Beverley Gower-Jones

Beverley Gower-Jones has two roles:
(1) the Founder and Managing Partner of the Clean Growth Fund, which" invests in companies with products and services focussed on driving clean growth in the low carbon economy"; and
(2) CEO of Carbon Limiting Technologies, which "works with industry and government to commercialise low carbon innovations and accelerate clean growth".

Our conversation covers:
-The need for a UK-based Venture Capital fund focused on early stage companies (pre-revenue or just about generating revenue) who need to build a commercial demonstrator to stimulate the next phase of their success.
-The different investor demands on a software vs hardware businesses.
-The story of founding the fund, and the personal and technical challenges of that.
-Why she sought public as well as private finance. And why they both, in her view, have to be exposed to the risks equally.
-The constant need, when doing innovation, to overcome inertia, where people choose to improve their current approach rather than explore the next. The book I mention is 'The Modern Firm' by John Roberts.
-Addressing the challenge of being a first-timer.
-The constant need for entrepreneurs to be able to describe a plausible route to investors to exit, with larger returns.
-The importance of government industrial strategy, especially the Skidmore Review on the economics of Net Zero.
-Their own playbook of where a company needs to get to as it grows, called the Commercial Readiness Levels (inspired by NASA's Technological Readiness Levels).
-How getting to Net Zero will mean whole-of-society, whole-of-economy shifts. Every part of our lives will be touched. There will be a need for invention and diffusion everywhere.



Links to other episodes:
-James Corah of CCLA, a funder of the Clean Growth Fund,  in Episode 4.
-Kyle Grant of Oxwash on using the Technology Readiness Levels in Episode 11.
-Leigh Huudson on the struggles of deeptech innovation in Episode 6.

This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.

Transcript

David Bent-Hazelwood: 0:07

This is one of several interviews on innovation, business and sustainability for the students studying for the MSc in sustainable resources at UCL. My name is David bent, and I'm an honorary lecturer at the UCL Institute for Sustainable resources, and CO lead for the module on eco innovation and sustainable entrepreneurship. Most of the course gives people that latest academic theory and insight, these 30 minute interviews with practitioners to give some of the grit under the fingernails of innovating for sustainability today. And I'm very glad to say we're joined by Beverly Gower Jones, who is the CEO of carbon limiting technologies, and managing partner of the clean Growth Fund. Morning, Beverly. So what is your organisation and what is your role?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 0:53

Okay, so, carbon limiting Technologies is a consultancy company. I'm the CEO and the Clean Growth Fund. I founded much more recently, that's a venture capital fund invests in early stage companies and I'm the managing partner.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 1:10

So what am What does carbon limiting technologies get up to what do you consult on

Beverley Gower-Jones: 1:15

a number of things, primarily, incubation and acceleration for entrepreneurs and small to medium enterprises who have a product or service in the has the potential to impact sustainability either through greenhouse gas emission reduction, or through resource efficiency, circular economy, type savings is one of the key kind of areas of consulting. We also work with corporates to help them understand what their decarbonisation journeys and roadmaps might look like. And they're low hanging fruit and new technologies that might be able to help them decarbonize their core business processes much more quickly. And we do work with multiple organisations looking at green finance, and how organisations might start to invest in different ways in, in technologies, mostly, or businesses and companies to help the net zero agenda.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 2:18

Cool. And then that's the advisory side on the consulting side. Tell us about the clean clean Growth Fund. What's what's that about?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 2:26

Okay, so the king Growth Fund is 101 million pound venture capital fund that invests initial cheque sizes between half and 3 million pounds into early stage companies that have the ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And that's typically the seed and series a stage, so to speak. And then we kind of follow our money to, you know, to help those companies grow and scale and become get their products and services to market.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 2:59

And just for folks who may not speak in VC speak, what does seed and series A mean?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 3:06

