How Dale Vince has become a green energy tycoon from subsidy harvesting at Ecotricity
DAVID TURVER
Introduction
This week we look at what it takes to become a green energy tycoon. Perhaps the best example is Dale Vince, owner of Green Britain Group that controls Ecotricity. He has stated that “wind energy is the fastest, cheapest, cleanest new energy we can make.” He has even said “the price of fossil gas sets the price of all electricity in our country – even that from the wind and sun, it’s an absurd market mechanism that enriches a few at the expense of the rest.”
However, most of Dale’s empire is reliant upon subsidies to be profitable and those profits may be at risk with subsidies running out and declining performance.
The Ecotricity Generation Empire
The Green Britain Group is a sprawling empire that includes Forest Green Rovers Football Club and Ecotricity Limited which is the company that supplies electricity to consumers and businesses. For now, we will focus on Ecotricity Generation Limited and its subsidiaries which hold the electricity generating assets and collect the vast bulk of subsidies (see Figure 1).
The black rectangles are holding companies and the grey rectangles are dormant companies. The green rectangles are the companies holding onshore wind assets that receive Renewable Obligations Certificates (ROCs) as subsidies. The blue rectangles are those companies that do not appear to receive any subsidies because they cannot be found on the ROC database. They cannot be found on the Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin (REGO) database either. The yellow boxes represent solar farms, none of which appear to receive ROCs or Contracts for Difference (CfDs), but they all feature on the REGO database.
How Much Has Ecotricity Collected in Subsidies?
Many of Ecotricity’s generation assets receive a large part of their income from subsidies. The analysis below covers income received from ROCs and other renewables credits declared in the accounts of some of the companies.
Ecotricity Renewable Obligations Certificates
ROCs have been a nice little earner for Dale since 2002/03, because his companies have received over £115m in ROCs up to April 2025 (See Figure 2, credit Ben Pile for data before 2008/9).
The biggest earners of certificates and subsidies are Fen Farm, Bambers Farm and Bristol Port Wind Park, earning £29.7m, £17.3m and £10.3m respectively in ROC value. It is notable that the value of ROCs received fell from £9.15m in 2023/24 to £7.87m in 2024/25, more on that below.
The subsidies earned by Dale’s companies do not end there. The accounts for some of his other companies up to 2022/23 declared renewables credits earned in each financial year (see Figure 3). Note that the financial year for Ecotricity group companies goes from May to April, in contrast to the government financial year April to March in Figure 2 above.
For 2023/24, the companies have stopped splitting out their source of their revenue. However, we can see that since 2014/15 Dale’s companies have earned a further £8.55m in renewables credits, giving a total of £123.6m received by his subsidy farms.
Finally, Ecotricity Limited declares the income it receives from administering the Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) scheme which has run at an annual rate of about £2.7m since 2018/19 and amounts to a total of £21.5m since 2015/16. The FiT income would not exist without FiT subsidies, so technically, this is a subsidy too, bringing the total receipts to over £145m.
Funding the Subsidy Farms
How does Dale and his empire manage to collect such vast subsidies? First, they need to borrow a lot of money to build the wind and solar farms and it looks like Dale is quite adept at raising capital.
Over the years, the Ecotricity empire has raised £51.8m in Ecobonds, see Figure 4.
At the time of the last accounts made up to 30 April 2024, £40.2m of these bonds were outstanding. It appears these bonds were offered to Ecotricity customers as well as the general market because customers get an extra 0.5% in interest payments. Borrowing money off your customers is quite a business model.
Ecotricity has also taken out bank loans to finance the construction of the generation assets and as of the last accounts, £39.8m remained outstanding (see Figure 5).
That is a total of £80m in outstanding borrowings, even after receiving all those subsidies.
Charging Higher Prices
The subsidies received by the Green Britain Group companies are not quite enough to keep the empire afloat, so they negotiated an enduring derogation from the Ofgem price cap in 2019 (see Figure 6).
This allows them to charge higher prices in return for committing to develop new green energy projects (See Figure 7).
Ecotricity quoted me just over £1,902 on their standard variable rate (SVR) for the South Region on 1 July 2025 for the standard usage of 2,700kWh of electricity and 11,500kWh of gas. This compares to the latest Ofgem price cap of just over £1,701 for the same region. Ecotricity’s SVR is some 11.8% above the price cap. It should be noted that a cheaper fixed price tariff was available. However, this begs the question if Dale’s claim of wind energy being the cheapest energy source is true, why does he have to charge extra for it?
