Profile: Mark Duncan

MARK Duncan was living the corporate life in New York working sixty plus-hour weeks when the dotcom boom happened.

He was working as a senior audit manager for KPMG on multinational clients such as Siemens, having relocated from the accountancy giant’s Leeds office in 1997.

Dotcom firms were trying to lure Mark and his colleagues away from their jobs with the promise of big pay packets on the West Coast.

Meanwhile, he and his London-based girlfriend Karen, now wife, were jetting back and forth across the Atlantic at weekends to see each other.

Fast forward more than a decade and he’s back in Yorkshire, running family renewable technology business, Duncan Renewables, with his brother Stuart, who started the enterprise as a traditional plumbing and heating company in the 1990s.

The worlds couldn’t seem further apart.

But for Mark, today’s debate around the future of the nascent renewables sector takes him right back to the days when he was sat in an office in New York discussing the emergence of the internet.

“We literally used to debate, what’s going to happen to traditional companies that don’t adopt the web?

“People said, ‘oh they’ll survive, people will always go shopping’, but now you’re seeing that actually how it’s panning out is you’ve got to do both.”

Mark continued: “And I sit here in Yorkshire having the same conversations around renewables.

“We know it’s the future because you just look at the environmental argument and the financial argument with a lot of these technologies, but which sectors are going to embrace it first?

“Because if you choose to focus on the wrong sector it can be a life-threatening decision. So you’ve got to be very aware of which sectors will grow and you have to be there ready with the proposition.”

Mark joined Stuart in the business three years ago after nearly a decade at Halifax Share Dealing in Leeds – which became part of Lloyds Banking Group – and several years in the States, mainly at KPMG in New York, but with a spell in Boston at PwC too.

The day New York’s Twin Towers were struck, Mark was in the highest building in Boston; it was his first day at PwC.

“People came running into our training class and said ‘you do not have to be here, if you’ve heard anything about what’s happening in New York, you might know that they reckon there’s five planes circling Boston and they’re going to hit all the buildings in Boston’, so literally you just ran for it.

“I remember I lived out near the airport and everyone just ran out of the city, getting as far away from the city as possible.”

Mark stayed with PwC for a year, gaining experience in mergers and acquisitions, before returning to the UK.

He had become more and more involved in Stuart’s business, back in Yorkshire, acting as “a sounding board” and helping out with the financial side.

Alongside his role at Halifax Share Dealing, Mark maintained a keen interest in the family plumbing and heating business.

“It plateaued. We weren’t sure where it was heading,” said Mark.

But in 2010, the Government introduced feed-in-tariffs – payments for renewable electricity generation.

The business, which was turning over just over £1m, then moved in a new direction and started offering solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. The next year it recorded a turnover of £6m.

“2011 was the initial peak in the solar PV and we were able to expand the business rapidly,” said Mark.

When the Government brought in the renewable heat incentive (RHI), a subsidy relating to the production of renewable heat via methods such as biomass, Mark became convinced of the path the firm should take.

“We identified we had all the building blocks to be very successful.

“The smartest thing we did at this stage is we backed the right technologies, we recognised that biomass would be the dominant technology adopted under the RHI rules.”

Duncan Renewables, a division of Duncan Plumbing Heating and Electrics, now serves domestic, commercial and community clients throughout Yorkshire, offering technologies including solar PV and solar thermal panels, biomass boilers and heat pumps.

The most common biomass fuels are sourced from wood, including pellets, chips and logs.

Duncan Renewables, based near Wetherby, employs 40 people and expects to turn over between £8m and £10m this year.

The firm’s work includes installations at the Great Yorkshire Showground, Wetherby, Thirsk and Redcar Racecourses, and Martin House Children’s Hospice, as well as other large-scale agricultural and commercial installations.

But it has not all been plain sailing. The Government has cut the feed-in-tariff significantly since it introduced the scheme.

“Initially, we suffered in that the volume of work came down and we had to streamline our PV business, but because the PV business was part of a broader business we were able to ride that out,” said Mark.

“But very quickly the cost of solar panels came down so rapidly that... where we’ve ended up right now is that we’re offering the best ever returns to our customers, even better, in some instances, than the absolute peak during the solar boom when everyone was clambering to get PV.”

The Government has adjusted the scheme to set it on a path for long-term growth, according to Mark.

Chinese manufacturers now dominate the solar panel market, which has pushed down the cost of installation.

“People think that’s a negative thing but at the end of the day it’s about delivering a value for money product,” said Mark.

“Now people have become more comfortable sourcing technology made in China. When the market first emerged people only wanted to use European brands.”

Mark predicts that micro-generation will be the future of the energy sector, with localised energy suppliers emerging.

“Now people are talking about the National Grid just being a back-up system and that micro-generation is the future,” he said.

Energy and climate change minister, Greg Barker, has talked about moving away from ‘the Big Six’ to a ‘big 60,000’ group of energy suppliers. “What he’s trying to give you there is the idea there will be regional, very localised energy suppliers,” added Mark.

And the Duncan family is leading by example. Mark explained how his parents supply heat to their neighbours via a biomass boiler as part of a district heating system.

“They invoice them for the heat that they use, they meter it, that’s exactly what the big energy companies are doing, we’re just doing it on a micro-level, but that is the future,” he said.

“So you will get many more co-operatives. What has to develop is all the legals around it, that’s one of the challenges, when you’re doing these groundbreaking schemes, it’s like okay, there’s a will there to develop this concept, but we all need it all tied together, so we need an agreement, and that can be very challenging.”

Like the internet, renewable technologies will just become the norm, said Mark.

The dotcom boom brought uncertainty and risk. But, he said, ultimately no-one could ever have predicted exactly how quickly and the extent to which the internet would come to dominate.

“I can’t help but think”, he added”, “that in terms of energy, renewables and energy efficiency will do the same.”

Mark Duncan Factfile

Name: Mark Duncan.

Title: Co-owner of Duncan Renewables.

Date of birth: 22/05/1971.

Education: Newcastle University, economics and geography degree.

First job: Kitchen hand.

Last book read: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Favourite film: The Shawshank Redemption.

Favourite song: Here Comes the Sun, The Beatles.

Car driven: Land Rover Defender.

Favourite holiday destination: Aspen, Colarado.

Most proud of: Having the guts to give up my safe corporate job.