Simon Holmes à Court

Simon Holmes à Court is the founding chairman of Hepburn Wind, Australia's first community wind co-operative, loosely based on the Danish model of community ownership of wind turbines. In 2010, Hepburn Wind will start construction on a two turbine wind farm which is expected to produce more power annually than used by the homes in Daylesford. Despite being launched during the financial crisis, the project has signed up over 1150 members and secured more than $11.6m. Hepburn Wind is being recognised as a model around Australia for community engagement.

Simon has recently founded Embark, a non-profit peak body representing and supporting communities that seek to play a significant role in their own carbon-neutral energy production. Embark empowers communities to engage constructively in the climate challenge.

Simon has broad commercial experience, ranging from 'dot com' businesses in Silicon Valley to remote cattle stations in Australia's remote Northern Territory.  He is a founder of Melbourne based Observant Pty Ltd, which designs and manufactures highly-scalable infrastructure monitoring and automation solutions for remote settings.