Ecotricity not for sale after owner says it’s not right time

DALE Vince has called off plans to sell the green energy company he founded in the 1990s, blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for putting his plans on hold.

The eco entrepreneur says the time is not right because the market is so volatile.

Mr Vince announced in April that he wanted to sell the green energy firm that employs around 800 people in Gloucestershire to concentrate on his political ambitions.

He said KPMG had already given him a list of 60 or 70 companies that might be interested in buying it.

Now he says the company that grew from a single wind turbine to a multimillion pound business is no longer up for sale, despite interest from around a dozen would-be buyers.

But he will be working with Manchester’s Labour mayor Andy Burnham, widely dubbed the King of the North, to try and come up with a political solution to the energy crisis.

Mr Vince told a trade journalist at Utility Week that the sale had been put on hold because of the continuing volatility in the energy market since Russia invaded Ukraine.

He said there had been about a dozen interested parties but the sale had now been put “on the shelf” because of the global situation.

When Mr Vince first released an email to his 800 workers on April 1 to say their boss planned to sell up, many thought it was an April Fool’s Day joke.

He later confirmed it was true and said Ecotricity was doing well despite many small energy companies going to the wall.

A spokesman for Ecotricity has confirmed the sale has been shelved for now.

But the Stroud-based entrepreneur, who has funded both the Labour party and the Greens in the past, doesn’t seem to have forgotten his political ambitions.

Earlier this month he joined forces with Labour’s northern metro mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram to launch an initiative that could be rolled out across the country.

The trio have set up a task force to see if green energy could be harvested to power both Liverpool and Manchester in a way that would allow the North West to take ownership of the resources.

The hope is they find a successful way of doing this that could be replicated across the country.

Mr Vince, who owns vegan football club Forest Green Rovers, said at the launch: “We can power the whole of

Britain by harnessing our wind, sun, waves and even grass. “And we know it makes most sense for the people to own these resources, so that the benefits accrue to us as a country.

“The Green Energy Task Force is a first step towards that and doing so at a regional level – starting with the Greater Manchester and Liverpool regions. It will create a blueprint that can be replicated across the country, by all regions – in pursuit of net zero carbon in the 2030s.”