Areva's UK director Julian Brown

Britain is the windiest country in Europe, as anyone who’s tried to stand upright in the Outer Hebrides will tell you. But even the fiercest winds that batter moor and mountain top pale into insignificance when compared with the gales off shore, in the North Sea and the Atlantic. This is why UK waters are seen as such a fruitful location for offshore wind farms, where the wind is stronger, often less gusty and blows more reliably than on shore. As yet, however, there are comparatively few.

Reversing this trend is a major concern for Julian Brown, who has become country director for UK wind at Areva, the French energy firm better known as the European supplier of reactors for the latest nuclear power stations. Areva’s wind energy business concentrates on offshore, with its main product, a 5MW geared turbine incorporating a low-speed generator, designed for the offshore environment.

Brown’s background is in the wind industry but for the past seven years he has been an independent contractor, advising companies on how best to enter the industry. ’I’ve spent a lot of time guiding businesses into wind and exploring how to develop a wind industry in the UK, learning from the industries in Germany, Denmark and Spain,’ he said. ’As the UK offshore industry started to develop, I decided I wasn’t happy with just consulting on the business; I wanted to get involved with it again. Areva had been a client of mine for some time and I’m impressed with its product and business approach; it would have been wrong for me not to get involved when the opportunity arose.’