So it mostly those companies will be pre revenue or just revenue generating, that's probably the easiest way to think about it. And if people understand technology readiness levels, then it's TRL. Six onwards, so it's out of the lab, right. And at that place where I set the fund up to be able to invest in first commercial demonstrators, no one wants to do number one, everybody wants to two or number three, and I specifically wanted to help entrepreneurs that needed that three to 5 million pounds, you know, where they need to commercialise that and, you know, show that the product actually does what they say it does. So quite a lot of hardware related type things, we do have a couple of software investments, but we're primarily focused on on hardware, because we're not going to decarbonize the planet with software and apps.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 3:59

And we might come back to that in a second with your stories. And before we do that, I just want to ask, How is sustainability framed across those two organisations?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 4:10

So we looked at that in a fairly wide remit, I would say. So we specifically measure the greenhouse gas emission reduction impact of the various investments, for example, on the fun side that we invest in. And we do that with a bottom up approach. So we look at how much carbon one widget, or one product or service could save one unit. And then we look at, you know, how much what the cost of that would be right? Because if it's going to be 2000 pounds or 10 or something, it's clearly unaffordable. We then look over time at what the revenues in five and 10 years would be and therefore what the potential saving could be if that company meets this revenue message revenue targets are On, we'll also look at the social and governance side of companies to really understand and make sure that they're managing everything, not just that one piece, I would say that it's impossible to be all things to people. So if the kind of 17, or however many sustainability metrics, there are, you, you can't measure all of them and be consistently good at them all, because they're conflicting in a number of, you know, in a number of ways. So I think it's important to, you know, be selective, and choose the ones that, you know, as an organisation, you want to stand behind and do your utmost to make sure that, you know, you're excelling in those areas,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 5:51

absolutely better to be excellent in a few areas, and not damaging in the rest than to be mediocre across the board, and then fail as a business. Exactly. Excuse me. So let's move into some stories. Can you tell us a story, which is a good example of your work, either as the clean growth fund or as carbon emitting technologies,

Beverley Gower-Jones: 6:13

I think that the story around how I set the team growth fund up might be interesting. Back in 2006, I founded the consulting firm, common limiting technologies to work with early stage entrepreneurs. And one of the things I found time and time again, on that journey is that those entrepreneurs really struggled to raise the investment money, they needed to build these, firstly, fund demonstrators that we were just discussing. And so probably about in about 2012. So it took 10 years to do this little task. I started to put together a vision and so on for venture capital fund that would focus on low carbon early early stage technology companies. I, you know, socialise that with the public sector and the private sector very, very heavily. So that meant me going to the committee on climate change, number 10, or party select committees, House of Commons and lords, so right across Whitehall, but also, you know, across all the various different institutional investors who I thought might have an interest in helping to Cornerstone venture capital fund. Back in May 2020, then I actually managed the first close for the fund, which was 20 million pounds from CCLA, who are an organisation that invests church and endowment and charity money, so they have 9 billion of assets under management, and match that with the 20 million pounds of money from bass, UK Government to I've been working with doing the commercialization work with CLT for the last eight or so years, and, and then was able to establish the, the funds, the clean Growth Fund, one of the things that's difficult on that journey is that the, you know, the private money wanted to see the people were team, okay, the public money wanted to see the private money. And the team, the people wanted to see the money was there before they join. So you've got a real kind of circular thing going on there. And I had to try and break that somehow. And so I had to kind of move everything along together a little bit at a time, right iteratively and that wasn't very easy. So, when

David Bent-Hazelwood: 9:00

to put it mildly. And to put it mildly, it wasn't easy,

Beverley Gower-Jones: 9:05

no, no, not at all. But once I got the 40 million now, I was unable to start to build and recruit the team, so important an investment partner and an analyst. And then of course, I had to try and raise the other 61 million. So, I then went out to to, you know, many institutional investors in the in the private sector, who are elusive, but, you know, manage them to bring in another three local authority pension funds, and Aviva, the insurance company and actually, one of the colleges in Cambridge to close the the remaining money in the target was 100 million. So I exceeded it by 1 million. Yes. And then and I can start to invest, you know, from My may 2020, I could start to invest in different technology companies, the slight challenge with that issue, because you don't know what the full size of the fund is going to be, you know, you're not quite sure how much money you've actually capital you've got to deploy. So we did start to make some investments we made to four or five, I think, in that early period. And then from March 2022, when we, you know, we've got the fund, I could finish recruiting the rest of the people, and then really, you know, in earnest kind of focus on the investment, and the pipeline side of things. So we've now made 10 investments.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 10:39

