UK government's solar energy plans are out of this world

Energy Security Minister Grant Shapps tells London Tech Week conference that Britain's space-based solar power industry is ready for blast off

Grant Shapps speaks at the London Tech Week conference. Bloomberg

The UK government has announced that universities and companies will get a share of a £4.3 million fund to “drive forward innovation” in the space-based solar power industry.

Space-based solar power systems collect energy from the Sun using panels on satellites and then beams it safely back to Earth using wireless technology.

The fund will be shared by the likes of Cambridge University, which is making efforts to build ultra-lightweight solar panels to capture the Sun's energy.

Meanwhile, Queen Mary University in London will receive money to work on the system through which that energy is transferred to Earth.

The six other companies and universities qualifying for funding were Port Talbot's MicroLink Devices, the University of Bristol, Didcot's Satellite Applications Catapult, Imperial College and EDF Energy.

“Space-based solar energy farms could deliver clean energy day and night far more efficiently and, of course, in all weathers,” Grant Shapps, the UK's Minister of Energy Security and Net Zero, told the London Tech Week conference on Tuesday.

He suggested the technology had the potential to generate 10 gigawatts of power by 2050, which would be enough to power three quarters of Britain's homes.

Mr Shapps claimed future space-based solar energy could have the power to generate 143,000 jobs.

This sector is at the very early stages of development and the UK is not alone in this particular space venture.

Also looking into the possibility of beaming the Sun's energy from space are Japan and the US, where earlier this month scientists at the California Institute of Technology claimed to have achieved a world first by successfully transmitting solar power back down to Earth.

“With the climate clock ticking, innovation has never been so important,” Mr Shapps said.

“Half of the emissions reductions required to reach net zero by 2050 will have to come from technologies which are not yet totally commercially available.

“It's estimated our low-carbon economy could grow more than four times faster than the rest of the economy in the period that we're in – 2015 to 2030.”

'A deep climate crisis'

However, following Mr Shapps at London Tech Week, Paul Polman, former chief executive of Unilever, climate and equalities campaigner, and chairman of the Oxford University's Said Business School, brought the issue of climate change and investing in related technologies back down to Earth.

“The world is in serious imbalance,” he said.

“There's no beating around the bush any more that we are, obviously, in a deep climate crisis.

“Incremental change doesn't do it any more. We really have very limited time left. And I would argue that time is actually less than what you think.

“Frankly, despite all these multilateral agreements, we are still applying a linear solution to an exponential problem, and the cost is enormous.”

However, Mr Polman pointed out that the climate crisis is also the largest economic and business opportunity in the world today. But that does not mean it is going to be easy, he added.

“It really requires all hand on deck,” he said.

“We've seen unfortunately a significant decline in climate technology over the last few years, probably most likely driven by the deteriorating macroeconomic environment. We've seen a decline in the number of funding rounds as well and it's not easy out there.

“But I do believe that this is a very temporary setback.

“We are at a point where the cost of not acting on all the 17 sustainable development goals is actually higher than acting.”

Impact investing

The now widely held belief that economic growth and decarbonisation go hand in hand as well as the fact that for companies, climate change is a business opportunities rather than a balance sheet hindrance, sparked a discussion on impact investing at the London Tech Week conference.

“We see the best financial returns as coming from investing in the energy transition, the biggest transition in the world's biggest market,” said Sarah Sclarsic, a founding Partner at Voyager, a venture capital firm that invests in early stage companies focused on decarbonisation.

“That is a massive opportunity and I think if any firm is not investing in that is really, really going to be missing out.”

Ravi Gurumurthy, chief executive at Nesta, the UK's social innovation agency, used the example of Britain's renewables industry to make the case for a nurturing role for governments in decarbonising start-ups and early stage innovation companies.

“Government decided to totally de-risk it,” he said.

“Unless you do that in each of the sectors, you're not going to get the scale and pace required. But in order to do that, government's go to be clear that the technology and the business models exist and that's there not a big consumer backlash.

“So, to do this systemic shift, the job for government is to put in place regulations, but there's also a need for innovation in business models and consumer shifts to make the regulations go with the grain, rather than against the grain.”

Ms Sclarsic noted that there is now more investment going into clean energy globally than there is going into new oil and gas extraction – something that has not happened previously.

“That's not because everybody saw the light morally,” she said. “It's because renewable technologies are now cheaper and a once disinterested market recognised that the technologies in renewables are good enough that they are the future.”

Biodiversity and beyond

But beyond decarbonisation lies the business of biodiversity. Consumers are increasingly demanding that companies take action to preserve and, where necessary, rebuild biodiversity.

Businesses for their part are beginning to explore ways to mitigate any impact they might be having on biodiversity.

“I think there's this growing momentum behind not only a net-zero transition, but a nature-positive transition as well,” Nitika Agarwal, head of sustainable finance policy at WWF-UK, told London Tech Week.

Ms Agarwal said there was a growing recognition that nature matters to business.

“Quite simply, on a dead planet – one where there is no nature – there would be no business.”

Kat Bruce, founder of NatureMetrics, which enables companies to track their impacts on nature, agreed.

“We basically need to change the relationship between humans and nature within the next decade,” she said, pointing out that for this to be achieved fundamentally, different groups – like ecologists and bankers – would need to talk.

“You show them data that shows how things are changing as a result of what they're doing on the ground and that becomes something that everyone can coalesce around,” she said.

“Then you can build the trust and then you can accelerate the flow of the finance down on to the ground.”

However, Oliver Vince, co-founder of Basecamp Research said that biodiversity is “very, very tricky to understand”.

“Even if we could do everything perfectly, I'm not even sure we yet understand how we look at it to fully comprehend the complexity of what's going on in the natural world,” he told London Tech Week.