Bizstartup.ie - ENTREPRENEURS

John Travers

Alternative Energy Resources

Alternative Energy Resources (AER) is one of the companies starting to get noticed in the ‘clean’ technologies area, with its plans to make running cars on algae a reality.

Already a multi-billion dollar global industry, clean technologies is an umbrella term to describe a wide range of technologies that is aiming to replace unsustainable fossil fuels with green energies.

AER was founded in 2006 by John Travers, a UCD engineering graduate. Three years later, it had made sufficient headway to scoop the ‘Rising Star’ prize at the 2009 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards.

In his 14 years since leaving Belfield, Travers’ career has been a mix of industry, education and consultancy. Upon graduation, he spent five years at Shell in The Netherlands as an operations manager and subsequently commercialised Shell technologies for the worldwide oil and gas industry.

Then, in 2000, Travers swapped Shell for Harvard. He competed against 10,000 applicants to win one of 800 places on the MBA programme and then took out a student loan to fund it.

Travers says the main lessons he took away from the MBA were the importance of “following your passion” and “the responsibility to contribute to a better society”. It could be argued that he had both principles in mind when he later founded AER.

Life after Harvard

After Harvard, Travers worked for management consultant McKinsey for four years as an energy specialist. While there he talked to some business contacts who were looking to start up a bioenergy business. These were John Heffernan and Simon Dick, who run a bioenergy company called Clearpower, and John Teeling, founder of the Cooley Distillery, the former State-owned ethanol plant in Co Louth.

“We decided the biofuels sector was one that was new and was going to grow quickly and that we should be involved in. So we formed the team,” says Travers, who became the company’s CEO.

Based at enterprise incubation facility NovaUCD, AER employs just five people. Travers is coy about disclosing details of turnover or customers, although it is notable that the Deloitte ‘Rising Star’ award is based on strong revenue growth as well as technology development.

AER's main business

AER has three main lines of business. The first is the supply of biofuels (ethanol) to the Irish market. AER, which claims to be a leading supplier of ethanol in the country, has access to the Cooley Distillery to make its own ethanol from grain.

It also sources ethanol from other countries, notably Brazil, which produces vast quantities of the fuel from sugar cane. Travers says the Irish biofuels market has been slow to develop but is at last beginning to gather steam, helped by government policy which includes making it mandatory to blend biofuels (Since the start of 2010, all transport fuel sold in Ireland has to have a minimum of 4pc biofuel mixed with it).

AER’s revenues also come from two other sources: biofuels R&D and technology licensing; and developing and implementing alternative energy programmes for international energy companies.

The R&D work is done in partnership with researchers at National University of Ireland (NUI), Galway. One of the projects underway focuses on generating energy from algae.

NUI Galway and AER have co-developed an enzyme-based technology that converts feedstock into fuel that can substitute petrol and diesel. Following the recent signing of a licensing agreement with the university, AER plans to either sell or license the technology to algae producers or energy companies around the world.

For Travers, algae is a flag-bearer for the next generation of biofuels that don’t compete with food, although he readily admits it will be a “few more years” before it will be an economically viable fossil-fuel alternative.

AER’s third sphere of activity is working with international energy companies to develop their alternative-energy strategies. The company has conducted projects in Europe, Africa and the Americas over the past three years.

International focus

Having an international focus is clearly important to Travers, who believes it is the destiny of the Irish clean-tech sector to be a major global player, given the natural advantages it enjoys. But given Ireland’s small size, he also feels that it is better suited to being a technology hub than a major producer.

“We don’t have a huge land mass and there are other parts of the world where biomass grows faster than here, namely the tropics. So rather than growing crops for large-scale biofuel-producing facilities, we should focus on our abilities to develop technologies that facilitate sustainable biofuels throughout the world,” he reasons.

There are signs this is beginning to happen. In May 2009, the government announced the creation of a new national research facility – the Bioenergy and Biorefining Competence Centre, of which Travers was founding chairperson. Funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, the centre brings biofuel researchers from all the universities together with industry partners to drive forward research in this area.

Then, in September, a dozen high-potential clean tech firms, AER included, went to Silicon Valley as part of Enterprise Ireland’s first clean-tech trade mission. The objective was to showcase technology to potential investors and network with firms active in the area.

This is an edited version of an article which first appeared in Irish Director magazine.