Richard Nourse leads venture capital fund manager Greencoat, the exclusive investment adviser to €200m ($272m) clean-tech fund, ESB Novusmodus, which is funded by Ireland-based utility ESB, and investment manager to Greencoat UK Wind, a sector-focused infrastructure fund invested in UK wind generation assets and listed on the LSE’s main market. as managing partner.
A year after leaving Merrill Lynch in 2007, and after a brief spell working for the UK government selling British Energy to EDF, Nourse hooked up with ESB during the financial crisis.
He said: “ESB had been thinking about how it would meet the challenges involved in transforming itself from a largely fossil-based integrated electricity company to one that would deliver in a low- carbon world. It realised that in a short space of time it would need to adopt new technologies and new business structures, many of which it would be unfamiliar with. This would be challenging within a utility framework and hence ESB was happy to pursue a fund structure. It is clear ESB was ahead of other utilities in its thinking on this.”
Corporates have become more important in backing clean technology in recent years. Nourse said: “If you go to a European clean-tech conference there is a huge change. Now I think 60% of the people in the room are corporate venturing teams. The clean agenda is maturing. Now people are thinking about the interaction between clean and affordability.”
The company has made about 10 deals and invested about €100m. Greencoat has also listed Greencoat UK Wind this year. Nourse said this allowed utilities to release capital by selling their wind farms, or part of them, and recycling the money into more development.