Anne Thomas

Anne, a former convenor of Transition Black Isle and a Green Party European List Candidate has lived with her family in North Kessock, for seven years. The ‘children’ have now flown the nest and the eldest has recently married. She has also lived in Glasgow, Edinburgh, the Borders, Newcastle and London. Born and brought up in Bath, she studied Speech Science at Newcastle University. She works part time as a Speech and Language Therapist with children with additional needs in Nairn.

A passionate climate activist, Anne was a founder member of Transition Black Isle and Friends of the Earth Inverness and Ross. She started the North Kessock Community Market and has helped organise many events in Inverness and the Black Isle. Some were funded by the three Climate Challenge Fund Projects the ‘Highland Food Challenge’ covering eating local food, ‘Grow North’ supporting local food growing and transport through the innovative ‘Million Miles Project’. She is a volunteer community cycle trainer for this.

She was also involved in two ‘Greening Homes and Gardens’ open days which TBI ran and a series of Green Homes days run by the Energy Saving Trust (Home Energy Scotland). These enable people to talk directly to those who have installed renewable energy and carried out energy saving activities.

The Friends of the Earth group ran ‘Keep the Heat in Campaign’ reducing carbon emissions and energy costs of local businesses and organisations, also with Climate Challenge Fund money. She managed to halve her church’s energy use through an insulation and solar panel project. She also co-convenes the Food and Energy groups.

Through her environmental activities Anne became frustrated at the lack of action from government at all levels and decided to join the Scottish Green Party. She is now Secretary of Highlands and Islands branch of the Scottish Green Party and stood for Millburn ward, Inverness at the last Council election and now is on the Euro-list. She has taken a lead in the campaign on scrapping standing charges for domestic power which is unfair for low energy users both those in fuel poverty and those who generate much of their own. She has also vigorously campaigned for better awareness of the health consequences of vitamin D deficiency in Scotland and for vitamin D supplements to be available free for all.

Determination to live as sustainably as possible led to her family installing a wind turbine, two sorts of solar panels and a heat pump to make their house carbon negative for power. She enjoys riding an electric bike, walking, gardening and bee-keeping.