Richard Cochrane obituary
My brother, Richard Cochrane, who has died aged 49 of motor neurone disease, was a passionate advocate for renewable energy – equal parts inventor, teacher and champion for the natural world. He lived by his values: to make the world a better place for future generations and inspire others to do so too.
Even as a teenager at University College school in London, he was a keen environmentalist and enjoyed inventing and studying design and technology. Richard was born in London, at the hospital where our father, John Cochrane, was a surgeon. Our mother, Caroline (nee Potten), was also a doctor, as were many other members of the family, but we were always encouraged to follow our own paths. At Clare College, Cambridge, where he studied engineering, Richard worked and played hard, designing and flying paragliders, coaching the college women’s rowing eight and leading mountaineering expeditions in the Alps.
After a period with Max Fordham engineers, he went to Darwin College, Cambridge, to study, and then teach, a master’s programme at the Martin Centre for Sustainable Buildings and Cities. In the mid-2000s Richard co-founded the low carbon building services engineering firm XCO2, and quietrevolution, a company developing and marketing an elegant helical vertical-axis wind turbine he had invented. Seven of these wind turbines were showcased at the London 2012 Olympics.
Richard had a rare ability to take complex issues and make them accessible to a broad audience as a gifted, dedicated and much-loved teacher. His lifelong vocation was to teach and inspire others. In 2013 he became a professor at the University of Exeter, where he ensured his undergraduate and postgraduate students of renewable energy gained hands-on engineering experience in real-life projects to become champions for the future. Richard led the way as a vital force behind the university’s ambitious carbon net-zero plan.
He was endlessly generous with his skills and knowledge. He was often to be heard in the national media speaking out on the importance of radical progress in renewable energy and was a galvanising force for positive change at the local level. He worked tirelessly and enthusiastically to inspire and co-ordinate community action to deliver low-cost renewable energy projects, plant hundreds of trees and enhance the protection of local land and marine habitats that he loved.
Richard married Sarah May, and had three children, Emily, Tristan and Jamie, creating a beautiful eco home for them in Cornwall. After the divorce and his diagnosis with motor neurone disease, he continued to dedicate himself to his family, his students and the many environmental and community projects he had catalysed. He fought with remarkable cheerfulness and optimism to maintain his health, buoyed by his happy new relationship with Felicity Notley, a colleague from the university, and was still working until the week before his death.
A devoted father, son and uncle, my brother is survived by his children, our parents and me, and Felicity.