Ethical oilman

As the biofuel debate becomes a snakepit, Mike Lawton sets out to make good business from jatropha oil – in every sense. Mary Zacaroli checks his profile.

Oxfordshire-based Regenatec is a relatively new business. Set up in 2004, it sells a conversion system that allows diesel engines to run on pure plant oil. Last year it won the ‘Engineering the Future’ accolade from IMechE at the National Business Awards.

But the world is losing its innocence about biofuels. Hasn’t the whole subject become mired in controversy [see What has sustainability got to do with… biofuels?], centring on rainforest destruction and the diversion of land from vital food production? Well, Regenatec’s founder, 40-year-old engineer Mike Lawton, believes his converters can still be part of the solution – running on a low-carbon pure plant oil fuel that’s both ethically sound and commercially viable.

The fuel is jatropha and pongamia oil, grown in a semi-arid tropical part of Maharashtra, western India, by CleanStar India. And for Lawton, the way it’s grown is as important as the source.

“The biofuels issue is complex. Sceptics cherry-pick the data to underpin their arguments”

“Humankind likes simplistic black and white answers, but the biofuels issue is very complex,” he says. “Sceptics cherry-pick data to underpin their arguments that all biofuels are bad. Our demonstration plantation is a model for how growing biofuels can enrich communities and the landscape.”

Lawton has now launched a joint venture with CleanStar’s founders, Sagun Saxena and Shashank Verma. Combining their existing company names, they’re calling it Regenastar. It’s “the world’s first ethical vertically integrated biofuel company”, says Lawton, adding: “We met recently with the Fairtrade Foundation in London. We will be working closely to ensure our ultimate goal of ‘Fairtrade Fuel’ recognition.”

The first point he stresses is that the oil-rich jatropha and pongamia trees can grow on barren scrubland unsuited to food crops. Planting them does not involve deforestation, nor does it create a dense monoculture at the expense of rough grazing. “The media debate misses the fact that there are many ways to grow biofuel,” says Lawton. “CleanStar selects the most sustainable approach for the type of land available, working out the absolute minimum set of inputs required to get a sensible yield.” As the trees grow (sequestering carbon in the process), their leaves provide shade and ultimately organic matter for the ground, conserving moisture and gradually regenerating topsoil.

Gaining community support is very important. Planting and maintaining trees creates employment for the local population, and CleanStar’s biofuel programme has received resolutions of support from 55 local village councils so far, says Lawton. “They have been to see our demonstration site and say this is what they want to replicate in their villages, because it makes sense ethically and economically.”

Regenatec wasn’t his first entrepreneurial venture; in the 1980s he spent twelve months unsuccessfully marketing his first invention, a beer keg-changer – but managed to emerge debt-free and more savvy about the business world. Later on, facing redundancy in 2004, he and a group of like-minded engineers formed an innovation house called Futuretec, resolving that they’d not devote themselves to projects that would harm the planet.

The start-up of Regenatec, a business spun off from Futuretec, was funded by redundancy money and investment from a business angel. Its main activity has been to develop and market the twin-tank biofuel conversion system Lawton originally invented as an impoverished student (he used it to run his own car on free waste chip fat for nearly five years), which allows diesel-engined trains, boats, road vehicles or generators to run on pure plant oils. “I was just fortunate enough that the idea had good green credentials and I could see there was a viable commercial product,” he says.

Turnover last year was £400,000 as Regenatec came out of its R&D phase, with contracts notably from coach and lorry manufacturers Optare and Dennis Eagle, who will fit the technology into new and existing vehicles. There has been interest from venture capitalists, and from politicians too. Tony Blair visited the company in 2006, while Gordon Brown has invited Lawton to No. 10. “Venture capitalists see a chance to make money, while we interest politicians and award-givers because we demonstrate a pragmatic approach to reducing carbon from existing diesel technology,” Lawton says.

As for the jatropha joint venture, he’s both pragmatic and ambitious about it. CleanStar is looking at other sites around the world where its production model can be reproduced, he says. “Essentially we can grow diesel-grade quality oil for $50 a barrel – that’s a compelling business case.” Yet this is the same man who, in a recent debate about biofuels, was accused of being a dreamer – and wholeheartedly agreed. “The world needs dreamers,” he said. “I’m proud to be one.” Lawton won that debate. - Mary Zacaroli

19 March 2008

Mary Zacaroli