, how it is insulated and ventilated, what it needs for heating and cooling, how much energy it uses and how all of that interacts.
Get the sequence wrong and you end up spending money on technology to compensate for a problem that could have been solved more simply, and more cheaply.
If the right answer is solar, I will say so. If it is insulation or ventilation first, I will say that. And if I think you should not spend the money at all, I will tell you that too.
Where my job ends
I am not the technical designer and I do not pretend to be. Heat loss calculations, structural loading, supply capacity and refrigerant work are done by certified specialists, because their certification requires it. If I produced those figures they would have to be redone and you would pay twice.
What I do is work out whether you should be paying for that stage at all, then brief the right person, review what comes back, and help you take the next step with confidence.
The same applies to older and traditional buildings. I hold the qualification for them, which mostly means I know how easily they are damaged by the wrong measure in the wrong place. On a solid wall or pre-1919 property I will tell you plainly where the risks sit, and where a conservation specialist needs to be involved rather than me.
What I am trying to do
Help you make confident, informed decisions about your building and your energy, without getting lost in conflicting advice, technical jargon or sales pitches. That is the whole job.
Where I work
Based in Worfield, near Bridgnorth. Most of my work sits within an hour of here: Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire and the West Midlands.
Happy to talk before you commit to anything.
Fifteen minutes, no charge. If it turns out I am not the right person for what you need, I will say so and point you at whoever is.