Before we go into the investments, I just want to just unpack a little bit more about that story of the setup. So the first thing is the need, I think there's a phrase now of deep tech, which is the contrast with software. So hardware is harder than software, it's easier to iterate software quickly became pay people and they do the coding. It's not it's not simple, but it's quicker. Hardware takes a long time. And it's got this name deep tech now. And it sounds like what you had identified was there was a gap in the funding available to entrepreneurs who had more of a deep tech kind of business that they couldn't build that first demonstrator. So there weren't investors willing to take the risk on that very first demonstrator. And is that something unique to the UK? Or is that all around the world? Or was there a particular features UK landscape, which made that harder?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 11:33

I think that's all around the world. So what we saw in 2008, so we had a.com. thing in 2007, or so soon as an agent, investors kind of moved from, you know, internet type investments to clean tech thinking it will be a similar thing. And they were surprised to find it wasn't. So in those days, they were investing in solar, and so on. And they lost all the capital that had been invested in things primarily in the US. But there had a huge knock on impact globally, in terms of what venture capital was, you know, how they understood the risk and how they understood, you know, the business models in the sector. And their appetite, then to want to invest in more clean tech businesses. So and that pervaded for a long time. And, you know, one of the things you can do, of course, is to show that you can successfully exit clean tech businesses, but without any money going in, and it's difficult to show any successful exits coming out. And so, you know, again, you have this kind of circular argument going on venture capital, globally, and here in the UK, as well learn how to run and manage software as a service type business models extremely successfully. And so if you're a fund manager, and you've got the choice of doing another software as a service fund, or a clean tech fund, naturally, you're going to do the thing, you know, yeah, and if your business plan on your table, right, you look at that business plan, and it's a SaaS business plan, and you know, you know, what the risks are, you know how to evaluate it, you know who the people are, you're going to look to invest in that business plan over and above this funny, thin tech thing that's full of hardware that's going to take, you know, 10, or whatever years to get to market that you don't know the people, you don't know what the competition is, and you're really rather stuck. So that one goes in kind of file 13.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 13:39

And you never look at it again.

Beverley Gower-Jones: 13:42

And you do the one you know, so and you know, and also VC move very much to the right. So it's all looking for, you know, things that already have four or 5 million pounds of revenue, which is actually more growth. But, you know, the risk appetite was such that the market risk is usually reduced.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 14:03

Yeah, so there's a couple of things to pull out from that. One is this difference between all the incentives to improve and navigate in what you know, are much stronger, in the first instance, than the incentives to explore and do something new. And this improve us is explored dynamic, is really well described in a book called The modern firm, by John Roberts. But once you see it, it's everywhere. Whether that's within a function within a business, doing innovation, more likely to improve what they have, rather than try something new. And what you're describing there is in the investor world, why take the risk on this new category on this new asset type on this new business? When there's a familiar one, which you can, it feels more likely to get the returns that you need.

Beverley Gower-Jones: 14:51

Yeah, and it's highlighted in the business world because in the in the venture in the finance world, because in the finance world, as well as Having your CV write that you might share with another fund manager, if you want to move firms, they have this thing called a deal sheet. And you have to fill in all the deals that you've done and managed and what the exit values were. So how successful you were as a financier in, you know, making money for your particular fund manager. So again, there's another level of risk, it becomes very personal.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 15:28

Yeah. And it's a great detail. It's an indicator of the barriers that we face. And I really does emphasise that for this early funding and these routes to commercialization, being being able to describe, plausibly, the whole route to exit, not just the next step to the next round of annual the next part of the revenue growth, you need to ensure your principal, your investors, but also your staff and your suppliers. And that there is a long term wind that they can that that business can have. Which is really tough when you're a relatively new technology in a relatively new domain, which is subject to particularly regulatory changes, and how can you know what your business model is going to be helping know? Like, you can't have the certainty that is implied by their requirement to be able to describe what your exit is going to be?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 16:27

