Catching Airtricity chief Eddie O'Connor isn't too easy these days either, as he travels hither and thither to sell the wind energy story.

Fresh from presenting his concept of a pan-European 22bn electricity supergrid to British MPs in the House of Commons ("maybe it's the way you tell them, but they came along very voluntarily"), O'Connor could squeeze in a chat last Monday morning before jetting to Hamburg to address a conference.

This week, he will be back in Germany to meet environment minister Michael Mueller. Next month, and again in September, he is off to the European Parliament. He will nip back to Germany in autumn. "It's a campaign, " he says. "I would hope we might be building the grid by 2011."

The concept of the supergrid is to link offshore wind farms in the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay, the Atlantic, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea by connections to national grids. The first phase is a 10-gigawatt wind farm in the North Sea. The plan is that large-scale interconnectivity would mean Europe would always have access to wind-powered electricity. The wind would always be blowing somewhere, the concept goes.

"When we looked at Europe and this industry of ours, we saw that we would come to a halt if we relied solely on onshore, " O'Connor said. "Only 69,000 megawatts can be built on land. If we are ever to become the majority solution provider, we have to do things a hell of a lot differently."

O'Connor says he is getting "very good feedback" on the plan, particularly from the European Commission. "The commission likes the idea because it is big." He hopes Britain, the Netherlands and Germany will lobby for regulation to enable electricity trading across national boundaries. This means public affairs will be at the centre of O'Connor's activities for months.

"Communicating with government is different to communicating with others, " he says. "Government charges all over the place. Now you see them, now you don't. One minute they are in a terrible kerfuffle about something and then they are off onto something else."

He reckons he got the MPs' attention, though. "Britain has just had its gas supply turned off. It was the master of its own universe for a long time, with lots of coal, but that began to get a bit dodgy. Now Britain is losing its last vestige of energy independence."

O'Connor, a fast talker, tells a good tale on the potential of wind energy. As the world shifts from fossil fuels, he says he hopes Airtricity will provide a "huge part of the answer" to energy needs. There are limitations to options such as nuclear power, he pointed out.

"The world seems to have decided that the private sector is the only way to fund energy projects, " he said (though noting that "socialist" Bertie Ahern hasn't yet been converted). "How can you do nuclear in the private sector when you have streams of liabilities that go on for 1,000 years?"

Against this backdrop, he believes the potential for Airtricity is enormous. "I would envisage our value would be 10bn in five years and that in another five years we would be the biggest Irish company. Undoubtedly, we'll have to go to market at some stage."

NTR, Airtricity's 51% owner, has mooted a flotation of Airtricity in 2006 or 2007. Meanwhile, the company is involved in major capital expenditure.

"Right now we are building 430MW, at 1.5m a MW, " O'Connor said. "That's about 680m being spent currently, and by 31 March next year we will have built nearly all of this."

To fund the investment programme, Airtricity is raising nearly 250m in equity this year, after raising 15.2m in 2002, 28m in 2003, 88m in 2004 and 130m in corporate debt last year. "Of course it's not easy to raise 250m, but we can do it and that's important, " O'Connor said.

In the US, Airtricity is building 215MW with turbines bought last year and O'Connor says it has a million acres under development." He rates US president George Bush as the world's best supporter of wind energy. "George Bush has called for production of 20% of power from wind energy. At the moment it is less than 1%."

Not everyone has welcomed Airtricity with open arms. Billionaire Tom Golisano, former candidate for governor of New York, has been mustering locals in upstate New York to develop a community wind farm scheme rather than sign up with foreigners. With fewer landowners to deal with, the wide open spaces of western states are easier prospects. China, where Airtricity has a Beijing office, is another enticing market.

"China needs one 600MW station every year for the next 50 years, " O'Connor said. "It needs a power system the size of Ireland every eight years." China is "stumbling towards wind energy", he says. "It is engaged in a very interesting experiment: it hasn't set the price and is engaged in a competitive process to get the future price ready for wind."

Airtricity is close to starting to build a power station in the north of China, but O'Connor insists no decision can be made until the Chinese government makes a decision on pricing plans, which it is expected to do in November. "We've signed up a hell of a lot of new property, but unless the government demonstrates that it really wants us to invest then we can't really do it."

Airtricity is also building in Scotland and Ireland, despite the fact that it has had torrid times on its home turf. The company has been engaged in running battles with ESB, has accused the regulator of allowing market failure and pulled out of the residential electricity market this year.

O'Connor says that decision was driven by factors including a moratorium imposed by the regulator in December 2003 on connecting new wind farms to the national grid. Airtricity was forced to source top-up supplies from ESB and complained that its power costs from August 2005 averaged some 43% above projected costs.

"One-third of the time between August and November last year we paid a price for power that was not justified, " O'Connor complained. "There is a complete lack of transparency in the Irish regulatory system."

He is scathing of the regulator's record.

"The regulator never looks back at what it has done. They are civil servants and civil servants never make mistakes." Ireland is a "very hard place to do business", he said. "We got out of it as soon as we could." He said he has "no expectations" of new guidelines on emissions trading "designed to make ESB richer".

Airtricity has already gone offshore in Ireland, building the initial stages of the Arklow Banks offshore wind farm. O'Connor wants government to back offshore wind energy projects, and had a chinwag with Brian Cowen the week before he presented to the House of Commons. "I got the impression that he strongly supports it."

That's a sharp turnaround from the rhetoric last year, when NTR boss Jim Barry said Airtricity might scrap plans to complete the Arklow Bank unless the government lent its weight to wind energy. Airtricity has just seven operational turbines on the bank out of a planned 200.

There's no doubting that Airtricity sells itself big, and O'Connor thinks that other wind power providers have tended to sell themselves short. "They never saw the bigger picture because they came from environmental, non-business backgrounds. If they got one project going in their lifetime, they would be satisfied with that."

That's not O'Connor's style. He did come from a business background, and says cheerfully that, "if anything, it was an over-long apprenticeship". He says he "loved" working in ESB, but he doesn't want to be known anymore as the former chief executive of Bord na Mona, which he ran for nine years before departing less than amicably after in-house battles and airing of dirty laundry.

"Have I not done enough?" he asks. "I would prefer it to be said that wherever he was, he was characterised by picking up one new idea every year . . . whether reducing staffing in Bord na Mona from 4,200 to 1,800, or whether introducing a maintenance management system in ESB that went on to maintain nuclear power stations around the world."

The company he has built since leaving Bord na Mona has a "unique" culture, he says. "I liken us very much to a Japanese company, because we're value-based and getting buy-in from our staff. Respect is a huge part of our values."

O'Connor has strong values, he says. "I suffered enormously for that in a previous life, where having values was the last thing they wanted."

CURRICULUM VITAE

EDDIE O'CONNOR Newsworthiness O'Connor (59) heads Airtricity, which is hoping to build a 22bn electricity supergrid that would supply Europe's energy needs through windpower.

Personal Roscommon O'Connor, married with two children, is arguably best known as being former chief executive of Bord na Mona. He left the company in acrimonious circumstances before founding Future Wind Partnership, which now trades as Airtricity, in 1997. He says he doesn't want to be known anymore as former head of Bord na Mona. "Haven't I done enough?"

He spends 40% of his time travelling, and describes himself as having "strong values". An engineer by training, he also spent time working with ESB.

AIRTRICITY The wind power firm, which has over 45,000 commercial customers, is 51%-owned by NTR. It is actively building wind farms in Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales and the US. Airtricity will invest at least $1.5bn in the US market over "ve years, starting with a $270m investment in wind farms in Texas, New York and Idaho. It is also making its "rst foray into China.