Sustainable Business

Interview Dale Vince, Ecotricity 3/4 food in the last few years, because energy, transport and food, together, account for 80% of everybody's personal carbon emissions. "For electricity we are focused on the resources of the wind, sun and the sea. And with green gas it's currently food waste or some other form of waste. However, it's a tricky area and you have to be careful what you feed these [AD plants] – we're still finding our feet". Ecotricity's recent work on food has mainly revolved around providing information and campaigning but Vince says there is also an electric tractor "on the drawing board". In terms of transport, Vince talks about Nemesis, an electric car the company launched in 2011 to demonstrate how well an EV can perform. He quickly points out that it set a new UK land speed record for a battery-powered vehicle – 151mph. The creation of the Nemesis led Ecotricity to build the 'electric highway', which is a national network of charging posts to encourage the electric car revolution in Britain, "which is surely coming," he adds. Despite these new ventures the company is strongly focused on the devel- opment of renewable energy and Vince outlines one of the next phases, wave energy generation. "We've got our own wave power machine in R&D, called Searaser. Following wind and solar, third in the merit order is wave power. It's early days and nobody has built a machine that really works and it's going to be expensive to make power out there. ing we can There is nothians such as say to politice minister] [Conservativ ecause John Hayes b sophically they are philonewable opposed to re energy "The device we've got in R&D uses a rather clever approach, which is brutally simple. It doesn't try to make electricity under the sea or over the sea, it's a pump and it uses the motion of the waves to pump high pressure water ashore and spin an onshore generator." Vince says the company will be testing the prototype in the next 12 months. The enthusiasm in evidence when discussing his latest renewable energy projects quickly diminishes, however, when he moves on to the role of the Government and its position on renewables. The 51-year-old, former new-age traveller is concerned with the lack of support for the renewables industry, citing the Government's position as "pronuclear, pro-gas, pro-fracking". "They say they are pro-renewables but they do the complete opposite. There is nothing we can say to politicians such as John Hayes because they are philosophically opposed to renewable energy," he says. Vince points out that for renewable energy to see a serious uptake in investment and deployment there needs to be "political will". He also highlights the recent attention the media and politicians have given renewable energy subsidies, while the "vastly greater subsidies for the fossil fuel industry" have seen little coverage - his comments clearly referring to the £3bn support package for the North Sea oil exploration announced in March 2012. Another sensitive area is the Energy Market Reform (EMR), which he simply labels "hideous". According to Vince, the

• Cover