Rowland Sheard has over 38 years commercial and technical experience within the gas industry firstly with British Gas and latterly with National Power (now demerged into RWE Npower and International Power), one of the UK’s largest electricity market players.

Prior to setting up Energy Links Consultancy in 1997, he set up and ran National Power's Gas Department covering most parts of the gas chain. including upstream, gas purchase, gas transportation, the UK Continental Interconnector, retail gas marketing and gas trading.

He was Chairman of the UK Gas Forum in 1996 and was a member of the Council of the Institution of Gas Engineers until 1999.