2016 Top 100 Power People 1 TOP 100 POWER PEOPLE 2016 The movers and shakers in wind Featuring interviews with Samuel Leupold from Dong Energy and Ian Mays from RES Group © A Word About Wind, 2016 2016 Top 100 Power People Contents 2 CONTENTS Compiling the Top 100: Advisory panel and ranking process 4 Interview: Dong Energy’s Samuel Leupold discusses offshore 6 Top 100 breakdown: Statistics on this year’s table 11 Profiles: Numbers 100 to 41 13 Interview: A Word About Wind meets RES Group’s Ian Mays 21 Profiles: Numbers 40 to 6 26 Top five profiles:The most influential people in global wind 30 Top 100 list: The full Top 100 Power People for 2016 32 Next year: Key dates for your diary in 2017 34 21 Facing the future: Ian Mays on RES Group’s plans after his retirement © A Word About Wind, 2016 2016 Top 100 Power People Editorial 3 EDITORIAL resident Donald Trump. It is one of The company’s success in driving down the Pthe biggest shocks in US presidential costs of offshore wind over the last year history but, in 2017, Trump is set to be the owes a great debt to Leupold’s background new incumbent in the White House. working for ABB and other big firms. Turn to page 6 now if you want to read the The prospect of operating under a climate- whole interview. change-denying serial wind farm objector will not fill the US wind sector with much And second, we went to meet Ian Mays joy. However, there is still great potential who, until last month, was chief executive by Richard Heap, for US wind, which has been one of the of the RES Group. He retired from the role editor at A Word About Wind sector’s big success stories of 2016. in October after 36 years at the company, but his passion for wind is undimmed. He The main reason for this is the five-year talks us through his views on the future of extension of the production tax credit, the industry; RES’s strategy over the next which has given certainty to developers, few years; and his plans for retirement. “With the Top 100 investors and manufacturers. But the fall- ing cost of wind power compared to other Mays is a true legend of the industry and Power People now sources of electricity has helped too. For we expect him to stay very involved in the in its fifth year, we that, we must ensure we recognise the sector. You can read the interview on page contribution of companies and individuals. 21 to find out exactly how involved. are giving you more That is exactly what we will do in the fifth- That is plenty to get through. As usual, we high-level insight annual Top 100 Power People. want to thank our judges (page 4) for their and market analysis help in coming up with this league table, More than half of people in this table work and all of our subscribers and members for than ever before.” for companies that are involved in North your support over the last year. America as their primary or secondary market, and the overall number of US- Here’s to a prosperous 2017 – whatever a based individuals is up by a third this year. Trump presidency means for the world. n Meanwhile, Europe continues to dominate, which reflects where most of the large manufacturers and investors are based; A Word About Wind while the Chinese slowdown has hit Asia. www.awordaboutwind.com [email protected] You can read more about the composition T: +44 (0)20 7193 6013 of the Top 100 on page 11; and profiles of +1 (917) 310 3307 the full 100 from page 13. Details of the Not a member? Sign up today! ranking process are on page 5. 2nd Floor, If you like the Top 100 Power People 167-169 Great Portland Street, In addition, we are giving you more high- and want to access all of our reports London, W1W 5PF level insight and market analysis that we and newsletters throughout the year, have ever featured in the Top 100. We have check out our membership options at Editor: Richard Heap interviewed two of wind’s big hitters, both www.awordaboutwind.com/subscribe Analyst: Ilaria Valtimora of whom have made big contributions to the wind industry in recent years. Silver Membership Designer: Lee Washington 1 user, 12 months Sales & Membership: First, we interviewed Samuel Leupold, head £395 Joe Gulliver of wind at Dong Energy, during a recent Publisher: Adam Barber trip to London. As the world’s largest Gold Membership offshore wind developer, Dong has 5 users, 12 months Cover image: Dong Energy completed a series of major deals this year, £895 including winning the 700MW Borssele tender; listing 17.4% of the company on Platinum Membership the stock exchange in Copenhagen; and unlimited users, 12 months making moves into emerging markets in £4,500 the US and Asia. © A