Greasing the Wheels of Government
Of course the subsidy machine works much more smoothly if the gears are greased with generous donations. According to the Electoral Commission, the Labour Party has received £5.486m in donations from Ecotricity companies and from Dale Vince as an individual since 2021.
Until very recently, Vince’s Ecotricity Group Limited also owned 24.7% of the Good Energy Group. The CEO of Good Energy is Nigel Pocklington who just happens to be the brother of Jeremy Pocklington who is the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). Juliet Davenport, founder of Good Energy, serves on the DESNZ Clean Power 2030 Advisory Commission. Good Energy was bought by a UAE-based company earlier this year for £99.4m. This transaction should have netted Ecotricity some £24.5m.
Generous donations and powerful connections could well help lubricate Government decision-making, but it is probably just a coincidence that the 500MW solar farm at Heckington Fen was approved by the Government earlier this year. Interestingly, instead of building out that solar farm, it appears as though Ecotricity is trying to flip it for a quick profit.
Declining Performance Spells Trouble Ahead
The ability to harvest subsidies, charge more than the price cap and reap the benefits of donations and connections does not eliminate the risks of renewables. There are several signs of trouble in Dale Vince’s empire, which might explain his rush to sell the solar farm mentioned above.
First, the ROC database shows us that in the year to end March 2025, overall generation from his ROC-funded wind projects was down significantly from about 159GWh in 2023/24 to 124GWh in 2024/2025 (see Figure 8).
This explains the fall in value of ROCs awarded in Figure 1, even though the value of each certificate rose. The decline in output is largely driven by the Alveston wind farm collecting no ROCs in FY2024/25. It appears as though this unit has been temporarily turned off as storage batteries are being installed. However, the largest wind farms: Bamber’s Farm, Bristol Port, Fen Farm and Galsworthy all saw significant drops in output as measured by the number of ROCs they were awarded.
If we split the windfarms into cohorts defined by the age of operation, we begin to see where output and profitability might be going, see Figure 9.
Age Cohort 1 contains those windfarms that began operation in 2003 or before. We only have data from 2008, so the data series by year of operation only begins from year 6. However we can see that after 12 or 13 years of operation, the load factor starts to decline significantly. Lynch Knoll is the only wind farm operating for more than 26 years and so skews year 27 onwards. It is notable that Lynch Knoll made a loss in the last two sets of accounts and others like Mablethorpe, Ecotech, Lowick Beacon (Swaffham), Blood Hill (Somerton) and East Kilbride will likely not be profitable as output declines and the subsidies run out.
Cohort 2 covers wind farms that began operation between 2004 and 2009. Again, the load factor is showing a steady decline. Fen Farm is the largest of the ROC-funded units at 16MW and came online in 2008, so the subsidies should run out after 2028. In financial year ended April 2023, Fen Farm made an operating profit of £1,671K, after receiving £1,924K in renewables credit, meaning it is only profitable because of subsidies. It was more profitable in FY24, but renewables credits are not declared, so we cannot tell if it would have been profitable without subsidies. Dagenham Wind Farm made an operating profit of £156K in FY23 after receiving £382K in renewables credits. It produced more in FY24 and so made a larger profit (renewables credits not declared), but ROCs issued in the year to March 2025 fell again and that was its 21st year of operation, so as the subsidies run out this unit will likely fall into loss. In FY23 Dundee Merchant made an operating profit of £225K after receiving renewables credits of £301K. It produced more in FY24 and was more profitable, however it will struggle to remain profitable as the subsidies run out. Green Park made an operating profit of £72K in FY23 after receiving renewables credits of £122K. Again, it produced more in FY24 and so was more profitable, but output declined in FY25 and subsidies will soon end, so this is likely to fall into loss too in the next couple of years.
Cohort 3 covers windfarms that began operation from 2013 onwards, with Alveston being the last ROC-funded unit coming online in 2017. These tend to be larger wind farms in the Ecotricity portfolio and generally have lower load factors than the earlier units. They are approaching the 12-13 year age where performance starts to decline. In FY23, Ballymena, Dalby and Galsworthy were only profitable because of the renewables credits. It will be interesting to see how the profitability evolves as the wind farms age and the subsidies eventually run out.
Of the non-ROC-funded units, Sandy Wind made a loss of £31K in FY2023 even after receiving £121K of renewables credits, however it did return to profitability in FY24. Cardiff, Kings Lynn and Pollington all also relied on renewables credits to be profitable in FY2023. We do not know how much of their revenue in FY24 came from renewables credits.
