[Apologies - it’s quite late here, and it’s been a day. This version has the actual ad-free file in video and audio form.]
It’s a good week to be in Britain. Yes, I am serious. Not just for the reason that I’m not within shouting distance of the dramatic dissolution of the most powerful state in the history of humanity. But actually because my adopted country is trying - and succeeding more than most - to do the right thing when it comes to climate solutions, innovation, and crafting a future our grandkids won’t curse us for leaving them.
A lot of that optimism came from being at The Carbon Trust’s Energy Transition Acceleration Forum (might want to workshop that). One of the highlights was a public interview by Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi (a Wicked Problems alum in good standing) of the UK’s clean power by 2030 tsar Chris Stark (a future Wicked Problems alum, even if it kills us).
We could have tried to gazzump Akshat’s interview, as the event wasn’t under The Rule and even was livestreamed. But that would be gauche. You should listen to the whole interview on Akshat’s Zero podcast episode, which dropped at lightning speed.
It’s hugely enlightening. The estimate is that the UK will spend £200 billion on grid upgrades, renewable power generation, and energy storage - in order to achieve 95% carbon-free electricity by the end of 2030. With a mandate that also promised lower electricity prices for consumers, that offers some tension between its goals - which Akshat deftly explored.
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And blimey it’s worth parsing every word - like watching Kasparov v Karpov (or Connors v McEnroe) in the 80s. Talented players who have been head-to-head before more than a few times, seasoned to the top of their game around the same time, respect each other, and push each other to perform.
Mind you, not everyone was satisfied with the exchange. Arthur Downing from Octopus Energy and Greg de Temmermen from Quadrature Climate Foundation both made some salient points about the framing of things around price versus cost and the peril of getting caught up in the wrong argument. We put clips from all of that at the end.
Many thanks to The Carbon Trust for letting me sneak in to their event where I was allowed to hang with the Brit Energy Nerd Premiership.
Is Climate Tech Dead?
Freya Pratty returns to the show to talk about some of her reporting in Sifted.eu (if you don’t get her Thursday climate tech newsletter, fix that shit now). We get into the UK’s best-known OG climate tech unicorn, Octopus. Greg Jackson’s energy services conglomerate is best known as a B2C play, which tends to make them better-known than other valuable UK companies like Zenobē that are B2B (or B2G). But their rising star is a B2B Software-as-a-Service offering in “Kraken”, which took a tool built for internal use in mapping and measuring customer relationships in a world where renewables producers get balanced with consumers charging EVs and powering heat pumps who also turn out to be market participants by allowing flexibility (e.g. of when things get charged). We also got into a debate she covered: is “climate tech” dead as a term?
We also give a shoutout to Meatly, which on Thursday became the first company in the world to produce dog food from lab-grown meat, available in your local Pets at Home outlet here in the UK. In Freya’s view, climate tech co’s that hitched their fortunes to charging a “green premium” at market are waning in investor favour. We’ll be very interested to see how consumers respond to Meatly’s offer. But we’re not neutral on this. We’re absolutely rooting for those guys and will be heading out tomorrow to get some for Django and Minnie.
Will the Inflation Reduction Act Be Repealed?
Oxford’s Smith School published an analysis suggesting that up to 32 Republican House members in the US might be considered likely to vote against a repeal of the landmark 2022 IRA climate tech law. To be sure there is no end of Musk/DOGE/Trump fuckery on offer that is trying (sometimes extra-legal) novel ways to kill the energy transition. Including trying to claw back the $400 billion in existing finance set up under the US Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office formerly led by Jigar Shah.
But in the event something like normal process is restored, Congress would need to act to kill off many of the incentives in the IRA law, which was purposefully designed to overwhelmingly favour projects in Republican districts. Professor Sam Fankhauser from Oxford talks us through their analysis.
UK EV Sales UP
One-fifth of cars sold last month in the UK were EVs. And notably, 9 out of 10 of the most popular marques were incumbent companies branching out from old-fashioned ICE vehicles, rather than Tesla. We don’t spend a lot of time munching on anti-Musk/Tesla schadenfreude, though we could have. But with the help of Ben Nelmes from New Automotive and friend-of-the-show (and The Trend) Ben Kilbey of Bold Voodoo, we get into how the UK market might evolve from here. Will those numbers hold? Will BYD and other Chinese manufacturers start taking more share, or will the UK follow the US and EU in trying to block cheaper, high-quality Chinese imported EVs rather than embrace the lower prices to consumers. Because that’s the only way to prioritise climate goals of lowering emissions in the time required.
The Mandate of Heaven (And Hell)
If you watch the clips of Chris Stark in this episode, and have seen him before, he cuts a lean and hungry figure well turned-out. If you were to put in in a cage fight with Angela Rayner, you might not put your money down on him. But here’s a guy who answered his country’s call to try and do something big - make the UK the first G7 country and historically huge emitted to stop burning things as the primary way of keeping the lights on. There is no shortage of vested interests and doubters who want him to fail. And also no shortage of upstarts who think he represents the status quo and some of those very same vested interests. Despite a cool title (Head of Mission Control), to many it seems like a shit sandwich of a job.
You’re unlikely to come out of it with more friends than you went into it with. But it needs to be done. And for that testicular fortitude alone he deserves some good wishes from anyone who wants at least one advanced democracy to resist the siren call of [checks news feeds, gestures at sky] all of this and actually think about what sort of planet we might leave behind. It doesn’t mean giving the guy carte blanche. It does mean crediting him with good faith, discounting the faith-worthiness of people who have lost the presumption, and taking a sec to just recognise the audacity of what the project he’s been put in charge of is trying to achieve.
Outro
We’re glad we found some light in the week here in our adopted homeland. But in our birth country things are…well they’re not great. Which is why we re-upped our choice for outro track to be from our teenage faves Midnight Oil.
If you stay to the Marvel-type second ending in the video you’ll see that not everyone on Team Wicked Problems is a fan of Midnight Oil.
But there are plenty of other tracks that even Mrs WP likes (I think) in this list:
Even with one night in Bangkok I can’t help you if you refuse to Google. You’re in the lowest-cost information environment in the history of…well consciousness, frankly, you lazy fecker. Make an effort FFS.
The prospect of being invited back is, let’s be honest, a pretty persuasive argument for prudent, cooperative, and generally good behaviour.
Despite us being a Man City ‘99 sort of side. But in the end if you can put four past Blackburn in the late season it’s all there for you. IYKYK.
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