If you’d not met the man, and I asked you to picture a ‘Reg Platt’, what would spring to mind? A retired gas fitter? A dogged constable in a Hercule Poirot drama? Almost certainly not a buzzing entrepreneur, with grizzled rock star good looks, who’s driving a revolution in solar power across the rooftops of east London.
So much for nominative determinism.
His company, Emergent Energy, is breaking new ground by enabling a local authority – in this case the London borough of Hackney – to bring clean, green electricity to its council home tenants. In doing so, it’s exploiting recent changes in electricity regulations, which allow locally generated solar power to be supplied directly to nearby households.
