Azeem Azhar's Exponential View
What does Spain’s blackout mean for the future of clean energy?
07 May 2025
Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, joins Azeem to discuss the Iberian blackout and how we can create a more stable, flexible, and resilient energy grid for the future. This conversation digs into grid technology, market structures, and the real opportunities of the clean energy transition. (00:00) Episode trailer (01:38) What caused the Iberian blackout? (04:55) Managing load in traditional vs renewable grids (11:57) The role of market incentives (18:13) Greg's social experiments within the UK grid (23:49) How the "virtual power plant" is becoming a reality (26:59) The path to completing the renewable energy transition (33:15) Are lobbyists slowing down the transition? (36:26) What does the next 5-10 years look like? (40:42) Why the name "Octopus?" Greg's links:Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/g__jLinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/gregsjacksonOctopus Energy: https://octopus.energy/Azeem's links:Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azharTwitter/X: https://x.com/azeem Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Full Episode
This week has been pretty bleak for energy transitioners. Prices are high in many parts of the world. Tens of millions of homes in Spain and Portugal lost power at the end of April. A lot of people will believe that we're going too fast.
We're halfway across the road. Now, if you've ever seen anyone hesitate crossing a multi-lane highway, that is a very dangerous thing to do. The best thing is to get right across as quick as you can.
But I think this gets us to the really meaty part of our discussion, which is about how you go and fix the grid.
You can run a very high proportion renewable grid incredibly reliably, but you don't do it like you did the old ones. Markets have got to move at the same speed as technology and engineering innovation. At some point you start saying, should we open up a debate that involves the demand side as well as the supply side.
And that's a real-life social science experiment that you went off and conducted, right?
1.6 million households signed up. All we had to do was text them saying, tonight, earn a little bit of money by shifting your demand by an hour. What we got was equivalent of turning off all of the electricity in two major cities.
This message is different to a lot of the people who have talked about the renewable transition over the last 10 or 15 years. A number of the advocates are promoting it in a way that is very ideologically driven, that is probably not very persuasive, frankly.
We signed deals in eight of the biggest house builders in the UK to build homes where there will never be an energy bill. We shouldn't try to convince people this. We should be able to show it because it's available right now, right here.
We're joined by Greg Jackson, the CEO of Octopus Energy. The company is only nine years old, but truly has enjoyed exponential growth. It's the largest electricity provider in the UK, and it serves tens of millions of homes worldwide through its software platform. I'm a happy customer, and I've been stalking Greg for several years, delighted to have him here.
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