Ecotricity Saves British Wind Firm Evance
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Originally published on Ecotricity.
Britain’s leading green energy company Ecotricity [last week] bought small wind firm Evance out of administration – ensuring vital expertise is retained and green technology comes to market in the next 12 months.
Evance have an innovative new windmill design 90% of the way through development and nearing the production stage, following the manufacture and supply of almost 2,000 of smaller windmills –between 10-20m tall – to Britain and locations across the globe from the USA and Madagascar over the past decade.
But with Government increasing the anti-wind rhetoric ahead of the next election and after cutting Feed-in-Tariffs last month for the second time in the past year, Evance was suddenly placed into administration last month after investors were spooked.
Ecotricity founder Dale Vince said: “So many small wind companies are going out of business in Britain due to Government policy.
“With the green sector responsible for around 10%of Britain’s GDP growth, that’s hard to fathom.
“Despite this we’re very pleased to be in a position to save Evance’s green sector expertise and new technology that we will bring to market in the next 12 months.
“This innovative new windmill will bring large turbine performance to small wind, a massive step change in terms of efficiency and cost.
“Ecotricity already has a vertical windmill called the Urbine at a similar stage of development, so we will soon be able to offer both horizontal and vertical axis windmills that will help to make Britain a global leader in the small wind sector.”
Vince backed comments by City financier Guy Hands earlier this week who said Britain had an “industry of successful and enterprising renewable energy businesses which are ready to rise to the challenge of powering homes and businesses from clean and sustainable sources. But politicians are being pressed by a coalition of opponents of renewable energy to ignore this potential.”
Vince said: “All recent opinion polls, including the Government’s own, show that two thirds of people support wind energy as away of powering Britain now and in the future.”
“For the sake of an ideological opposition to renewable energy, this Government is scaring off investment that is threatening to kill of Britain’s small wind sector and drive green sector jobs, expertise and technology abroad. It’s important that we don’t let this happen.”
The Feed-in-Tariff for small wind turbines 15kW and under received a 20% cut from April 1 this year; a reduction came on top of 37% FiT cut last year that led to an 80% reduction in small wind sales in Britain.
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