Andrew Mill, energy advisor to the UK, on what cleantech companies he watches and why

Andrew Mill is CEO of the UK’s NaREC (New and Renewable Energy Centre), one of the leading energy R&D centers in Europe. He’s also a member of the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)’s Renewables Advisory Board, which makes him one of a handful of people that are shaping the UK’s directions in renewable energy.

Andrew has been involved in energy for most of his career. After graduating from the University of Strathclyde in Electrical Engineering and Electronic Science, he worked for NEI Peebles, part of the Rolls Royce group where he was Director and General Manager of the projects division. He’s also worked in senior roles with British Energy, Aggreko and Vianet. His last post saw him take responsibility for the strategic development of the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney where he was Managing Director. He sits on the boards of a handful of renewable energy companies, none of which came up in our discussion below.

NaREC CEO Andrew Mill, UK energy policy mover and shaker, neither moving nor shaking for our photo.

He’s a native of Scotland, but attended school in Canada for a time. Which must help explain why he’s such a polite, soft spoken fellow.

In your position of helping chart the course for renewable energy in the UK, all kinds of technology must come across your desk. What vendors in solar have got you most excited and why?

From a generation point of view, some of the things on the photovoltaic (PV) side are very interesting to me because of their long term prospects. Right now the PV industry is hampered by silicon availability, and price still has a long way to go for PV to be cost-competitive. But it has huge potential.

Some of the things going on with concentrators, and building integration with colored cells are very appealing.

I pay special attention to “concentrating” solar PV plays. HelioDynamics is a company to watch, as well as Practical Instruments near Los Angeles and ENTECH in Dallas, Texas. All of these companies are looking at concentrating sunlight through mirrors or lenses to maximize energy output, and then tracking the sun as it moves through the sky during the day.

We also see value in colored solar cells - being able to offer architectural benefits with solar cells of differing color. We’ve been doing some work in this area, ourselves.

What’s the state of the art in wave-based energy?

I’m impressed with Ocean Power Delivery (OPD), a Scottish-based company that’s now got devices going in Portugal. They’ve developed what looks like a huge articulated bus – actually it looks like a London tube train; about the same color, about the same length – that sits on the surface of the ocean and generates electricity by compressing and decompressing hydraulic pistons. They call it the Pelamis [ed. note: pelamis = a genus of sea snakes. Ick.] This is one worth watching, because it’s one that’s actually been in the water and has got its first commercial customers (three units down in Portugal).

What about tidal turbines?

I spent two years running the European Marine Energy Centre where tidal turbines are being researched. I left them a year ago to go to NaREC. At EMEC, I raised the money to build the first test facility for full scale tidal.

Underwater turbines are potentially a big industrial market for whoever can crack the problems associated with it.

Oh? What sorts of problems?

How do you install something in a tidal flow of seven meters a second? How do you service it when it requires maintenance? You don’t want to be trying to do anything on the sea bed with a few hundred tons of machinery when water is rushing by you at 7m/second. No-one’s done it before. You’re talking about going into areas of the sea that everyone else tries to stay out of.

There’s no doubt that the technology works. You can certainly make a turbine that will take advantage of a good, strong tidal flow. The real question is: can you install, maintain and decommission it in that environment? And this is true for both wave and tidal.

The technology is still in its early days. But there’s huge potential around the world. The leading company, in my opinion, is Lunar Energy of the UK. They’ve got what look like the right set of characteristics. Another company to watch is Marine Current Turbines, or MCT. They’ve been in the water for two or three years with their SeaFlow device and are trying to put one in Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. They’ve been pursuing this technology since the early 90s. They’ve actually had a 300kW test unit in the Bristol Channel in the UK.

These companies are among the most advanced in marine. But there are challenges, and it’s not yet been demonstrated that these challenges can be overcome.

Let’s switch gears and talk about biomass. Are we doing the right thing in retooling the prairies of North America to grow crops like corn for biofuels? Your thoughts?

Personally, I have a fundamental problem with growing food for energy when the world needs food as much as it needs energy. But there are plenty of crops you can grow that are energy crops, as opposed to food.

I’m excited about the concept of energy crops that have a high yield of product that can be used to be create liquid fuels or gas, and in a sustainable cycle. Where you’re growing one crop and burning it and giving off CO2, and as you’re growing the next lot it’s absorbing CO2. If you can get that cycle to be carbon neutral overall, then that’s sustainable energy.

A lot of waste energy schemes are starting to develop from municipal waste, sewage waste, industrial and commercial waste. There are a lot of companies developing those technologies. They’re probably economically closer to market than a lot of these other technologies we’ve been talking about because they have a double benefit: you’re putting less waste into landfill, and you’re generating power at the same time.

In another less-publicized use of biomass, Canada and Scandinavia are leading the way in pellet fuel from forest byproducts. As a fuel for domestic or commercial applications, this is an interesting and perhaps more short-term option that should be commercially viable without too much subsidy, or perhaps any subsidy at all.

What about so-called micro-renewables, i.e. small wind turbines, personal PV, etc. for residential or small scale industry/commercial embedded generation?

Issues like net metering and grid connection had been challenges in the past, but we’ve now seen enough momentum in Europe, and I guess in the U.S. now, that grid-connectable inverters and the like are now widely available and falling in price.

In the UK, a lot of municipalities are setting their own renewable energy targets for new developments. They’re saying that any new buildings or major refurbishments need to receive at least 10% - and in some areas of London, 20% - of their energy from a renewable source. So more people are now looking to wood pellets for heating, solar PV on the roof, and in some cases, their own small wind turbines.

Any favorite vendors, here?

I’d watch small turbine companies like the Dutch company Wind Energy Solutions. And Renewable Devices of Edinburgh has a small roof-mount wind turbine called SWIFT that’s getting a lot of attention in the UK. We’ve done some testing on their behalf and some development work with them. And they’ve attracted investment, which is a good sign.

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