Employees InVestas

By Chris Cook

Despite the outbreak of Vestas diaries, I felt I had to post on this subject as well, since I'm actively working on a municipal wind turbine project myself, have a background in the energy world, and have a good network of people with comprehensive industry knowledge.

The first thing to say is that the Danish owners are quite clear that if there were decent orders in the UK then the plant would not be closed. This means on-shore orders, because off-shore orders are only just beginning to become “bankable”. So while an off-shore project like Sheringham Shoals may be going ahead, being financed by Norwegian state entities, many of the rest in the pipeline rely on bank financing which is not easy to find right now.

The conventional government response in respect of on-shore is - as ever - that “Big is Beautiful” ad therefore that what is needed is massive fields of turbines plastered in high places developed and built by big corporates.  There is a pretty powerful, and reasonably well funded, coalition formed against these industrial scale developments, and frankly I'm not surprised.

I have long favoured the Danish approach of small scale and decentralised energy developments operating and funded at local level, and I spent an interesting afternoon talking to a Scottish farmer, Maitland Mackie about his plans.

He envisages literally thousands of turbines scattered around the UK countryside in rather the same way that wind-mills used to be a few centuries ago. Personally I would also favour where possible replacing strings of unsightly pylons with strings of (to my eyes) less unsightly turbines and burying the unsightly cables that link them. Don't believe a word the National Grid says about the costs of cable burial, by the way.

Key to Mackie's proposal was a Danish style “not for profit” approach to investment so that most, if not all the benefits of the turbines stayed local, instead of the conventional approach where developers come in, borrow as much as they can, give the community a new bus shelter, and then eff off to the next transaction with the loot in the back of their Range Rover.

Unfortunately for Mr Mackie, he was unable to make his (brilliant) scheme work, in my view because the legal and financial structure he planned, based upon the genetically modified Co-operative form of company known as an Industrial and Provident Society does not “scale” at all well.  So for the meantime Mackie's existing development of three Vestas V52s - Margaret, Matilda and Mirabel – will have to remain a prototype for what is possible.

But as a marketing approach, a decentralised network of community energy co-operatives has a lot to commend it, and would be entirely understood by Vestas, who would not be around without it.

Secondly, there is the question of the Vestas factory in the Isle of Wight. 

Here I advocate Venture Communism, by which I mean ownership by the staff of the business using a John Lewis style, or Tower Colliery style approach.

Vestas would be invited to remain as a supply partner supplying the motors etc, while the towers could of course come from Scotland. The Isle of Wight factory would turn out the blades, and possibly also for other makes as well in the future, and would work with Vestas or other experts to solve the quality issues which I understand affect some of the blades.

In other words, I advocate a partnership - within a UK LLP framework – involving the factory under employee ownership; Vestas as supply partner (but if not them another supplier); a marketing partner working to set up community energy partnerships throughout the country, and finally, a Capital Partner willing to risk necessary working capital in return for a share in the gross revenues. 

Maybe, as with Tower Colliery, the employees might be prepared to risk their redundancy money, and one would have thought that the Unions might find their membership (or pension funds) might join in as investors in solidarity as well, instead of looking for the government to bail out the factory.

So forget Nationalisation, Comrades, to the barricades for Venture Communism!