About

Team size: Three lawyers

Major legal advisers: Dentons, Lewis Silkin, TLT

Elspeth Vincent practises what she preaches: she cares about environmental sustainability, carving out a career as a renewables and environmental lawyer since 2008 before going in-house to ultimately become head of legal at green energy firm Ecotricity.

‘You really couldn’t be in my role with a silo mindset,’ says Vincent. ‘On any given day I might be dealing with a complex employment dispute, a corporate acquisition, and interpreting an agreement to buy gas in the wholesale European market.’

Ecotricity was one of the world’s first renewable energy suppliers when it was founded in 1996 and generates a substantial amount of its green energy supply instead of buying it on the market. The firm builds its own generation assets, like wind turbines and solar parks, supplying electricity and gas to around 200,000 domestic and business customers.

The company’s goal is to find new ways to bring the green agenda to business and commerce in what Vincent describes as a ‘politically harsh’ renewables environment. Cuts to renewable subsidies in the UK in recent years pose a challenge to the company’s asset-building model. ‘The challenge for me in this role is helping the company get these sorts of projects off the ground. We are planning to build a handful of subsidy-free generating assets this year. We are heavily involved in the early stages of structuring finance and we have to work hard to ensure the terms of the facility will work on a long-term basis.’

The legal team supports the company in putting its mouth where its money is, lobbying on climate change issues and partnering with organisations like Extinction Rebellion and anti-fracking campaigners.

The Osborne Clarke-trained Vincent has worked her way up the company, starting out as legal counsel in 2016, then senior legal counsel and finally head of legal in 2019: ‘I’m trying to roll out more sustainability within the legal team too and we’re working to kick the bucket of that paper-heavy legal department.’

Last year, Gloucestershire-based Ecotricity also launched a vegan food company, Devil’s Kitchen, which supplies plant-based food to schools and colleges around the UK, and unusually, the company also has its own professional football club, Forest Green Rovers, equipped with electric car chargers, solar panels and a solar-powered robot lawnmower.