'I suppose you could call me an energy enthusiast,’ admits Mike Proffitt, the 53 year old boss of Renewable Energy (REH). ‘Even during my school days, doing Physics A-Level, I thought the concept of harnessing renewable energy was brilliant. These ideas used to be the domain of tree-huggers and environmental nuts, but now it presents a very remunerative business opportunity.’

Proffitt knows what he’s talking about. In light of the Kyoto Agreement, coupled with rising oil and gas prices, the UK government has committed to generating up to ten per cent of Britain’s energy from alternative sources by 2010. This puts REH in prime position to capitalise on a wave of demand from electricity suppliers, as they are now obligated to meet minimum targets set by the Government. Corporate Synergy, which led REH’s AIM float in February, estimates that spend on renewable energy in Europe is set to rise from the current €4 billion per year to €14 billion by 2010.

Betting big

Manx-born Proffitt trained as a chartered accountant with KPMG, but says he ‘soon yearned to leave island life behind and see the world’. He was offered a two-year trip to the Bahamas and decided to stay on afterwards to work for the subsidiary of Canadian Pacific that was building glamourous hotels. ‘It was such an enjoyable mixture of real estate and showbusiness,’ he recalls, ‘and I loved it.’

In 1987, Proffitt decided to go it alone and set up a hotel chain in the Carribean, but Hurricane Hugo demolished everything he’d built. ‘I’d rather have a sharp stick in my eye than go through that again,’ he jokes.
So he turned to the gambling game, building lucrative, dockside Vegas-style casinos in the US. ‘But frankly, I could see that the Vegas big boys were hovering,’ he says, ‘watching small and pioneering operations like ours and getting ready to swoop in and dominate the market, so I knew it was time to get out of the game.

‘I didn’t want to sit still,’ he states, ‘so my wife Ginny, my two sons and I decided to come back home to the Isle of Man. I took on a few new projects, including joining the board of the Isle of Man Electricity Authority in 1997. The island’s electricity demand was escalating as the economy was booming and we could clearly see that by 2002 the lights would go out! The infrastructure just couldn’t cope, so I decided we had to do something.’

Riding the tide

Appointed as CEO, Proffitt went on to completely restructure the business, securing the funds to develop and manage a comprehensive electricity generation project that would see a network of pipelines bringing natural gas from Scotland, a two-way connection to the National Grid in England and the building of new gas turbine power stations. This ambitious venture was completed within five years and has been operating successfully since 2003.

Proffitt, is using this extensive experience to position REH at the forefront of the sector in Europe. In July, REH undertook a £33 million acquisition of a 41.7MW wind farm in Germany and a further placing in August raised £2.5 million to fund additional acquisitions of wind farms in Ireland and landfill gas projects in Wales. The intention is to invest in proven renewable technology such as wind in the short term, while the long-term plan is to exploit wave power and invest in pioneering early-stage projects. £5 million has already been used to develop a wave energy device called CETO, which Proffitt says is one to watch and will be ‘like rocket fuel for the company’.

Renewable Energy Holdings	AIM	£26.22m	40.00p	0.00p
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