No, so what you end up doing is looking for similar businesses that have exited in a, you know, reasonably close timeframe. And so what we did is we pulled together point charge master Solon, all the kind of recent exits that had happened and who they had exited to at what stage it exited what those valuations were, because in the venture capital world, you know, the fund is expected to deliver a two and a half times return to investors. So for the 100 million I have, I'm expected to divert 250 bat. Yeah. And I suppose the other thing to add to that is that as a first time fund manager, you're a completely unknown quantity. So you can't rely on the track record from the previous fund, because you don't have one, you do have to be able to produce a personal track record that speaks to that, even if it's not, you know, in the conventional kind of way of the deal sheet. Yeah. So

David Bent-Hazelwood: 17:35

there's something about if capitalism fails, because of run out of capitalists, we've run out of people willing to take risks, but that's a whole other conversation will go down right. Now, the other thing I wanted to ask you about the construction of the fund was you were going to public bodies for funding, why not just go entirely to private? Why Why make your life more complicated? It would seem by going to those public funders as well.

Beverley Gower-Jones: 17:58

Okay, so I think that to crack the net zero challenge, we need both public and private money, right? We need it all the actors to be working together. And so one of the ways to do that was to get a minority so so base, now the government and now a fifth of the funds, and I wanted to kind of minority share there, so that that would then help start them start to be able to see the climate challenges and investment challenges through a different lens, because they'd be sitting around. So we have our Pac and LP advisory group, which is my fund investors every six months get together. And the government's part of that. And so that enables a different conversation, because you're looking at something through a different lens. And I think that's really, really helpful. And I think that's one of the things that government wanted as well, is to be able to, you know, kind of participate in in a in a different different conversation. And you see it now, when the inflation Reduction Act in the US. Yep. And the amount of subsidies and the amount of tax credits and so on that the administration is, you know, delivered to really charge, you know, their commitments and help them deliver their Paris Agreement commitments. And that's very much a kind of a public ed piece, to encourage and incentivize private investors to to actually invest in low carbon solutions.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 19:39

I definitely say I'd say we're seeing a shift towards a green industrial policy, certainly in the US. There's always been a response in the in Europe. And the Skidmore review, I'd say recommends that here in the UK, how much our UK Government can follow through and that we'll see in the coming while it was really interesting to hear you say that they themselves the bays as was a I'm wanting to have that experience. And that would end a different conversation, which would give them a lot of insight into what they can be doing. does, is there a different exposure to risk for the different investors? Is there? Is there one investor? Is the politics investor take the first risk? For instance?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 20:18

That's a great question. And the answer is absolutely not. Right. I was really clear that all and all investors would be the same, they would all be Perry passou basis, an arm's length investor, the same as the others. And they're all treated the same. And it's really important, because if you go out to the market, saying the government's going to take the first risk, you're basically saying this is so risky, there's no chance you're going to make a profit. And so therefore, the government's going to underwrite it, right? So how are you ever going to raise commercial money off the back of that? So so the message was much more and and I absolutely believe this, and I'm fully behind it, is that there is a massive opportunity in low carbon, that zero is the future economy is the future growth of the country. And the government wanted to accelerate private investment into the space, right. So they saw that there was a huge economic opportunity, and they wanted the UK to get on with it sooner. And so they want to stoned this fund. And you know, when when you look around now, you absolutely see that, you know, 10 years ago, you definitely didn't 2020, you didn't, but now you do absolutely see that

David Bent-Hazelwood: 21:42

wonderful lead, you're about to tell us that you've made 10 investments. Before I want us back to unpack that more that story, could you just give us one or two examples of those investments, just so we get a flavour of what it is that you're funding that would otherwise be struggling to get that funding because of the nature of the ecology?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 22:00