Word About Wind, 2016 2016 Top 100 Power People Compiling The Top 100 4 THE EXPERTS To help select the Top 100, each year we bring together a senior advisory panel to provide an outside perspective Fintan Whelan Per Hornung Pedersen Tom Kiernan Independent Investor Senior Adviser Chief Executive, American Renewables Funds Wind Energy Association Fintan has been active in the sustainability Per spent 20 years in various manage- Tom joined the American Wind Energy business since 2000, when he joined Irish rial positions at companies in a range of Association as chief executive in 2013. energy firm Airtricity. He spent eight sectors before joining the wind industry AWEA is a trade body that represents years as corporate finance manager and in 2000, as CFO in NEG Micon/Vestas. firms in the US wind industry, and Tom raised more than €1bn of project and He moved to Indian turbine manufacturer has joined our judging panel this year to corporate debt to fund the company’s rapid Suzlon in 2004, where he was responsible give his perspective on the biggest names development and build programme using for international operations. in the North American market. innovative financing structures. He then took over at REpower (now Before AWEA, Tom spent 15 years as In 2008, he co-founded Mainstream Senvion) in 2007 and, in his role as CEO, president of the National Parks Conser- Renewable Power and worked as doubled turnover to €1.3bn. Per left vation Association; and has been deputy corporate finance director. Key successes REpower in 2011 and, since then, has assistant administratror of the US Envi- included working directly with Japan’s been active in a number of supervisory ronmental Protection Agency’s Office of Marubeni Corporation, which led them boards as well as acting as industry adviser Air & Radiation, where he assisted in lead- to make an equity commitment of €100m to a number of private equity funds and ing the implementation of the 1990 Clean for 25% of Mainstream in 2013. He left other companies. Air Act Amendments. He has also been the company last year. president of the Aubudon Society of New Per is senior adviser to MCF Corporate Hampshire; and a senior consultant at Ar- Fintan now works with early- and growth- Finance in Hamburg; senior advisor to thur Andersen & Co. stage renewables firms on business model Atrium Partners in Copenhagen; senior development and execution plans leading advisor to Apricum CleanTechAdvisory Tom is a native of Arlington, Virginia; has to raising capital. These include Emerging in Berlin; independent director at Su- an undergraduate degree from Dart- Markets Power, a greenfield developer of zlon Energy; and last year he joined the mouth College in Environmental Com- wind projects in sub-Saharan Africa; Solar- supervisory board of German developer puter Modeling; and an MBA from Stan- Cool Ireland, which supplies solar panels PNE Wind. ford’s Graduate School of Business. for air conditioning/refrigeration systems; and Digital Array Control Systems, a battery array product developer. © A Word About Wind, 2016 2016 Top 100 Power People Compiling The Top 100 5 THE RANKING PROCESS o make the rankings in the Top 100 as credible as possible, and to reduce the level of editorial subjectivity Tin the process, we went through the following process: 1 January: Started accepting industry nominations. 1 June: Started promotion to attract wide range of nominations. 8 June: Started desk-based research after publishing Legal Power List. 31 August: Closed to nominations. Started work on shortlist. 5 September: Started research on those in last year’s Top 100. 23 September: Sent shortlist to judging panel for feedback and rankings. 24 October: Made final cuts and started ranking. The positions and views in this report are those of our editorial staff, and not necessarily those of the judging panel. Our decisions are final. 31 October: Finalised rankings and started report production. 8 November: Top 100 published. We have made every effort to be comprehensive, and to ensure that profiles are accurate and up-to- date at the time of publication. However, if there are important factual inaccuracies that you feel need correction, please get in touch with Richard at [email protected] The team behind A Word About Wind Richard Heap Editor, A Word About Wind Richard has spent 11 years in business journalism. He joined award-winning commercial property magazine Property Week in 2006 and worked his way up to assistant editor. In 2011, he moved to the Sunday Times Fast Track in 2011 to work on league table programmes including Profit Track 100 and Tech Track 100.