Wind energy, electric cars, Just Stop Oil and green gas: Why I will always stand up for what I believe in

We find ourselves again in the position of going against the conventional view

(James Manning/PA) (PA Wire)

In life it’s important, unavoidable I would say, to stand up for yourself and for what you believe in. That’s never more true than when your beliefs are outside the mainstream, which mine seem always to have been.

Thirty years ago, I started in wind energy, seeking to build big modern windmills to make electricity for the grid. Nobody took it seriously, or me for that matter. However, 25 years ago I started the world’s first green energy company - Ecotricity - to offer this new kind of electricity to people. And it seemed nobody thought that was a good idea either. Both were battles, but none of that was consequential to me, these were ideas I thought were essential to bring into being.

It was much the same 15 years ago when I set out to build an electric car, before there were any in the world. Electrification of transport and especially cars looked essential to me. And 10 years ago when building a national network of charging points for electric cars, when there were only a handful on the road, it was the same again.

Creating a green football club - Forest Green Rovers - in the last decade has attracted a similar level of scepticism and disbelief, and ‘that’s not how football works’-type comments.

So, when I said I was going to make diamonds out of atmospheric carbon, you can imagine (and I can accept why) people looked at me like I may have lost it.

All of this stuff is history now and it required an amount of imperviousness to the brickbats thrown by others and to the opposition of ‘conventional wisdom’; my favourite oxymoron.

Today, the new frontier for this seems to be our plans for green gas. Gas made simply from grass that can be put into the gas grid to replace fossil gas. We find ourselves again in the position of going against the conventional view and proposing something that sounds a bit exceptional, possibly too good to be true, which is a problem I believe renewable energy still suffers from.

The latest brickbats coming our way are from an unlikely opponent, George Monbiot - the Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner.  His opposition has been just as unlikely in its format - sensationalising, exaggerating, ad hominem rants on social media, and data-free criticism. He kicked off by calling me ‘ecologically illiterate’ and when I asked if we could discuss his views (we know each other) he refused. When I asked him to give me some data he said “I’m not going to do your work for you”. He then went on social media and said, rather incredibly that I’d refused to engage with everyone who had raised objections. And pretty much tried to stir up an online mob. All of this was in response to our latest green gas report that shows we can make all the gas we need from  grassland that we have. It’s an amazing opportunity that we’ve flagged and we think needs serious debate and consideration.

But it’s OK, the day will surely come when green gas made from grass is just normal, like wind energy is now (it’s a global business at the forefront of all countries approach to net zero) and just as electric cars are now (by 2030 you won’t be able to buy a new fossil car) and as plant-based living is well on the way to being, not to mention sustainable sports clubs, and diamonds from the sky.

Meanwhile, there’s a different battle raging, between people that see the impending climate crisis and the lack of government action as reasons to get out of the streets, and a media and government that don’t like it.

Just Stop Oil (JSO) are the best latest example and some of their best protests have been at sports events. I gave them some money to get started; their aim couldn’t be more spot on, to end the drilling for new sources of oil and gas in Britain. It makes such perfect sense it’s incredible that we even need to campaign for it, but our government are busy pulling in the opposite direction to net zero, with 40 new licences for the North Sea, two new coal mines under consideration (incredibly) and all manner of anti-green stuff.

Amusingly, the first sport protest of JSO was a disruption of a Premier League football game and I found myself on talkSPORT radio talking about that. The presenters were pretty shocked that I’d funded them, given that I run a football club. I was back on the show in July as JSO disrupted the Formula One race at Silverstone with a track invasion. The argument is always the same; "we support the right to protest, blah blah blah -  but not there and/or not in that way". It’s just another kind of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) argument where people say they support the idea of a windmill or new housing - but just not in a place that doesn’t suit them.

I make the same point repeatedly; protest needs to be disruptive to be effective and the actual impact of the climate crisis is so important that there are no bad places or wrong ways to protest.

Just Stop Oil summed it up perfectly after the F1 disruption, they said if you are more upset by the disruption of a race than you are about the effects of the climate crisis then you need to look at your priorities.

Our government refuses to take proper action to avert a catastrophe that will endure for generations and centuries, if indeed it can ever be reversed. The science is clear; the economics are in favour of action, as are most people. If the government refuses to act then it’s our duty, in my view, to disrupt the status quo, the business as usual mindset.  We can’t sit idly by.

Such views bring criticism and antagonism and online trolling, the 21st century version of the mob with a pitchfork, but so be it.

Soon enough it will be accepted wisdom - that we needed to do this.

This was originally published in The Independent’s Climate Warrior newsletter. To sign up to the free weekly newsletter, written every Wednesday in turn by Lizzie Carr MBE, Dale Vince, Mitzi Jonelle and Mikaela Loach, visit our newsletters page or add your email to the box at the top of this article.