March’s Spotlight of the Month: David Diracles
Verus Energy Ltd. Co-Founders Tim Jervis and David Diracles
Dave, you and your friend Tim recently founded Verus Energy. What is that?
Verus Energy is a development company focused on creating renewable power plants that use waste as the feedstock. In the same way that a property developer might develop a new residential or commercial property, Verus develops a power plant. Between the core team at Verus and our strategic partners, we can design, build, construct, and operate power plants that use waste rather than fossil fuels as the source of energy.
How did the two of you meet?
Fortuitously! We met at a dinner party held by a mutual friend. At the time, Tim was doing work around sustainable buildings for Pell Frischmann and I was working in Ernst & Young’s Renewable Energy team. We had a number of discussions on the massive potential for turning waste into energy in the UK, both from an environmental and an economic perspective and decided that we should give it a go.
What made the two of you decide to delve into renewable energy?
It’s clear that the world’s energy generation infrastructure requires massive changes if the planet is going to be sustained. In the UK, the economic and social climate of the past encouraged low rates of renewable energy generation and high rates of landfill. Recently, the UK Government has instituted a number of changes that are aimed at stimulating renewable energy generation and reducing landfill. This has combined with a cultural shift in awareness of sustainability and green issues to create an environment where change in the traditional energy and waste landscapes can be achieved.
Versus aims to develop clean and efficient energy from waste plants. How does that work?
Waste has been used to make heat or electricity on a commercial scale for quite some time, at least for the past 75 years. However, until recently the primary method of extracting energy from waste was incineration. The drawback of incineration is that it produces undesirable emissions which are difficult and expensive to get rid of. In addition, incineration plants often distribute electricity only, as opposed to electricity and heat, because they are too large to be located near commercial heat customers or district heating schemes. In such cases approximately 2/3 of the energy in the waste is lost as heat emitted to the atmosphere.
Verus is taking a very different approach. Instead of large scale mass burn incinerators, we are developing small scale, community based solutions that use advanced technologies such as anaerobic digestion and pyrolysis. Because these technologies can be deployed on a small scale, the facilities can be located next to a large heat user. For example if a plant were located next to a factory, the waste heat from the electricity generation process could be used by the factory. Typically this would displace the factory’s reliance on natural gas or other fossil fuels used to fire an on-site boiler.
How clean is the energy generated by pyrolysis or anaerobic digestion?
Both of these technologies produce very clean emissions. The US and the UK have very tight limitations on power plant emissions and both of these technologies fall well below the allowed rates. With anaerobic digestion, waste is converted into biogas via the age old process of decomposing organic matter with bacterial digestion. As the bacteria digest the waste, they naturally produce biogas. The pyrolysis process also decomposes waste but instead of a biological process, it relies on the application of high heat. Waste is exposed to high heat in the absence of oxygen. Because oxygen is not present, the material does not burn. The high temperature environment converts the waste into a synthetic gas. The biogas and synthetic gases created in anaerobic digestion and pyrolysis can then be combusted in much the same way that natural gas is combusted to produce electricity and heat.
In addition to the clean exhaust in these processes, they allow large amounts of waste to be diverted from landfill. This reduces the leachate problems and methane, a green house gas 21 times as potent as CO2, associated with landfill.
Does that mean that the UK will someday be able to provide all of their own energy from trash?
The UK sends about 50 million tones of municipal, commercial, and industrial waste to landfill each year. If the UK could change its waste patterns so that 25 million tones was used to create energy, approximately 25 million MWhs of electricity and 50 million MWhs of heat could be produced. This roughly translates into enough electricity to power 2 million homes. While it’s definitely not enough to power the UK, it would make a meaningful and valuable contribution to the countries renewable energy targets and divert a vast amount of waste from being dumped in landfills.
You’re an American. Any plans to bring this technology to the states?
Yes, in fact some of the technology providers that we are working with are based in the US and a number of municipalities and companies are considering or building advanced energy from waste plants. To date, Japan has been the leader in deploying these technologies. As an island nation with little landfill space, the solution is particularly attractive.
You worked previously in the Financial Services industry. How does one go from finance to green power?
While it was a big jump to move from a global professional services firm to a start-up, renewable energy and finance are actually closely linked. Because renewable energy generation involves fixed assets that have operating lives of 20 to 30 years or more, infrastructure financing is a key element in getting a project off of the ground. Clean technology development is fascinating because it couples traditional, long-term infrastructure finance with the rapid growth associated with start-ups and technology ventures.
How green is Verus? Do you implement any green initiatives in your offices?
Absolutely! I cycle to work and we use public transport whenever it’s practical. We also wash and reuse coffee cups, tea pots, and the coffee maker rather than use automatic equipment with disposable cups and containers. We recycle as well. In our current office, we don’t have the ability to choose who provides our power but if we do get the choice we would love to purchase renewably sourced electricity.
For more information about Verus Energy, check out their website.
