The Utility Of The Future Is Here
This week sees the kick-off of Season 13 of Cleaning Up with Greg Jackson, Founder and CEO of Octopus Energy. It's a must-watch. Also, read on for details of our new Leadership Circle...
This week Season 13 of Cleaning Up kicks off with a bang - a conversation with Greg Jackson, Founder and CEO of Octopus Energy.
I started the episode by reading something I wrote 10 years ago:
The electricity system of the future will have cheap renewables at its heart so we have to learn how to manage intermittency. The killer app will be a digitally controlled smart grid, which will provide the ability to shift demand to match supply, in ways either imperceptible to the customer, or otherwise remunerated by the provider.
But where is the EasyJet of Clean Energy? Or the Virgin Atlantic? Where is the Vodafone. Where is the SafariCom? Where are the new services, the new providers, the innovation? The answer is they don’t exist because policy is being written with state and industry incumbents in mind.
Only by releasing a maelstrom of entrepreneurial and competitive activity, will the world be able to build a high performing clean energy system, without driving costs to unacceptable levels.
Just one year later, in 2015, Greg Jackson founded Octopus Energy. And today, it’s looking like it might be the Easyjet, the Virgin Atlantic, the Vodafone and the SafariCom of the utility sector all rolled into one. Not only has it grown incredibly quickly to be the UK’s largest utility by households, but its Kraken software platform is being adopted my more and more utilities in multiple countries to power their own service offerings.
This is Greg’s second appearance on Cleaning Up. His first was in February 2021, before the energy crisis transformed the face of UK energy, in an episode we called Building the Billion-Customer Energy Company. TLDR: he’s still on track.
The episode
I spoke to Greg at Octopus’s head office, just off Oxford Street in London. It was a fabulous, wide-ranging conversation, covering: Greg’s management philosophy; why software architecture matters and big companies are bad at it; war stories from the recent energy crisis and why Octopus thrived while other challengers went bust; and whether an IPO might (or might not) be on the cards.
It also gets into the nitty-gritty of why the UK needs regional pricing to prevent the absurdity of wind plants being paid to shut down while gas generators are being paid to run, to encourage renewable buildout in the right places, and to help consumers benefit from cheap renewables (instead of seeing them creating local eyesores and driving up their bills). And yes, we touch on how Octopus concluded that hydrogen boilers have no possible future, and so went all in on heat pumps.
If ever an episode of Cleaning Up were a must-listen, it’s this one. Catch it right now on YouTube or any good podcast platform.
Leadership Circle
Keen followers will also notice a bit of a facelift for Cleaning Up. Over the summer break we’ve rolled out a whole new redesign for the podcast and YouTube channel.
I am also delighted to announce a new set of supporters. The founding members of our new Cleaning Up Leadership Circle are: Actis, EcoPragma Capital, Eurelectic, the Gilardini Foundation, KKR, National Grid, Octopus Energy and Wärtsilä.
These organisations have for many years shared our commitment to accelerating climate action and our belief in the importance of leadership - which they are each demonstrating in their own sectors - and we very much look forward to working with them. We hope to be adding a few more names in the coming weeks and months and if you or your organisation is interested to learn more, please visit cleaningup.live.
I want to take this opportunity to thank our previous supporters - Capricorn Investment Group, Gilardini Foundation and Liebreich Foundation - for their critical role in getting us to this point.
The Cleaning Up team has also been expanding. Oscar Boyd is now leading on production (and my goodness, you should already be able to see and hear the difference), and Alex McInerny has joined to handle marketing and outreach. And Bryony and I have persuaded our great friend James Cameron (the lawyer, advisor and social entrepreneur, not the Titanic guy) to chair a new Editorial Council, which will help steer the development of Cleaning Up, secure the best guests and remain focused on the most important issues.
New York Climate Week
Michael, Bryony, James and Alex will be attending New York Climate week at the end of this month. Are you hosting an event you think one of us should attend? Or do have a star candidate for an interview? Please drop Alex a line.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the Cleaning Up newsletter, which you can do by visiting CleaningUpPod.Substack.com, so you never miss an episode.
And any time you’re bored, visit CleaningUp.live where you’ll find the archive of over 175 previous episodes, plus audioblogs of my BloombergNEF pieces.