Wales looks toward green future

When a new production line is ready later this year, G24 plans to raise production to several million units per year. The company, which is seeking around $40 million to $50 million in further funding and eventually hopes to list on a stock exchange, also aims to branch out into backpacks with built-in chargers for both emerging and European markets.

A few kilometers to the west, Connaught Engineering Ltd. has invested US$24 million in a factory to produce a CO2 emissions-cutting engine component that can be retrofitted to commercial vans. The system saves both fuel and an estimated 25 percent of carbon emissions on diesel home delivery vans.

Tesco PLC, Britain's largest grocery chain, is one of several companies testing the hybrid retrofit system. If successful, Connaught expects orders of around 4,000 units a year.

Connaught CEO Tony Martindale said the company was initially hesitant when approached by the Welsh Assembly, looking instead at sites in Germany, before being won over by a US$6.7 million grant.

"The universities here will also be a feed for research and development in our future business," he said, including the development of the world's first gasoline/electric engine high-performance sports coupe.

Similarly, G24 considered London and Germany before deciding to invest US$75 million of its own funds to build its factory in Wales.

"Quite frankly, the difference in the rhetoric between the political circles in talking about renewables and actually how difficult it was to go into business was quite stunning," said chairman Robert Hertzberg, a former California lawmaker, of his experiences in the United States.

"Here's a place that was the backbone of the industrial revolution in the coal mines and now all of a sudden, they can be the backbone of the next generation in terms of green energy."