Charles Bradshaw-Smith, co-CEO SmartKlub Ltd
Charles left the corporate world to establish SmartKlub because he believes community energy needs disrupting. Starting out in customer facing IT, Charles proved his innovation credentials by floating a dot com in personalised print and after successful exit joined E.ON in 2001, establishing its front office systems. In 2006 Charles lead E.ON into the Distributed Energy market writing its first strategy and setting up its Innovation department in UK and then EU-wide from Germany, where he wrote E.ON’s Smart City strategy. A physicist by training, Charles’s creativity is in system thinking applied to diverse topics from Electric Vehicles to social benefits of Smart Cities. Charles has advised on public policy in Brussels and London: President of Micro Power Europe (elected); UK Micropower Council; and Green Building Council. In 2014 Charles investigated the SmartKlub concept to build resilient communities via innovative business models. SmartKlub was spun out of E.ON in July 2015 after winning Innovate UK funding. Having won a number of further R&D Innovation grants, SmartKlub is now launching ESCO services based on ground breaking innovation at Trent Basin, Nottingham.
