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Later built dams in Africa, Guyana and New Caledonia.1985-91: managed the group’s Far East division, focusing on China and on the development of nuclear, thermal and hydro-electric generation and transmission projects.1991-94: managing director of EDF’s hydro power department.1995-98: deputy head of EDF’s international division.1999: deputy chief financial officer.2000: head of strategy and finance.2002 to date: chief executive of London Electricity Group (since renamed EDF Energy).. And in case the regulator is reading this, de Rivaz becomes deadly serious at the end of the interview, when he states: “You have not heard me say negative things about the regulator.” Not yet, at least.BIOGRAPHYBorn: 4 October 1953.Education: graduated as an engineer from the Ecole Nationale Sup?eure d’Hydraulique de Grenoble in 1976.Career1977 Joined EDF. I am in charge of powering the capital of Europe.”Utility companies, including EDF Energy, objected to the draft proposals outlined two months ago on the grounds that they did not allow them to invest enough in the grid “There is the idea that we can sweat the assets,” he says “But behind these assets are people. There is no one-size-fits-all answer.” What about France, where around 90 per cent of energy comes from EDF’s nuclear reactors? “France is happy with its choice,” he says quickly.Today will not be the most relaxing of Sundays. How can we benefit long term on this basis? How can you motivate people to get out of their beds to go and see to a problem on the line?”You get the impression that de Rivaz has never lacked the motivation to get out of bed to go to work for EDF (not like one of the group’s French employees, who recently wrote a bestseller giving tips on how to shirk at work, entitled Bonjour Paresse, or “Hello Laziness”). The aim is to prevent the kind of blackouts that hit the big cities on the East Coast of the United States last year.It’s an issue close to his heart “My networks connect 20 million inhabitants That’s powering 40 per cent of GDP of the country It’s a huge responsibility London is the capital of Europe. He will spend most of it wading through a 200-odd page report from the regulator, setting out how much EDF Energy – along with the rest of the industry – can invest in the ageing grid network.

On the question of whether the UK should opt for renewable forms of energy such as wind power or build more nuclear power stations, he says: “It’s a no brainer that if you put all our eggs in one solution we are raising the risks. Enron’s company logo was also the letter “E” (in this case, a capital), but positioned at an angle, which wags later dubbed “the crooked E” Safe to say, the “e” in EDF Energy is straight as a die. De Rivaz is reluctant to dwell on the office’s previous tenants. “We are writing a different chapter,” he says.Although it is owned by the French government and the top executive jobs belong to Frenchmen, EDF Energy is a UK company, he insists.

It is one of the official sponsors of the London bid for the 2012 Olympics, even though, across the Channel, its parent company, EDF, is backing a rival bidder – Paris. De Rivaz, who lives with his family in Chelsea, says he considers himself a Londoner, despite his heavy French accent.”My French culture is something which is part of myself,” he says. “I do not think the fact that I am French is the most important. I do not ask myself at all every day: ‘What is it to be French?’ I ask myself: ‘What it is to be a global manager?’”His passion for “our country” sometimes gets him in a twist.