Director of the Year Awards

Before 1 Before 2 Michael Portillo in full flow Alan Sugar and Michael Portillo Mervyn Jones, Chairman of Aquamarine Power

Across to the Lancaster Hotel in heavy rain for the Director of the Year Awards, organised by the Institute of Directors. Found myself on a table right at the front with people from the Director magazine team, including Richard Cree. I had been one of the judges for the Director of the Year for Environmental Leadership Award.

Michael Portillo was an excellent chairman of the event, though I don’t always subscribe to his politics. He made a delightful comparison between the social dynamics of a meerkat group he had been involved in filming recently for a documentary (in which the dominant female chases other females out into the desert to die, and eats their pups, her system flooded with testosterone) and his time with Mrs Thatcher. I’m sure he’s told the tale before …

In any event, the short-list for the Environmental Leadership Award was: Mervyn Jones of Aquamarine Power, Duncan Goose of Global Ethics, Ian Jackson of Imerja, Nick Heaton of EnviroVent, Julian Dennis of Wessex Water and Pat McGarry of the Henderson Group. Was pleased when Aquamarine Power got the Award: they had come top of my list.

Aquamarine Power is a wave energy company, who I first came across during a cleantech tour of California. They have head offices in Edinburgh, Scotland and further operations in Orkney and Northern Ireland.  The company is developing its flagship technology, an innovative hydro-electric wave energy converter, known as Oyster.  Aquamarine Power’s goal is to develop commercial Oyster wave farms around the world.

The first demonstration-scale Oyster has been successfully deployed at sea at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland and was officially launched by Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond MP, MSP in November 2009 when it began producing power to the National Grid to power homes in Orkney and beyond. 

Oyster wave energy device