Declining performance means less generation and fewer ROCs. Ecotricity will be reliant upon the value of the index-linked certificates going up faster than performance declines if cashflow is to be maintained. However, as the subsidies run out on the older units, they may need to be decommissioned and so turn cashflow negative. What is not clear is why some of the windfarms continue to receive ROCs after more than 20 years of operation. It may be because they expanded during their life or did not start claiming ROCs until later in their lives. In any event, many of these windfarms will stop receiving their certificates very soon, reducing the income to these units. Ironically, that means it will be in Dale’s interest for gas prices to remain high so the wholesale price he receives for the electricity produced stays high. This may explain his opposition to more drilling in the North Sea and fracking to improve gas supply and reduce prices.
Failed Investments
Conclusions
Dale has navigated the subsidy, regulatory and political landscapes to collect over £123m in subsidies and more than £21m from administering the FiT scheme. Yet, despite receiving generous subsidies each year and being able to charge his customers more than the price cap, Dale’s companies struggle to make a profit. It looks like his companies received a windfall of over £24m from the sale of the stake Good Energy earlier this year, so the coffers will be relatively full. However, the outlook for the profitability of his generation assets is not good as subsidies run out and performance declines with age.
This poor performance falsifies Dale’s claim that wind power is cheapest energy source. His companies struggle to be profitable without massive subsidies, even though he charges his customers more than the price cap. Yet, Dale manages to be one of the few enriched at the expense of the rest.
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This article (Green Energy for Dummies) was created and published by David Turver and is republished here under “Fair Use”
See Related Article Below
Solar Farms Paid To Switch Off
PAUL HOMEWOOD
h/t Doug Brodie/Philip Bratby
It’s started already!
From The Telegraph:
British solar farms have been paid to switch off for the first time as sunny days prompt a surge of clean power that could overwhelm the grid.
The National Energy System Operator (Neso), which manages the UK’s power grids and is overseen by Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, has issued switch-off orders to solar facilities this year, new research reveals.
Operators are paid to switch off when these orders are issued, with the extra cost added to consumer and business energy bills.
The solar operators claiming compensation are understood to include some of the UK’s biggest energy suppliers, such as EDF Renewables and Octopus Energy.
Such “constraint payments” are already common with wind farms because so many have been built in areas such as northern Scotland or offshore, areas without grid capacity to carry the power they generate.
So far this year, constraint payments have cost consumers £650m, according to the Wasted Wind website. The cost is added to energy bills.
Overall “balancing payments” could hit £8bn a year by 2030 without massive grid upgrades, according to Neso estimates. Such upgrades would also be extremely costly, with consumers liable.
Read the full story here.
This is of course the tip of the iceberg. The real problems will start when we have three times as much wind and solar capacity.
As I noted here, there will be many occasions during the year when we will be throwing a third of the electricity we produce, when demand is low and wind and solar power are high.
The only way to have enough renewable capacity at times of stress during winter is to build large surpluses in.
What this latest news shows though is that there are already regional imbalances appearing, with too much solar power in local areas.
NESO’s own projections for 2030 show that these surpluses will add £15/MWh to electricity costs. Even that is optimistic, because it assumes we will be able to export some of it, which may not be the case. It also assumes grid expansions.
Even at £15/MWh, that works out at £5 billion a year.
Once again, the red herring of zonal pricing is mentioned in the Telegraph report:
Octopus has been campaigning for Britain’s energy market to be broken up into regions that set their own prices based on supply and demand. This reform, known as zonal pricing, would theoretically reduce or even eliminate constraint payments by encouraging developers to build infrastructure in areas where prices were highest, meaning there would be sufficient cabling.
The basic idea is that new generation will be attracted to areas with high demand, and consumers attracted to the areas where supply exceeds demand, with price differentials the driver.
But most new generation will be paid via CfDs, so will be unaffected by whatever the market price happens to be. Moreover, most will be offshore wind, and therefore not embedded regionally.
As for the idea that people and industry are suddenly going to relocate to the Scottish Highlands is ridiculous. Or that people are going to switch all their electrical appliances on when it is windy, just because prices come down,
Zonal pricing will no doubt be a good way for Octopus to charge higher prices. But the real solution is not to rearrange the deckchairs. It is to stop building wind and solar farms that cannot reliably meet demand when and where it is needed.
SOURCE: Not a Lot of People Know That
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