Jean-Marie Santander is an energy visionary taking on the
global giants. Sarah Wachter meets the face of France’s Theolia.
The wind is always blowing
off the port of Tangiers in
northern Morocco, where
the Mediterranean meets
the Atlantic and North
Africa meets Europe. Jean-Marie Santander knows this breezy terrain
intimately. As well as heading the company
Theolia, which operates a 50MW wind farm
off its shores, he was born in the small village
of Boulhaut, 265km away.
Over a more sheltered lunch in Paris, the
57 year-old CEO fires off the other spots that
offer the most wind power potential. All are
within Theolia’s sights: the North Sea, where
the wind blows stiffly and consistently for
4,000 hours a year; France, up to 3,000 hours;
Germany, up to 2,200 hours; China, India,
and Pakistan. The Tangiers coastline racks
up 5,000 hours of gusts a year. Santander’s
ambitious plan is to increase Theolia’s
capacity six-fold and sell the resulting
electricity throughout Europe.
Of all the forms of renewable energy,
European analysts say wind is the most “scaleable” – meaning the right system of
incentives and subsidies are in place. Wind
turbine technology is efficient, which, coupled
with EU edicts for countries to produce 21% of
electricity from renewable sources by 2010, is
fanning a regional investment boom. What’s
more, after years of experience, developers
are now savvy about managing costs.
France could be become Euope’s third largest
wind power nation (after Germany and
Spain) within a decade and analysts say that
within a year Theolia will figure among the
country’s top five wind developers.
“Theolia has a huge pipeline,” says Eduard
Sala de Vedruna, senior analyst at the
European Wind Energy Advisory Group,
part of Barcelona-based Emerging Energy
Research. “It is well-positioned with partner
GE to finance growth. It’s quite dynamic and
aggressive – it doesn’t mind taking risks.”
Wearing a suit and white shirt, the human
dynamo that is Santander says he only sleeps
about four hours a night, a habit from his days
studying, on a full scholarship, for an electrical
engineering degree at Paris’s Conservatoire
National des Arts et Métiers. He followed this
by taking two master degrees, in management
and in finance, while working full-time. To
relax, he runs up mountains.
Today Theolia, whose new headquarters
are currently being built in Aix de Provence,
has wind farms stretching from France to five
states in India, with operations along the way
in Spain, Greece, Italy, Brazil, and Germany.
Santander pledges he will sign an agreement
in China before the year is out – a country
that he says must be part of the business plan
for any serious global wind developer.
The company is listed on the Euronext Paris
mid-cap exchange and has a spin-off outfit
for its biomass activities listed in Brussels.
This has provoked barbs from some French
analysts, who moan that multiple listings
makes a company’s activities opaque.
Santander is unyielding on this issue. “If
there is one thing I regret, it is not listing
sooner. I took too long analysing the situation
before tapping the capital markets.”
To make up for his tardiness, Santander
has taken under his wing three aspiring
entrepreneurs whom he has coached through
their stock market listings, including a
Moroccan window manufacturer and an
American event planner. |