Octopus Energy's chief executive Greg Jackson has called for data centres to be built in Scotland to soak up the country's surplus wind power, arguing that Britain's outdated grid infrastructure is forcing bill-payers to foot an increasingly costly bill for electricity the country cannot use.
Speaking to The Independent’s Editor-in-Chief Geordie Greig during our Climate 100 event in New York, Mr Jackson said the UK's electricity market was built for a fossil fuel era that no longer exists.
"Our grids don't fit the pattern of our generation" today, he said, noting that Scotland now generates three times more wind power than it currently uses. Rather than spending huge amounts of money extending the grid south to move that power to demand centres in England, Mr Jackson suggested that the country should instead move the demand north.
"Encourage data centres to move to Scotland and use that cheap electricity," he said.
The comments from Mr Jackson comments came at the Climate 100 event that also saw former foreign secretary David Miliband warn that climate change is increasingly impacting the same places afflicted by conflict and extreme fragility. The Independent’s Climate 100 list itself, meanwhile, features business leaders, scientists, and activists from across the globe who are helping to tackle the climate crisis.
Mr Jackson – whose company Octopus is now the UK’s largest household energy supplier – focused firmly on the UK’s domestic clean energy agenda. He suggested that the current approach from grid operators - building an estimated £150 billion of new grid infrastructure to ship Scottish wind power south - would only push up costs for consumers, when a cheaper fix was available by relocating demand instead.
He was also scathing about the market mechanism that pays wind farms to switch off when supply outstrips local demand, which is a practice known as curtailment. Turning off turbines and paying gas plants to replace the lost power will cost the UK around £3bn over the next 12 months, he said - and that figure could rise to "eight or nine billion a year" by 2029.
"It's insane," Mr Jackson said, likening the arrangement to a factory owner being paid for goods it never made. He also criticised the "market structures that guarantee pricing to every company," under which consumers pay the same rate for electricity regardless of whether it comes from a gas plant or a wind farm - a system, he said, that shields fossil fuel generators from having to compete on their higher input costs.
Mr Jackson argued that in a properly functioning market, companies like his own would be able to buy cheap, curtailed wind power directly and pass the benefits on to consumers. "We will take that power off your hands very cheaply, and we will find a way for consumers to use it," he said, pointing to electric vehicles and heat pumps as ways to absorb surplus supply. "Every home in Scotland would have a heat pump," if regulation allowed for companies to maximise power generation dynamics.
High energy costs – which are driven by the high price of gas rather than solar or wind power that has ‘no input cost’ – have resulted in thousands of UK businesses employing fewer people, according to an Octopus Energy survey. Pursuing a practical path to net zero via renewables, however, will result in “a more vibrant economy with lower price of energy will generate vastly more jobs”.
There might be teething difficulties along the way, but electrification via renewables is not simply a climate imperative but the clear direction of travel for the energy system, and one that brings security benefits fossil fuels cannot match, said Mr Jackson.
The War in Iran led to a single country to "turn off 20 per cent of the world's supply of liquid natural gas" almost overnight. Electrification, by contrast, is "automatically and naturally dramatically more resilient through diversification and through decentralisation."
He cited Norway and Denmark – where electric vehicles now make up the vast majority of new car sales – as evidence of how quickly that shift can happen once incumbent industries stop obstructing it. Those industries will keep lobbying to hold back progress, but progress is now inexorable. “Blockbuster thought they could wait and see how Netflix did… . But exponential change means that by the time you've missed the boat, you can't catch up,” he said.
View The Independent’s 2026 Climate 100 List here
