‘I don’t try and fit in’: energy boss Dale Vince on fracking, Farage and going green

Dale Vince is not your run-of-the-mill power company chief. Here, the founder of Ecotricity talks about green energy, warring with Elon Musk - and his vegan football team

It is fair to say that Britain's alternative energy sector is not dripping with glamour, but within the world of turbines and micro-inverters, Dale Vince, the multimillionaire founder of Ecotricity, counts as a superstar.

Vince has the directional haircut and the fancy electric motorcycle. He has the maverick past (as a New Age traveller) and the visions of the future (a vegan Britain entirely self-sufficient in green gas). And he has his fingers in many sustainably sourced pies, from rainforest regeneration to electric vehicles, documentaries like Seaspiracy to tidal lagoons, artificial diamonds to plant-based football. In addition to founding the world's first green energy company - Ecotricity began life as a wind turbine that Vince had built next to his caravan in 1995 - he is the owner of Forest Green Rovers, the world's first vegan, carbon- neutral football club, whom he has taken to the third tier of English football for the first time in its history. A timber stadium is one of the next items on the club's agenda.