The UK should become a peddler of (climate) weapons for the battle ahead
At the invitation of Startup Coalition I spent last Sunday at a very rainy and cold Liverpool waterfront for the Labour Party conference fringe event on Climate Tech. A number of newly minted MPs stopped by. A few dozen home-grown Climate Tech companies were in the room, Labour Conference attendees drifted in and out.
In the closing minutes of my third panel of the day, the question was asked about what the potential could be for the UK in global Climate Tech.
A phrase that I had mentioned to Matt Clifford on his podcast several years ago came to mind:
“When you know there is an upcoming war, you want to be the peddler of weapons”
The new UK government, I proposed, could set forth an industrial policy to see homegrown climate solutions become not only local, but more appealingly global leaders. We are but a small island, and the climate crisis is a global problem. That small island, however, is full of brilliant minds, willing investors and ideally a supportive government.
“With the right support we could help build the BAE Systems of Climate Tech”
NB: BAE System, the defense and aerospace company, is the currenta instantiation of decades of M&A to create one of the leading global procurers of missiles, planes (like the Harrier) and submarines. It currently sits at №16 in the FTSE 100 with a market cap of £37bn.
My comment many moons ago to Matt was reffering to China and the leading role they had already taken around solar through government “incetives”, domestic demand and aggresive pricing for exports. The same was then beginning to happen for EVs with an estimated $230bn investment by the Chinese state to stimulate the sector.
By using the power of the purse to crowd-in private capital alongside public capital, by establishing incentives for the deployment of climate solutions across the UK, and by being forward thinking about the new weapons that will be needed, the UK could indeed become a global exporter of climate-positive innovation.
From Direct Air Capture where Mission Zero Technologies from London is already a global leader in terms of low capex, low-cost, highly scaleable systems and the first deployed DAC implementation in the UK (full disclosure, I am an investor). Or Origen which is using limestone (which we use in the making of cement releasing CO2) to reverse the process and capture CO2. Role of government: Incentives for production scale DAC hubs capturing > 1m tonnes of CO2.
To new energy distribution models like XLinks which is building a giant renewable energy facility in southern morocco and running a massive underwater cable thousands of kilometers to import the clean energy into the UK (yes, it works)! Role of government: Permissioning and accelerating integration into the UK grid to prove nation-sized deployability
To lower-embodied carbon, hard to abate materials, like cement and concrete. Concretene mixed graphene (discovered in Manchester) into concrete to increase strength and require less cement (the bad stuff). Role of government: fast-track regulation for new types of additives for structural concrete and requirement for lower-embodied carbon concrete for any government funded projects (like HS2!) similar to LECCLA laws in the US
To building with wood which has been proven again and again to allow for large scale buildings and unlike popular perception is actually safer than reinforced concrete in case of a fire. Role of government: Revisit post-Grenfell regulations which have made building with wood close to impossible
And there are dozens of other vectors of attack where innovations already exist both in the lab and in the field across the UK and where a coordinated industrial policy and support could see this small island become a global leader in the battle ahead.
And to close off on the military-industrial complex analogy, and to link it to the evolution of warfare that we are unfortunately currently seeing in Ukraine, perhaps the outcome will not evolve into a giant missile-sized conglomerate like BAE Systems but instead create hundreds of smaller, nimbler drone-sized companies all flourishing on a global stage.
This new government has a once in a lifetime opportunity, one that could impact the economy and wealth of future British generations but also the wellbeing of global generations.
