Producing Better, Consuming Less

Our Mission

PHGD’s mission is to enhance understanding of complex systems and to offer practical solutions to enable customers and partners to produce better and consume less.

Committing to sustainability, in its various dimensions, is one thing. Knowing how to achieve it is something else again.

PHGD offers ideas, anchored in cutting-edge science, with a particular emphasis on the social and human sciences.

PHGD supports transitions, helping clients to audit their starting points, identify relevant responses and scope technological options.

And PHGD provides solutions through its affiliates, which cover many key areas of renewable energy.

Advice & Technical Support

At PHGD, we are committed to a collaborative view of entrepreneurship and are constantly looking for new ideas and opportunities.

So we have a steady stream of conversations on the go, whether to help other entrepreneurs do what they want to do or to identify new ventures for PHGD to invest in.

Here are some current examples.

Plug & Play Solar Panels

French start-up Evolis has developed an innovative approach to solar energy. Plug & play 600 W panels that can be set up in minutes, integrating seamlessly into any domestic network.

PHGD is currently advising Evolis on business development, to enable the full potential of the technology to be unlocked.

Paths to Sustainable Transportation

PHGD is currently advising Ecolution kWh on launching its development in Europe. By recovering kinetic energy from rolling stock, Ecolution’s cutting-edge technology enables electrification of refrigerated trailers and makes it possible for every train to become a mobile power station.

Connecting Gaming to Philanthropy

French company Braintogain operates an online gaming platform focusing on puzzles and other logic games.

PHGD is working with Braintogain to define a new strategic development path, involving the creation of an innovative platform to enable gaming revenue to support impact-oriented projects and facilitate learning from them on project impacts.

Operationalizing Trust

For a decade, French consultant Pierre Winicki has been exploring how to operationalize trust and use trust metrics to enable institutions to transform themselves and improve their performance.

Pierre’s approach is encapsulated in the “Tree of Trust” model, which distinguishes seven key dimensions of trust, allowing situations of distrust to be better analysed and trust-building measures to be designed and implemented.

Pierre’s company TrustInside is working with PHGD to define a comprehensive new strategy for thought leadership, training and consulting on trust.

Chairman & CEO

John Crowley founded PHGD in 2020 to bring together a portfolio of interests in sustainable energy and environmental regeneration. With 18 years high-level international experience in the UN system, and previous careers in oil & gas and in academic research, John combines the vision to generate new ideas with the business skills to make them work in practice.

From 2003 to 2021, John worked for UNESCO, where he led programmes on ethics of science and technology, global environmental change and management of social transformations.

From 1995 to 2002, John was a research fellow at the French National Political Science Foundation, specializing in political theory and comparative politics.

From 1988 to 1995, John worked for Total, first in corporate planning and later in North Sea exploration and production.