How does a 15-year-old school dropout and one-time chef become a successful serial — and super-green — entrepreneur with more than 30 startups to his name?
One secret, says Peter Darwell, is a savvy eye for promising new business niches. Beyond that, though, the formula is a tried-and-true one: tonnes of research, years of hard work and dogged persistence.
Darwell, who was a green entrepreneur long before green was in, is today chairman of the Cardiff-based Eco2, which specialises in developing, financing and operating renewable energy projects across the UK and Europe.
One of Darwell’s previous ventures, Economy Power, was launched in 2000 after he saw an opportunity in the electricity market.
“I spent a long time researching — I carried out over 2,000 interviews — and realised that SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) were being substantially overcharged for their electricity,” Darwell says. “By setting up a business, Economy Power, which focused almost exclusively on them, we were able to undercut our rivals and grow extremely quickly.”
At that time, just 2 per cent of the UK’s power came from renewable sources, but Darwell again saw opportunity.
“I saw the potential on offer in renewable energy production and we established Eco2 as a subsidiary to Economy Power,” he says. “We started with some of the easier wins such as landfill gas and onshore wind but have now moved our focus firmly to a £1 billion vision for sustainable biomass in the UK.”
As the renewable industry “really started to get serious” in 2005, Darwell sold Economy Power to E.ON for £45 million but retained Eco2 and its portfolio of renewable energy projects.
“At that time I sensed that the business and the sector were ready to stand on their own two feet,” he recalls.
Not bad for someone who left school at age 15 “with no qualifications” and began his career with several jobs in catering. Later, Darwell joined the assurance brokerage Mildon, earning various financial services qualifications before setting out to start his own first business — Darwell Associates, a financial products firm — at age 33.
While the company was successful, Darwell found himself facing an increasing challenge retaining staff in a competitive field, so decided to seek out a new industry and began studying the energy markets. That led to the establishment of, first, Economy Power, and, later, Eco2.
While finding the right niche is critical for any successful enterprise, Darwell says exhaustive research is also “absolutely critical.”
“You have to know more about whatever it is that you’re doing than anybody else in the room, what exactly you’re trying to achieve, how you’re going to achieve it,” he says. “The devil really is in the detail.”
He adds, “Whoever it was that said it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert wasn’t far wrong — but if anything it will be more with your own business. Instant success only comes after years of hard work!”
Other thoughts from Darwell:
On opportunity: “Every company I’ve been involved with has been about meeting a need and to this day I’m still looking to see what’s going to be in demand tomorrow. If you can be one of the first into a market, you’ve got a huge opportunity.”
On persistence: “Whatever it is that you’re doing you have to be prepared to stick at it. With all of my businesses I’ve always found that success came two feet past the point I thought I could go.”
On future energy trends: “One area that is going to be huge for the UK in the future is tidal energy. Just look at all the factors it’s got in its favour — it’s free, it’s limitless and it’s entirely predictable. To make matters even better, Britain has some of the best resources in the world, not to mention a lot of expertise built up from the offshore oil and gas industries.”
On the evolution of green industry: “One of the things that has been interesting to watch over the last five years is the ‘greening’ of the boardroom agenda. Environmental concerns were considered to be a real niche issue at the end of the ’90s, but they are now accepted as being absolutely paramount to every part of the business, from brand value through to risk litigation … That’s not to say that there are not still opportunities out there though and I think increasingly we’ll see the insurance companies take a lead on environmental issues — they have most to lose after all.”
On the quest for ‘green shoots’: “I think we are starting to see some signs of recovery — if the green shoots aren’t yet showing, the seeds are certainly in the ground! I think renewables will be at the very front of the process. There is clear political will to create a low-carbon economy — and we have a lot of the resource and expertise already. In many senses, the challenge is to make sure that we don’t lose ground to our competitors, as we did in the ’80s to Germany and Denmark with the wind industry … If we do that, then I see no reason why the environmental sector can’t lead us out of the recession. It could even one day become a key economic indicator, like housing or retail!”
Haha - we’re not there yet, but almost. There’s still time to submit your company for the list, which will be published all over the place.
Don’t forget that CNBC publishes all our posts. And we’ll be commentating on this here, there and everywhere…
Here’s the blurb, in case you missed it.
Greenbang is publishing a report on the UK’s top 30 clean-tech start-up companies.
This report, while focused on the UK, is intended for Greenbang’s global audience of entrepreneurs, investors and business communities, who want to learn about the state of the green innovation industry.
The research is intended to recognize excellence in business, and to demonstrate that business and green credentials can work hand in hand.
The final report, which will appear under the Greenbang banner, will provide a detailed profile of all 30 companies. They will be chosen for their ability to demonstrate excellence in business and environmental innovation. Failing in either of these areas would exclude them from the list.
The report will index rather than rank the country’s most promising young companies. To qualify, the company must:
• Be less than two-years old
• Privately owned
• Have a strategic path to profit and/or be an obvious target for investment
• Sell a product or service that has clear environmental benefits to society and the planet
Scottish and Southern Energy has agreed to buy Irish wind-power firm Airtricity in a £1.1bn deal.
Airtricity is one of the biggest developers of wind farms in the world. And this is a pretty big deal, to say the least. In fact, it’s f8%*ing massive.
This has got to be one of the biggest renewable energy deals to date - well for the UK anyway. We’re unsure about the rest of the world.