Sure, so I'll start with a hardware spent. So we invested in some swap, some swap, it has a solution, which allows decarbonisation of the heavy goods vehicle sector, where the trailer needs to transport frozen chips or cooled medication up and down the country. That that trailer is currently called with a diesel generator that sits between the cab and the trader. And since we've taken that diesel generator off, and they have put a battery on there, they put solar on the roof of those long trailers and control system, which allows the frozen chips to be transported up and down the and one completely carbon free. And actually 40% of the carbon from you know, a refrigerated trailer actually comes from the trailer parts. So the carbon saving is significant. And they have just sold their first 10 units to DFDs. So they're pre revenue company, they've been doing a large number of very successful trials. And and then that stage in the journey whereby we can start to push the button on the production. So they've got two trial units, and we can start to push a button on the production units.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 23:18

And it's worth saying that diesel also, when burned, is provides other kinds of local pollution issues as well, which is great to replace it. And also, I imagine in the medium to long term, enabling refrigeration across the world, especially in Sub Saharan Africa, where it's very difficult to get that done at the moment. And therefore to be able to transport medicines to more remote locations is is a very strong public benefit with as a business that for that I'm not quite sure, but it would be wonderful to see it happen.

Beverley Gower-Jones: 23:49

It certainly would. And as Bill Gates funded it.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 23:54

Well, I'll send him the podcast and see what we can do. I have his email address or anything like that. So that was one what was another one

Beverley Gower-Jones: 24:03

I was going to mention was, so to give you another flavour, it's just software based business in the power sector. And it's a flexibility trading platform. So when you're looking at distribution system operators are the people that you know, provide our electricity where supply and demand can't meet each other. The supply side can ask the demand side to turn things down or off for a few minutes or you know, of the day. And then there is a payment as a transaction that happens for that turning off service. And Piccolo is the company that we invested in. It's our first investment and they provide that independent trading platform so they provide the procurement operations and the settlement to enable that to take place They have a revenue now of one or 2 million a year when we first invested in them. They're in the UK only, they've now expanded. So they have a trial with Annelle, who are the largest distribution system operator in Italy, have a trial in New York, and rolling out into the states? You know, extremely quickly. Why did we do that as a software business is because the power sector is so complicated, that other investors couldn't get comfortable with flexibility. What is it? How do you value it? Is there really such a market as flexibility? Trading? Is that ever going to be a thing? Or is it just something that someone dreamt up one day? How big is it the opportunity, right, and so, you know, we invested in December 2020, all those things were completely unknown. And if you've watched the BBC News, you'll have seen it for the first time, people were paid to turn their electricity off for a certain period of time. And that's the market that's this emerging market start to take shape.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 26:10

And that was in the recent cold snap. And there's a way of doing it also, which doesn't harm the quality of experience of the end customer as well. So yes, your your fridge is constantly cycling, but if it was just awful little bit, it wouldn't actually make that much of a difference. So it's, it's it's, it's from the the end customer point of view is probably pretty much invisible.

Beverley Gower-Jones: 26:32

It is completely invisible. And if you have 1000s and 1000s, of routers together, then, you know, you have a really beneficial effect. So you don't have to turn on those peaker plants. And it means that you can bring forward electrification of vehicles and electrification of heating, which you wouldn't be able to do, you know, if if you didn't have that ability?

David Bent-Hazelwood: 26:54

Yeah. And there's a lot to do with the smoothing of electricity demand across the day. Also, the amount of peak supply you have to provide couldn't go down, and therefore the number of generators you need, reduces as well, it makes it easy to electric to make it all renewable, rather than relying on peaks of gas or whatever else it might be as well. So there's a lot of knock on effects if we can demonstrate that flexibility. Wonderful.

Beverley Gower-Jones: 27:19

So the carbon impact is indirect, but it's very large. Yeah.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 27:24

So then I wanted to move into innovation management, are there key methods or practices that you use to for innovation for sustainability?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 27:34

