With more than 25 years experience as a green entrepreneur, Dale launched Ecotricity (http://www.ecotricity.co.uk), the world’s first green energy company back in 1995. Today, it powers around 200,000 homes and businesses across the UK with renewable energy from the wind and sun.
Dale also owns Devil’s Kitchen (http://www.thedevilskitchen.co.uk), which makes vegan school dinners, and his latest business, Skydiamond (http://skydiamond.co.uk) – creating lab grown diamonds from the wind, rain and sun. His work focuses on three key areas – energy, transport and food – collectively responsible for 80% of our own carbon emissions.
He is Chairman and owner of Forest Green Rovers (http://fgr.co.uk) – recognised by FIFA as the “world’s greenest football club” and became a United Nations Climate Champion in 2018. He launched his first book, Manifesto in 2020, and is Executive Producer of the Netflix Original documentary, Seaspiracy.
Time Line
00.00 – 00.44 Wanderful Theme
00.45 – 04.25 Introducing Dale Vince
04.30 – 09.48 Travelling & living off-grid
10.05 – 13.25 The Origins of Ecotricity
13.27 – 15.33 Green Populism
16.45 – 19.10 Forest Green Rovers FC and the Green Agenda
20.00 – 21.40 Business versus Politics
21.50 – 23.00 Thoughts on Leadership – the Ecotricity ethos
23.40 – 25.27 Adopting the best elements of business
25.30 – 27.20 Business, Government and the People
27.25 – 29.12 The Wanderful Exercise – Slow Right Down
29.30 – 33.10 Epilogue
33.11 – 33.55 – Outro
Quotes
“ A term I learned in my twenties, was ‘new radical dis-possessed’ and we had been dispossessed… we are dispossessed by the system of wealth and wealth maintenance. Money stays with the people who have money and the rest of us are kind of cogs in the wheel.” (Dale)
“When were the first company in the world to start selling green electricity and were able to price match brown electricity… it seems obvious to me the way to get real traction for the environment cause for sustainability is for it to become a business opportunity or at least for it to be business like.” (Dale)
“The conventional environmentalist way of communicating is too often about doom and gloom and catastrophe on a global scale, which makes people feel a little powerless and a little bit hopeless. At the same time the presentation of living a green life is made to feel like we’re asking people to give up the way we live.” (Dale)
“Living a green life is just as good, it’s actually better – you will live healthier and longer.” (Dale)
“We have to get away from this altruism first approach, which says its about polar bears, melting ice and people somewhere else in the world and actually come back to the people in this country which we’re asking to change their lives and say ‘this is actually about you’, our economy, it’s about Green sustainable jobs, a stronger economy that supports our people better and in the process doesn’t create pollution of the air, the land and the water and then fighting the climate crisis just becomes a happy by-product.” (Dale)
“On day 1 of being in charge of a football club (Forest Green Rovers) I found we were serving red meat to the players and I got the manager and the chef together and we agreed to stop it on that day. The Sun called it a ‘red meat ban’ which was fantastic, we leaned into that infamy that they created for us and day by day I bumped into things that had to change in terms of environment and ethics. After a couple of weeks, I realised this meant we would be creating a green football club and we would be communicating to a very different audience, the world of football fans, and that appealed to me.” (Dale)
“Football is the most incredible platform to reach people..” (Dale)
“We have a one-page ecotricity manifesto, which we share with everybody that joins us. It talks about how we want people to treat other people – it’s about openness and honesty, admitting mistakes when made, so we can fix them and move on in a non-judgemental way, and treat people how you would like to be treated yourself.” (Dale)
“I think it’s really important to do something before you talk about it. Prove it, do it and then when you talk about it you’ve got a standing to persuade other people to then pick that up themselves. There are two ways to bring change in the world. One is to do it yourself, necessarily limited by what one person can do. The other is to be the catalyst for other people and it comes back to do it first, show other people you can become a catalyst and other people will follow you and then you create more change that way..” (Dale)
“There are three things, which between them, account for about 80% of everybody’s carbon footprint and general unsustainability – energy, transport & food – it’s about how we power our homes, how we travel and what we eat and these are things we all spend money on every day. If we choose to spend that money on a greener option, where we can, that sends a very big signal to businesses who are picking this up and changing what they do, adapting to what people want and then the government picks that up from business. And these three sectors from our society are the main players – business, government and the people – and we have much more power than we realise because ultimately – we’re the consumers of everything that’s produced, we are the people who drive demand and our money gets to choose which way the world goes round.” (Dale)
Links
Dr Dale Vince OBE
Twitter @DaleVince
Insta @zerocarbonista
David Pearl (host)
Twitter @DavidPearlHere
Instagram @davidpearl_here
Website www.davidpearl.net
Andrew Paine (Producer & Audio Engineer)
Twitter @ItPainesMe
The Green Room at COP26 – What (On Earth’s) The Story?
Full film: https://youtu.be/UWoO9UmWscM
Trailer: https://youtu.be/zmQqj5WHSPM
