Matt Setchell, Head of Renewables at Octopus Investments, writes about securing a inexperienced future for generations to come back.
I at all times attempt to learn a “enterprise ebook” on vacation and this 12 months was no exception. Within the transient moments between constructing sandcastles with my two younger daughters, I discovered time to learn “The Swap” by Chris Goodall. It is nicely value a learn if you’re excited by the way forward for vitality.
To massively oversimplify it, by the point my women are sufficiently old to not be excited by occurring vacation with my spouse and I, the world will generate most of its vitality straight from the solar. This may occur a lot faster than most individuals count on as a result of just about everyone seems to be spectacularly dangerous at predicting the tempo of change in expertise led by price reductions (“I believe there’s a world marketplace for possibly 5 computer systems,” Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943).
Due to this fact, while just a few years in the past nearly all of vitality trade “specialists” doubted solar energy’s position in world vitality era, now you could have individuals like Nick Butler, the previous head of technique at BP, saying “advances together with falling prices promise to make photo voltaic the ability supply of alternative in twenty first century”.
That is a tremendous conclusion and one which fills me with extra optimism about reaching the transition from fossil fuels and giving the world an opportunity to restrict world warming. (Should you nonetheless want convincing in regards to the human causes of world warming, this Bloomberg article based mostly on NASA analysis is value a learn.)
Even when you do not consider earth must make the break from soiled fossil fuels, Goodall’s evaluation exhibits that the world would really lower your expenses if we transfer to photo voltaic slightly than maintain digging up gasoline and burning it. Due to this fact, as a head of Octopus’s renewables funding workforce, The Swap performs to my coronary heart and head. It makes a compelling case that helps what I consider is the best factor to do for the planet (a viable possibility to maneuver to scrub vitality as shortly as doable), while additionally interesting to my rational funding thoughts.
So the place does Octopus Power match into this? We’re captivated with supporting the transition to scrub, renewable vitality. My funding workforce do that by investing in renewable vitality era vegetation – plenty of them. We’re by far the biggest investor in photo voltaic within the UK and complement this with wind and different renewables to generate sufficient inexperienced electrical energy to energy round 640,000 houses.
We consider that proudly owning renewable vitality belongings is nice for our traders in search of steady returns away from the volatility of fairness markets, while additionally offering a greater return than leaving money within the financial institution or with the UK Authorities. Due to this fact, we’re lucky to have the ability to ship what our traders need while additionally making a constructive distinction to our planet.
That is solely the beginning of the journey – which is nice as we by no means sit nonetheless for lengthy at Octopus. The change to photo voltaic is an enormous, as soon as in a century sort, world pattern that has a protracted solution to go, with analysts suggesting one other £33bn will likely be spent on photo voltaic installations globally within the subsequent 4 years, and within the UK alone, one other £12bn by 2030.
Sadly, the solar is not at all times shining (significantly right here within the UK) nor the wind blowing and due to this fact, new applied sciences are required to enrich this era. For this reason we’re exploring how we combine storage (primarily actually massive batteries) into our portfolio and investing in new applied sciences that assist handle the ups and downs in electrical energy being generated by wind and photo voltaic (extra about that in my subsequent weblog).
Octopus Power is exclusive in bringing collectively such a big portfolio of renewable vitality belongings with innovative expertise. This permits us to supply our clients vitality that comes straight from the solar, by way of our photo voltaic panels and into houses and companies. This advantages our traders within the renewable era belongings and our clients who want to purchase “inexperienced” electrical energy.
I am due to this fact decided that we play our half in supporting the “change”. My aim is that in 20 years time, when constructing sandcastles with my daughters is a distant reminiscence, not less than I can say that we have performed a task in leaving a greater legacy for them, and alongside the way in which we have delivered what we stated we might for our clients and traders in our funds.
