Octopus Energy agrees $600m deal with former-VP Al Gore backed sustainable investment fund
In 2018, when Octopus Energy was a fraction of the size it is today (but growing fast), our small 12-person leadership team spent a weekend away to plan for the future.
One evening, we sat down together and watched An Inconvenient Sequel: the follow-up to former US Vice President Al Gore’s landmark climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The viewing changed everything for our team – refocusing our efforts on a mission far broader than just bringing affordable and fair power to the UK: to accelerate the world’s transition to a 100% green energy system. Straight after, we announced plans to make every Octopus electricity tariff 100% green, as standard. And since then, we’ve never wavered from our urgent goal.
This is why I’m so completely over the moon to share Octopus Energy’s major partnership with Generation Investment Management, a $36 billion sustainable investment fund, founded and chaired by global climate vanguard Al Gore himself.
Generation’s sole purpose is backing sustainable businesses to drive transformative change – and they’re continuing that work by boosting our global mission with an investment of $600 million over the next few years.
It’s one of the biggest investments in the fund’s history; a massive, massive vote of confidence that I don’t take for granted. We can’t wait to make Mr Gore and the rest of Generation’s team proud.
How did we get here?
Octopus Energy launched just over five years ago, and since then, the business has rapidly expanded – we now power over 3 million British homes, and we’ve taken our mission global: operating in 13 countries on 4 continents, including Germany, USA, Japan and Spain. Our green energy platform, Kraken, not only enables an outstanding customer experience and cleaner, smarter energy for our UK customers, but for the 25 million energy accounts license to us it around the world.
Our multi-million pound centres for Net Zero and the Decarbonisation of Heat drive cutting-edge green research; and through Octopus Energy Generation, we’re Europe’s largest investor in solar energy, managing $4.5bn of renewable energy assets across the continent, and that’s only the beginning.
This comprehensive whole-system approach to decarbonisation has caught the attention of some of the most impressive businesses and investors in energy across the globe, and after several rounds of investment, we’ve become a double, triple, and then now quadruple unicorn – with Generation’s investment meaning a valuation of $4.6bn.
Generation’s investment will drive crucial transformation, further and faster
With the UK energy market in turmoil – companies going out of business, people out of work, and household bills as high as they’ve ever been – the need for investment in renewables and technologies to end our reliance on fossil fuels has never been clearer.
But investment isn’t the achievement in itself: it’s the fuel that will power our efforts to drive a cheaper, greener, fairer energy transition. We don’t have a moment to lose.
Together with Generation, we’ll work to forge deep connections between renewable generation and supply, to guarantee green, flexible, better-balanced smart grids all over the world.
We’ll also be able to pump money into research that leverages storage and encourages smart energy usage to help us make the most of our clean, green electrons, even when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. We’ll also be going further than ever before to bring the benefits of increasingly green electricity to less accessible sectors, like heating and transport.
Our partnership is the result of several months’ work and now years-old conversations. It’ll see Generation take a stake of up to approximately 13% in our business as part of their Long-term Equity strategy.
Octopus Energy has an extraordinarily good fit with Generation’s mission of investing over the long term to support system and climate-positive companies. The world is at the early stages of an unprecedented energy transition which is essential to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement. This can be done in a way that is better for the environment and consumers [and] Generation is pleased to partner with Octopus Energy to help build that future.
Tom Hodges, Partner in Generation
I’m so grateful to every single member of our team who’ve worked tirelessly to get us here, to every customer who’s chosen us and helped make this possible, and of course to Generation for sharing in our vision. We’ll continue to do everything in our power to make it a reality.
Published on 16th November 2021 by:
Hey I'm Constantine, welcome to Octopus Energy!
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