At one point in his life Noel Lock became very familiar with cars, and with two pink Land Rovers in particular. In 1998 he took 18 months out to plan and execute a trip to Australia — by car. He and seven friends travelled 22,000 miles across 22 countries, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for Trinity Hospice in South London.

Lock is now a director (and founder) of the Greenfuel Company, which converts private cars to LPG fuel. While he didn’t have anything to do with the maintenance of the Land Rovers on the trip (he was in charge of finance), it does give you an idea of the determination that has made his company, set up with a fellow Bath MBA graduate, a success.

Entrepreneurship comes naturally to Lock. After a stint in a graduate job with a packaging firm, he and a friend took over a student bar in St Andrews, where he had done his first degree in economics and management science. “We did it because we wanted to set up a chain,” he says. “It was very profitable but we just couldn’t expand it. After running it for five years we decided to take the money.”

It was at this point that he did the Australia trip. He came back with the idea of doing an MBA, and eventually settled on Bath. “I thought Bath was a place where I’d like to spend a year,” he says. “My thoughts were that if I got back on to the job market it would make me more marketable. There would be other people I could network with. Also, one aspect of the course was geared towards small businesses.”

On the course he met Ingram Legge, a co-founder of Greenfuel, and they became friends and colleagues while working together on MBA projects. There Lock also met his wife, who now runs her own jewellery company (“It was a bit fraught setting up our own businesses at the same time,” he admits.) Lock and Legge became interested in LPG conversion and its environmental implications and realised that they could corner part of this market. “We tried to look at the consumer and not the (company) fleet market, because other companies were targeting the fleet market,” he says. But the difficulty is that “LPG conversion is a cottage industry and the quality of the work can be variable. You get mechanics and workshops that are good at it but aren’t specialists in sales and marketing. And unless you make it easy and show that it makes financial sense for consumers, they won’t do it.”

Lock and Legge scoured the country for the 25 best LPG conversion workshops (they also have one now at their offices in Bath) and set up a website to allow people to decide whether a conversion is right for them (www.greenfuel.org.uk). The site tells you whether your model of car can be converted, and how soon the cost of it could be recouped given the number of miles you do a year. Crucially, it also points out your nearest LPG fuelling stations.

The business is thriving and now employs 12 people. Was the learning gained from the MBA responsible for this? “I don’t have all my MBA files on my desk to refer to on a daily basis. But the rationale for decisions I’ve made have been influenced by the MBA. And it was a huge eye-opener in terms of working in groups with people from different backgrounds who look at things in different ways.”

So is he an environmentalist or a businessman? “I’m both,” he says decisively. “The fact that I’m doing something that’s making a significant impact on the environment gets me up in the morning and puts a smile on my face. But business has a role in changing our impact on the environment.” Lock is one of those rare people: an environmental businessman.

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Background

• The message is clear

• Business takes the green route

• How to... be an active eco-worker

• How to be a responsible leader

Background

• Rapid growth in green jobs

• It is cool to be green

• Busy saving the world

• Oxford cultivates green valley effect

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