Only a month after I shared that Al Gore’s sustainable funding fund, Technology Administration, can be investing in Octopus Power Group, I’ve received extra nice information about the way forward for our enterprise.
We’ve simply signed a brand new long-term strategic partnership with Canadian Pension Plan Investments (CPP Investments), one of many world’s largest pension funds.
The deal means they’ll be offering an preliminary US$300 million fairness funding for our world mission – and that’ll hopefully simply be the beginning of one thing a lot greater.
We’ve spent the final 5 years pioneering know-how that permits individuals to learn from cheaper vitality because it will get greener. This new partnership will assist us drive the identical transformation alongside your complete vitality worth chain. We’ll use it to develop our Kraken platform, supercharging the event of a sensible grid. It’ll additionally assist us increase our renewable vitality technology in a great deal of alternative ways, bringing cheaper, greener energy to hundreds of thousands extra houses throughout the UK and past – beginning with the Octopus Power Fan Membership…
We’ll intention so as to add 30 new wind generators to the Octopus Power Fan Membership, giving extra UK communities cheaper energy when their native turbine is spinning
A Octopus gentle projection on our #1 Fan in Yorkshire
Earlier this 12 months, we launched our two ‘greatest followers’ – a few wind generators in Caerphilly and South Yorkshire – to the Octopus household. Quickly after, we launched the Fan Membership, the world’s first tariff that lets individuals close to a wind turbine profit instantly when the blades are turning.
Meaning cheaper energy for Fan Membership prospects 80% of the time – and when the blades are working additional time, individuals get an excellent greater low cost to reward and encourage utilizing energy when inexperienced electrons are considerable.
It is a real paradigm shift in energy tariffs, and a vital one. For a very long time, the inexperienced vitality revolution didn’t work for the individuals. Clients couldn’t profit from the low price of renewables, as an alternative paying for it by way of levies and better grid prices. Frustrations round that, paired with scaremongering from these with vested pursuits in fossil fuels, led to some communities being much less eager on new wind turbine developments.
The Fan Membership helps make the inexperienced vitality revolution genuinely for the individuals: fostering an extremely sturdy and tangible connection between residents and inexperienced technology. Since we launched the tariff earlier this 12 months, greater than 300 communities have reached out to us, asking whether or not they may get their very personal Fan of their yard.
Native faculty children even got here for a sustainability lesson on the base of our #2 Fan in Caerphilly, and designed a stupendous signal to introduce it to the neighborhood…
At this time’s funding announcement will enable us so as to add 30 new wind generators to the Fan Membership, rising it by greater than 1500%. What began as a small pilot is now going world – we’re taking the Fan Membership around the globe and are elevating £4bn to increase it to many extra international locations so hundreds of thousands of individuals can profit from native inexperienced vitality when it’s considerable.
CPP Investments’s religion in us will allow us to have a bigger influence on the worldwide vitality business
CPP Investments is a worldwide drive in vitality investing, engaged on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Canadians with a fund value C$541 billion. They’ve received an extended historical past of funding companies that develop low-carbon vitality applied sciences to speed up the world’s transition to renewables. Their Sustainable Energies Group has round C$19.5 billion in vitality property globally, from investments in renewables and utilities to energy technology.
Octopus Power’s mission is to drive a sooner cheaper decarbonisation of vitality globally. Our know-how is designed to scale back the price of renewables and to allow individuals to learn from them particularly at instances when inexperienced vitality is considerable.
CPPIB’s funding will allow us to construct extra of this tech, and deploy it throughout extra of the worldwide vitality system. It’ll enable us to succeed in extra shoppers and residents in addition to deploy extra renewable technology, and work with extra vitality firms, prospects and utilities.
Local weather change is a much bigger risk to our planet than the pandemic – and that’s why Octopus are so decided to construct a brand new vitality system at tempo. With the pandemic, society discovered that the 15 12 months vaccine course of could possibly be shrunk to lower than a 12 months. We have to act with the identical creativity and urgency right here – and Octopus might be on the forefront.
That is why I particularly wished to explain right here how big this partnership could possibly be, not only for the way forward for our enterprise, however for all companies driving the renewable vitality revolution. Innovating new methods to speed up funding into renewables is significant to delivering governments’ Internet Zero objectives. I’m actually assured that our partnership may genuinely pave the best way to billions of {dollars} of funding into inexperienced vitality, right here within the UK and around the globe.
I’m completely honoured that CPP Investments have put their religion in us: we’ll work relentlessly to ship implausible outcomes for them, their hundreds of thousands of pension holders, and naturally, each good buyer around the globe who’s been supporting what we do.