So far, we’ve focused on rural challenges and Cornwall, but let's briefly turn back to London and unpack the ongoing climate-business revolution as we reflect on Innovation Zero 2024, one of the UK’s largest sustainability conferences.
Enter, Innovation Zero:
From 30 April to 1 May 2024, almost 10,000 experts engaged in the fight against climate change attended Innovation Zero, the UK government-backed two-day international congress at London’s Kensington Olympia.
This was one of the largest sustainability and net zero expos ever in the UK, sporting hundreds of speakers, experts in climate change mitigation, clean technology innovation and implementing low-carbon solutions, across 175+ sessions.
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As Innovation Zero podcast partners, this was our chance to better understand how municipal, regional and central government initiatives are tying together with finance to support the next generation of climate-tech companies.
We spoke with dozens of entrepreneurs and their teams, five of whom we’ll profile on this Substack with audio clips in the next week or so – but not as a full podcast as we felt the audio was a little too messy.
We also heard from politicians – both those in government and those aspiring to be so come the next election. Take a listen to what they have to say in this snapshot from the showfloor – (apologies in advance for some audio quality issues!) and read on for my four main takeaways from the experience…
I’ve been to more than my fair share of climate conferences, my first big one being COP21 in 2015 and boy, how things have changed:
Back then, there was a campaign to create a global 1.5 degree warming target, and we didn’t have normalised carbon standards
Almost no climate startups, you could find biochar and solar, some energy efficiency, but seldom did you see you what we have today
No bankers, no finance, limited money. Just the way it was back in the day, lots of academics and NGOs though!
The US and China were the climate villains, and it would be COP21 where they agree to a landmark solar deal…
A fairly busy day at COP21 in the Green Zone, anyone can enter this area after signing up
After attending COP28 in Dubai, well, I had fears about the state of climate conferences. Would they be trade shows pushing luxury cars? Or would they be places for people working on climate to gather?
COP28 branded electric BWM, a more tasteful luxury offering in the Green Zone
The Blue Zone entrance at COP28 (this is for pre-registered delegates only)
More people isn’t always bad, but COP is a climate negotiation ultimately, so what could we expect to find at a traditional climate conference?
The climate-tech scene is alive in London! We were pleasantly surprised at Innovation Zero to instead see a balanced but thriving climate conference. We found investors, entrepreneurs, hustlers, builders, networkers, and everyone in-between. While Innovation Zero lacked the headline announcements I’ve heard at similar events, the atmosphere was vibrant and vital. This felt like networking for those with a net-zero positive outlook, and crucially involved investors at least willing to consider putting money behind high-potential solutions.
Take 2: The UK net-zero debate is fracturing along cost vs opportunity lines
We heard two distinct arguments at conference: one from serving government ministers arguing the net-zero transition is too expensive amid persistently high inflation and a cost of living crisis, and the other from Labour politicians suggesting net-zero will kickstart the economy and propel Britain into the future.
Let’s start with the first:
“But let me challenge some of the great untruths that I get told in this role. Firstly, that everything we need for Net Zero has already been invented - government just needs to implement it.
To this, I say no. When you look at the pace of technological change that we’ve seen in the last 10 years alone, it’s astounding how many times a week that I hear that. But we must leave space for new innovations, the likes of which we haven’t even begun to imagine”
- Claire Coutinho - Energy Security Secretary (full speech on the government website)
This framing runs counter to what Netting Zeros listeners have heard directly from decarbonisation experts. Which hitherto unheralded technologies are going to bail us out of this situation? Home fusion?! We’ve heard for decades that “we must wait for the next technology” and despite some wind and solar being the cheapest forms of electricity ever made, apparently we still need to wait some more.
The timing for the UK to be rowing back on its once world-leading commitments is dire: a recent Guardian survey found that climate scientists who track emission reduction pledges and model them fear we will blow past 1.5 degrees of average warming. Failing to stop warming will only happen without binding plans and policies to drop emissions. Some suggest waiting for mystery tech featuring dystopian sci-fi franchises like Fallout to save us (although in Fallout in the pre-war world they did have home fusion).
