A Weymouth man has won a prestigious award for his work in reducing carbon emissions.

Andres Shoman from Weymouth was the recipient of the ‘Climate Champion of the Year’ award at the Unlock Net Zero Live Awards.

The ceremony recognised and championed businesses and leaders across the UK housing sector who are making an impact with their work on decarbonisation.

Andres’ work primarily focuses on ‘decarbonisation which is all about reducing carbon outputs and making things more environmentally friendly.’

He described the awards as, ‘the go to event for everything net zero hosted in Manchester,’ adding: ‘it’s very competitive.’

He said: “I didn’t expect to win the award.”

He impressed the 33-strong judging panel with his pioneering work on the roadmap to net zero, including the first integration of Artificial Intelligence for a Housing Decarbonisation programme.

Andres got into his field of work due to having a personal interest in decarbonisation as well as being ‘very interested in renewable energy.’

His work has contributed to the largest Social Housing Decarbonisation BID in London relative to stock size, and together with a number of innovative developments across Green Homes Grant implementation is representing a collaboration with British technology company Polysolar to deliver the first UK social housing retrofit to feature transparent solar glass technology.

The Weymouth man also plans to launch a first-of-its-kind boat in Weymouth Marina, completely powered by transparent solar glass technology.

He is developing a Trimaran-Tritoon ‘which will be completely powered by the sun and doesn’t use fossil fuels.’

Due to the way that the boat is powered, Andres explained that it could ‘potentially run for five to seven days in normal weather conditions, even if it’s cloudy or raining.’

He plans to launch the boat in his hometown next year.

He said: “I wanted to launch the boat here as first of all, I’m a resident and I love Weymouth.”

Another reason for launching it in the seaside town was down to his research.

He found that the town received over 1,900 hours of sunlight last year which he said was ‘around five per cent more sun than most other places.’