Speaker module

Clare Townley is a Todmorden-based eco-poet, climate communicator and former managing director of a green engineering business. Known for a warm, incisive style that blends humour with technical accuracy, Clare helps complex sustainability issues land with diverse audiences. Clare’s professional background spans renewable energy, retrofit, transport systems, community engagement, higher education, local government and operational research.

Her earlier career continues to inform her interest in optimisation, behavioural friction and the hidden incentives embedded within modern systems.

Her former company was among the UK’s early photovoltaic installers, and she brings over two decades of lived experience of low-carbon technologies including solar PV, biomass heating, air source heat pumps, dynamic tariffs and battery storage. Alongside this, she has undertaken hands-on training in permaculture, regenerative farming and low-carbon building methods, grounding her work in real buildings, real materials and real-world constraints.

Although qualified as both a Carbon Literacy Trainer and a Climate Fresk facilitator, Clare prefers translating these ideas in more adaptable and memorable ways through performance, writing and discussion. Her aim is not simply to inform, but to shift understanding, language and behaviour in plain English, without jargon or acronyms.

Recent work includes Retrofits of Laughter, a growing series of illustrated cards and poems using humour to open conversations about carbon, retrofit, transport, repair culture, greenwashing, circular economy and everyday climate contradictions. Through satire, analogy and lived experience, Clare translates concepts such as fabric-first retrofit, Scope 3 emissions, embodied carbon, transport systems, carbon accounting, sustainable aviation fuel, heat pumps, damp and mould, and behavioural friction into language people actually remember.

Alongside her climate-focused work, Clare writes and performs a wider range of poetry rooted in language, observation and social insight. This includes playful explorations of wordplay and punctuation, satirical pieces on marketing and sales culture, and reflective writing shaped by rivers, landscapes and grief. Her poem Prefer Not to Say explores equality, identity and belonging in ways that resonate strongly with audiences across the sustainability and public sectors.

Clare performs regularly at sustainability, arts and community events. Recent appearances include Reset Connect North, Leeds Museum, Bradford University, a national Flight Free UK event, a Green Economy Networking Brunch in partnership with the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, and a symposium on ‘Co-creating with Communities’. She was recently shortlisted for the British Renewable Energy Awards (Engagement) and the Calderdale Community Spirit Awards (Sustainability), and has been appointed Artist in Residence (working across poetry, prose and performance) with national charity Slow The Flow from July 2026.

Her background in local government and civic leadership reinforced her belief that lasting climate progress depends not only on policy and technology, but on communication, behaviour and public engagement, and led her towards forms of engagement where she felt she could achieve greater impact and return on effort. Clare’s work sits at the intersection of behaviour, systems and storytelling, bringing rigour, warmth and originality to conversations about climate, energy, equity and change. She is open to commissions for education, communication, marketing and live performance, where values are shared.