This is why so many advocates say ‘we have all the technology we need, we just need political will’. Carbon Brief has a good explainer here on how emissions are not “locked in” and we can reverse the warming trend provided action occurs now – think of climate change as a closing door we can try to hold open to buy us more time.
On the podcast: Netting Zeros researcher Rosie Grundy asks Alan Whitehead MP about support for SMEs on climate
Now, consider these words from Ed Miliband, Shadow Secretary of State of Climate Change and Net Zero:
“I think we should have two numbers etched in our minds: 6 million and 94 billion. 6 million is the number of people in fuel poverty as a result of the cost of living crisis that we have seen over the last two years. And 94 billion pounds, the amount of money that government had to shell out to try and prevent this crisis from its worst effects” - Ed Miliband MP
Miliband is quoting a recent report on fuel poverty in the UK that is worth reading as it highlights some of the transition challenges faced by colder yet higher income countries that were supposed to have easier times transitioning with climate change. That £94 billion number came from the government paying for half of people’s energy bills from October 2022 to June 2023.
This massive outlay certainly supported people through the economic shocks triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the consequent spike in conventional energy costs. But the UK has poor insulation for the region and inefficient heating, it also has a chronic gas dependency, and paying all that money was in a roundabout way a huge investment in fossil fuels and existing infrastructure.
Put simply, spending £94 billion reactively to mitigate a reliance on natural gas is not a climate action nor is it an argument for policy stasis.
Take 3: All we need is ‘Certainty, Clarity, Consistency, Continuity’
Businesses at Innovation Zero were crying out for “the four Cs” identified by Chris Skidmore in his review and what he calls ‘Mission Zero’
“The certainty, the clarity, the consistency and the continuity – the four C’s that we identified in the review – that should make a mission”
-Chris Skidmore (in a great interview by Carbon Brief, link)
The full interview is worth reading as it had an impact on the finance sector. Each talk we attended with a finance or investor focus confirmed Skidmore’s narrative. During one panel on “Bridging the Gap: Derisking and Financing Innovation”, the moderator noted each panellist mentioned at least one of the four Cs once during their remarks.
This is common sense and offers a foundation for the next government: If you want to build a nation-wide movement, you have to be certain, clear, consistent, and continue with what you are doing. Stopping and starting, changing direction, moving the targets – or setting carbon budget goals with no concrete plans to achieve them – only results in roadblocks and delays that we simply cannot afford.
Take 4: Enabling private finance to brave the Valley of Death is a key challenge
Quote me on that:
“[On SMEs] when it comes to actually scaling up and bringing them to market, we are not so good. And that often means that we lose products overseas, other people take advantage of the work that we've done, or it means that products just don't get off the ground at all. So we really need support for SME's in what we call the Valley of Death, where they just can't quite get enough investment to get products to market and up to scale. - Shadow Kerry Gillian McCarthy MP
On the podcast: Netting Zeros editor David Green asks Kerry McCarthy MP about Labour’s net zero plans and the view from her Bristol East constituency
It’s encouraging to hear McCarthy recognises the UK’s issues with financing start-ups to scale, a lament echoed by entrepreneurs on the showfloor (coming soon). Innovate UK, the national innovation agency, occupies a pivotal role in the incubation space but that vital bridge finance (or “patient capital” as Tom White, CEO of carbon capture tech firm C-Capture, refers to it) necessary to take great ideas from lab to implementation needs some nurturing in the UK.
McCarthy did highlight the success of Bristol City Leap in securing over £1 billion of investment into Bristol’s energy system via a 20-year joint venture partnership between Bristol City Council, cleantech integrator and renewable energy player Ameresco and low-carbon heat company Vattenfall Heat UK. We will do our best to get to Bristol to report on how this partnership came about and what the 20-year timeframe means for cleaner energy in Bristol in the weeks to come.
That’s it from us on policy at Innovation Zero, stay tuned for next week where we start posting the startup chats (exclusive!) and an episode on installing heat pumps in Cornwall.
Editor David Green, Rosie Grundy, and Nate Maynard take a selfie above the melee
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