81
Juwi
Mainz, Germany
Private
Renewables ' solar
Matthias Willenbacher &
Fred Jung (below) CEOs

This pioneering duo founded their company in 1996 and believes the future is mass market solar power for individual homes. The results of their efforts are now coming through in the form of '€120m sales and groundbreaking projects such as the world's largest photovoltaic power plant, near Leipzig, which will feed energy straight into the public grid. Due for completion in 2009, it is also unusual in that it will use second generation, thin-film solar technology using in which Juwi has a strong interest. Juwi's solar business is experiencing double-digit growth and it is also strongly involved in the wind and biogas sectors.

82

In partnership with the club's main sponsor, E.ON, Ipswich is attempting to counteract the calculated 3,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide it produces at its Portman Road ground. Fans, local businesses and surrounding schools have backed the Blues by making pledges such as switching to energy-saving lightbulbs and buying hybrid fuel cars. Many fans have been walking to games rather than driving and the club says some of team have set up a carpool. As an extra incentive, if six-monthly targets are met, E.ON gives the club a 'green' cheque to bolster transfer funds. Late last year E.ON scrapped the deal declaring that it would focus its green efforts on a deal with the FA Cup and Football League. Nonetheless, Ipswich was the pioneer.

83
Zander
Mells, UK
Private
Support services
John Carter, CEO

Founder Raymond Asquith OBE, has a startlingly original business model: digging up the gunk that silts up waterways and lakes, some of it ancient, then storing, transporting and re-deploying it on degraded land elsewhere. It is a sustainable and renewable solution to a massive problem contributing to climate change, namely the desertification of large tracts of land that can no longer grow crops or forest. Zander products allow sustainable plant production in poor soils and the remediation of contaminants. An intriguing company that CNBC European Business will revisit in depth later this year.

84
Guinness Atkinson
Woodland Hills, US
Privat
Fund Management
Tim Guinness, CEO

Formerly CEO of Guinness Flight Global Asset Management (which merged with Investec in 1998), Tim Guinness founded Guinness Atkinson Funds in 2002. Comparative youth has given the company an unusually proactive view of the world ' its Alternative Energy Fund returned 40.80% to the end of November in 2007. The fund is co-managed by Edward Guinness and Matthew Page. At the end of last year the company announced the launch of a second alternative energy fund aimed at the UK and European markets, citing a predicted 35% p/a growth in solar for the next 18 years A sure but volatile bet?

85
Zenergy Power
London, UK
Public
Clean tech
Dr Jens Muller, CEO

AIM-listed Zenergy works in the field of high temperature superconductors (HTS), which allow the conduction of electricity without any resistance. The technology promises to transform the efficiency of electricity grids, and the company says it has the potential to be 'the fibre optics of the energy sector'. The company recently won a '€7.5m grant from the US Department of Energy to install a high-voltage fault current limiter (FCL) in the Californian electricity grid, to protect it from power surges. Some estimates have suggested that the market for HTS will be '€3.7bn by 2010 and '€28.4bn by 2020.

86

Founded in 2006, BioGasol is a Danish engineering and technology company developing and designing technologies needed for second-generation bioethanol production, which if successful, could make bioethanol cost-competitive with gasoline. BioGasol plans to build Denmark's first second-generation bioethanol demonstration plant at the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. The plant will convert waste, grass and agricultural residues into bioethanol and other energy products, and will produce 10m litres of bioethanol and approximately 10,000 tonnes of solid fuel (in the form of fuel pills). Biogasol is not only a low-carbon pioneer, but one of the most innovative companies in Europe.

87
Nanoco Technologies
Manchester, UK
Private
Clean tech
Michael Edelman, CEO

Nanoco Technologies develops and manufactures fluorescent nano-crystals from semi-conductor and metallic materials known as quantum dots '€” more cost-effective than traditional siliconbased designs '€” which can be used on a number of applications including solar cells and LEDs. Nanoco Technologies was established in December 2001 to commercialise patented methods of synthesising quantum dots developed by the company's founders. The company is a venture capital-backed academic spin-off and has won EU grants to develop its quantum dot technology.

88
Greenfinch
Ludlow, UK
Private
Renewables ' biogas
Michael Chesshire, CEO

Michael Chesshire is a pioneering and respected scientist working on biogas since the 1970s and has played an important part in drawing attention to the wasted energy business potential in the food and agricultural sector. He constructed the UK's first major biogas plant, based in Shropshire and using green waste from 20,000 homes. In November, the plant was contracted to sell renewable energy to retail giant Marks & Spencer (see entry 11) in a remarkable deal which is also a UK first for the retail sector. Biogas (mainly the greenhouse gas methane) in wet waste is captured via anaerobic digestion, then converted into heat and electricity.