Main man
Dr Eddie O’Connor has ploughed much resource and energy into his company and here he talks to Mike Farish of his aims for its future
The founders of most start-up companies are usually keen to stress the extent to which the venture is unprecedented and represents something completely innovatory in its chosen field. But Dr Eddie O’Connor, chief executive of Mainstream Renewable Power - which was formally launched in June this year with its headquarters in Dublin - describes the move in rather different terms. The company, he says, is “not really a start-up.”
Instead, it represents a new vehicle for O’Connor’s already well-established commitment to effecting a change in the world’s energy generation and supply infrastructure that is nothing less than revolutionary. What the company is about, quite simply, is establishing a world power industry that is “free of CO2.” It is a message with which O’Connor became associated in his previous job as chief executive of Airtricity, a company whose purpose - the development and operation of wind-powered electricity generation installations - was explicit in its name.
But when that company was sold at the beginning of this year for €1.46 billion to Scottish and Southern Energy O’Connor did not go along as part of the package. Instead he founded Mainstream Renewable Power, pumping in some €35 million of his own resources to provide himself with a personally-owned majority shareholding. One consequence of that, he promises in a statement of forward intent that is evidently informed by the emotions of recent experience, is that: “I won’t be selling off this company in a few years.”
Nevertheless, the name again is more than just a means of identification. In this case, it encapsulates and expresses the whole purpose of the enterprise - that the generation of electricity from renewable sources should cease to be the minority, ‘alternative’ means of doing so and instead become predominant.
The company’s business will be the development and operation of all forms of renewable energy installations. Since its inception it had around 60 staff and was busy recruiting more. It had also established offices in Berlin, Chicago, Dublin, London, Santiago, Toronto and on the other side of the world in Australia.
But something O’Connor makes clear is that he wants the people who join the company to regard it as more than just a business, but as an organisation with a mission. “This is a value-driven enterprise,” he states categorically. “It is a fundamentally ‘green’ company.” However, individual motivation will include a distinct economic element. Everyone who joins the company, he promises, will be given a share option. The only exception to that largesse, he adds, is “myself.”
It is till too early for the company to announce specific contracts, though O’Connor says that negotiations are underway for more than one project and that there are no pre-set geographical limitations. “We don’t rule out anywhere,” he states. Outside of Europe, Australia is a country on which he has evidently set his sights. Nearer home, another unusual name that crops up is Egypt. Mainstream is “looking hard” at the prospects of working in that country. “It looks great for solar power,” he explains.
Wind power, however, is likely to be the major area of activity for the company in the foreseeable future. It is, O’Connor states, by far the most “commercial.” It is also the area in which Mainstream has already made a considerable investment to increase its own internal resources. It has spent €1 million to acquire a shareholding in Dutch turbine designer 2-B. O’Connor says that the Dutch company is developing a highly efficient type of offshore turbine and that he sees it as absolutely crucial to the effectiveness of Mainstream that it should be “on top of offshore developments.” He has set up an Offshore Centre of Excellence in London, where he has “one of the most experienced offshore teams in the world” working on delivering large-scale projects with strategic partners.
Much of what O’Connor says, though, also makes evident his belief that the establishment of a carbon-free energy regime on any significant scale will involve far more than just the development and application of appropriate technology. It will also require the replication in the wider world of the commitment and enthusiasm for the concept that he is seeking to create within Mainstream.
There is, he indicates, not just a vested interest in fossil fuel power generation within much of the existing energy industry based on existing investments and infrastructure, but also a predilection derived from the fact that it is, in effect, the easiest option. “The term ‘entrepreneur’ could never be applied to them,” he says. “They would never do anything other than gas, coal, oil and nuclear,” adding the rider that, as far he is concerned, “uranium is a fossil fuel.”
Lack of imagination seems to be reason for this. As O’Connor points out, the generation of electricity from renewable sources “stands on its head” the basic conceptual model on which the existing, fossil-based industry operates. In the old way of working, fuel costs money and eventually the investment required to keep a power station operating will come to rival that involved in building it in the first place. But in the renewable world “fuel is free,” though initial capital costs may well be more than for an equivalent fossil-based generating capacity.
Renewables do, however, suffer from one comparative restriction. While fossil-based generating capacity can, theoretically, be based anywhere, renewable generation has to take place at the point where the ‘fuel’ - be it wind, wave, tides or sunlight - is actually active. That raises the matter of grids, which O’Connor clearly regards as possibly the most important issue facing the renewables industry. “The challenge now is to get grids built,” he states with some emphasis.
O’Connor’s choice of words is, in fact, an indication of his cast of mind. He clearly thinks in terms of enabling and not inhibiting factors. That is evidenced by his dismissal of one of the more frequently cited impediments to the take-up of wind generation, the supposed shortage of turbine blades and components caused by demand outstripping supply. “I would question whether there is under-supply in the turbine industry,” he says simply. In short, as with any question put to him about the future prospects for the renewable energy industry, O’Connor’s reply is always in the positive.
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