Ian Marchant, Chief Executive of SSE, said: “The combination of SSE’s and Airtricity’s interests in renewable energy will provide an excellent platform for future growth, which will be made much more achievable by combining SSE’s financial strength with Airtricity’s outstanding ability in project development. I am looking forward to working with the Airtricity team.
“Seven major public policy developments took place during 2007 alone, all of which point towards a material step-change in the amount of renewable energy that will be required in the future. The range of investment opportunities now available to SSE in renewables will become increasingly important as the world becomes more carbon constrained and the EU becomes more concerned about energy security. Demand for renewable energy is only going to go up.
“In one step this acquisition moves SSE forward in onshore wind, offshore wind, Ireland, Europe and China and gives added momentum to the increasing scale and broadening scope of SSE’s activities which has been achieved over the past few years.
Airtricity runs wind farms in the UK, Ireland, continental Europe and China.
The agreement is subject to clearance by the Irish Competition Authority and by the Irish and Northern Ireland energy regulators and the acquisition is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2008.
Forget the big smelly petrol pumps, why not plug into a small trim electric charger?
To promote the use of electric vehicles (EVs), EDF Energy and Elektromotive are rolling out 250 recharging bays (like the one pictured here) across the UK, by the end of March next year. It’s something of a boost from the paltry 2 charging points currently available (in London).
Sheffield, Islington, Camden and Lambeth councils have all stuck their hands up, with presumably more to follow. More info here.
His company, PolyFuel, is making serious headway in the development of fuel cell membranes. These are essentially the technology that enables hydrogen fuel cells to work properly, but in the past have been troublesome to make work.
PolyFuel says:
“These technologies have the potential to change the economics and performance of fuel cells for both the mobile and automotive markets.”
Jim joined PolyFuel in 2002 from Chrysalix, an energy-focused venture capital firm, where he was entrepreneur-in-residence.
Previously, Balcom spent four years with Ballard Power Systems in senior fuel cell development engineering and fuel cell manufacturing management positions.
He was one of five senior fuel cell development engineers responsible for the design and development of the record breaking Mk700 automotive fuel cell stacks delivered to Daimler Benz.
Jim also spent four years with a technology start-up in various VP positions developing and commercializing a flat panel speaker technology licensed from the University of British Columbia’s laboratories.
He has a Systems Design Engineering Degree from the University of Waterloo, and an MBA from Harvard.
Non-hydrogen fuel cell makers are picking up attention from investors as their prospects start to look cheerier than their hydrogen-based siblings.
Non-hydrogen approaches, which are powered by natural gas or other fuels like ethanol tend to focus on power generation, rather than aiming to power tomorrow’s green cars–a daunting prospect.
The key problem facing the hydrogen fuel cell companies was the prohibitive cost of the infrastructure to deliver the hydrogen. Shares of companies in that market segment went through a dot-com-style boom and bust.
“We are some time away from any significant revenue traction in the sector,” said Henwood of Camino Energy.
“The non-hydrogen crowd is a different story; they don’t have the technology challenges and are making progress, and once they get their products solidified they can get revenue traction.”
As firms developing hydrogen-based cells have suffered lately, non-hyrodogen ones are thriving.
“The shift from hydrogen to non-hydrogen fuel cells has been the trend in recent years. Now, the investment community has seen that and are voting with their dollars,” Gary Simon, chief executive of Acumentrics Corp., told Reuters.
“Non-hydrogen has solved some of the problems, and there’s a consensus from customers that they would prefer non-hydrogen fuel cells,” said Simon, whose Westwood, Massachusetts-based company develops 5,000-watt solid oxide fuel cells [pictured above].
Greenbang is frothing at the mouth over this one. It’s like the Great Wall of China all over again.
If you’ve not yet heard of architect William McDonough, you soon will have.
The Chinese government has him designing SEVEN new sustainable cities for them. He’s a genius .
While people are happy to lambast China with the world’s CO2 problems - it recently was labelled the world’s worst emitter of CO2 - Greenbang thinks the Chinese realise the problem and are quickly looking to solve it - perhaps faster than the West will be able to.
China is on a roll of change. Why not leapfrog a few more technologies while they’re at it?
A very formal pose is struck by Kelly Smith, the managing director at Smartbunker - a data centre that claims it uses zero carbon energy.
Power used within the 30,000 square feet data centre is free from carbon emissions, being generated entirely from renewable resources.
If this is true, Greenbang wants to know more about this.
They say:
“Smartbunker’s zero carbon energy policy is a preferable alternative to ‘carbon offsetting’ in which carbon emitted by traditional energy supplies is theoretically neutralised by projects designed to extract carbon from the environment.
He says:
“All the elements of design guarantees that our customers have all the service and environmental benefits at no additional cost,”
Kelly has 20 years’ experience in IT. He co-founded Centrinet in 1995.
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environmental Check this out to see how we can help prevent environmental catastrophes.
How does a 15-year-old school dropout and one-time chef become a successful serial — and super-green — entrepreneur with more than 30 startups to his name?
Forget the big smelly petrol pumps, why not plug into a small trim electric charger?
Non-hydrogen fuel cell makers are picking up attention from investors as their prospects start to look cheerier than their hydrogen-based siblings.
The chap with the funny eyes pictured here is Jason Elliot, something of a serial entrepreneur in the eco-space.
