Ecotricity unveils expansion plans

Green energy provider Ecotricity has revealed it will next year launch a major expansion drive as it seeks a fourfold increase in its growth rate.

Speaking to BusinessGreen for its inaugural Eco-Entrepreneur podcast, Dale Vince, chief executive of Ecotricity, said that the company was planning to recruit a dedicated sales team for the first time and undertake a major marketing push designed to attract 1,000 customers a month.

"We are putting in some major new [IT] infrastructure… [that] goes live in March next year and will give us the infrastructure to handle millions of customers," said Vince. "Once that's in place and bedded down sometime next summer we're going to build a sales team and recruit. We'll aim for about 50,000 customers in that first year – about 1,000 a week, where we're doing 1,000 a month at the moment."

However, he insisted the new sales team would adhere to the low-key marketing philosophy that has seen Ecotricity establish itself as one of the UK's leading green energy providers.

"We've never sold hard," said Vince. "We'll be making ourselves visible [and] we think that if people can see the alternative… that's very attractive. But we are not fans of doorstop selling… if you want us, we're here."

Vince also expressed concerns about the failure of the UK's major energy companies to provide sufficient renewable energy capacity to meet growing customer demand and accused them of "greenwashing" in their promotion of green energy projects.

"The [green] tariffs and the activities of the big guys we think of as environmental fig leafs," he said. "They are spending vastly more on marketing and conventional power than on building renewable capacity."