Yes, we have a proprietary method. So what we've done is we've taken the technology readiness level skills are developed by NASA, and created a commercial readiness level scale, so that at each, you know, technical kind of level, we know where we expect a company to be at that's commercially. So if you're a technology readiness, level three, you know, we were expected you to have discussed and talked with the market, we would have expected you to have two or three business model options, which you hadn't yet done selected. And we would expect you to have, you know, a good understanding, reasonable understanding of what the minimum viable product would need to look like but but not be there yet. Of course, then as you move to technology readiness, level six, then the business model would be, you know, established and selected and minimum viable product will be finalised, and so on. And, and so we, we do that for all kind of eight key areas of the business, which is market, business development and sales strategy, and business plan technology, supply chain product, finance, and people. So, those are the kind of key eight areas and we have a set of criteria by which we expect, you know, each of those companies to have reached. And so then when we evaluate a company, and we have a kind of 300 question questions that we don't ask them all, we can go into different levels of detail a bit like you've been doing with me in this interview for different things, and so, so we can then gauge, you know, there's a gap here, and there's a gap here, but actually, they're further ahead here and here. So then we can tailor the support that we provide to the companies, you know, based on that analysis, and we can do that analysis, that kind of 18 month to whatever intervals, so we can see how a company has changed and progressed over time. One of the things we have done is we've asked various different members of management team to, you know, do a shortened version of that analysis so that they can see where they think they're at. And sometimes they're all on the same page and sometimes They're not. And if they're not, that is a really useful and valuable conversation that we can facilitate, to understand why people have different interpretations and different impressions of kind of where they're at. Because to move a business forward, you do need some kind of common understanding as to what the key areas are that to work and focus on.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 30:23

That sounds like an amazing resource for you. And also almost like an instruction manual for an entrepreneur like, in order to progress, you need to achieve X, Y, and Zed on all of those eight different dimensions into presumably, move them forward broadly stepwise. So you don't want one to rush on it one aspect and rush on ahead, whilst the others are still far far behind. Because they all support each other.

Beverley Gower-Jones: 30:52

Yeah, ideally, they are kind of moving, you know, kind of in sync. Sometimes that's, of course not possible. And generally, you find because of strengths within the people in the management teams and those management teams that are not normally fully resourced, because there are always gaps, that you have gaps. But there are two places where the all those things absolutely have to come together if the company is going to raise the next round of funding on one is it the beginning of the kind of product development phase, where you're going out to raise money to build that, you know, that that kind of first commercial demonstrated that that type of product, and the other one is where you then scaling up and launching and going into market? And if if there are gaps in any of those kinds of stories, if you like, at those points, then that will give investors you know, real question marks and raising money will be, you know, extremely difficult.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 31:50

Wonderful. And it also sounds like you have effectively you've codified your implicit knowledge that you'd gained over years of experience. It's no longer in your head, it's now down in the manual, it's down in those 300 questions. We've been quite painful to do, I imagine. But hard one hard one thing.

Beverley Gower-Jones: 32:12

Yeah, it's core of our intellectual property, really forensic consulting business and the fund. And it was, you know, kind of a thing to put it all on paper. But absolutely worth while doing, and certainly helps you get some of your own thoughts and ideas straight, you know, really helps. Make sure that because I think the thing with incubators and accelerators is the barrier to entry is really low. So it's easy to create an incubator or an accelerator, the challenging comes with the quality of the advice, because really, it's through experience that you can give founders and entrepreneurs that advice. And some of that advice is life changing for their business. And so to be able to have a tool like this, to be able to, you know, take the kind of experience people that we have each with 15 or 20 years experience in their chosen domain. And kind of, you know, lay this out, this is what you have to check if you like, these are the questions, this is the, you know, the in depth interview process that we're going to go through and we expect you to write a report based on this. And if you don't, we came back with loads of questions as to why there are always things that are missed. Quality. Yeah. Right. And you can make sure things aren't missed, make sure that you're giving the company and the company can be assured that they're getting the right advice. Yeah, it's not someone sitting there, you know, kind of giving you things off the top of their head, which can be useful. But I think there is a place for a structured process.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 33:51

Absolutely. Absolutely. So in our last few questions, what's the biggest challenge you face? Or biggest challenges? Sorry, you faced? And how did you overcome them?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 34:03

I think the biggest challenge I faced when setting the funder was the fact that no one will believe I could do it. Right? To not be from the finance industry to be a forgotten to be a kind of a first time fund manager. No one ever believed I'd raise 100 million pounds, especially for something of a sector that no one's the slightest, slightest bit interested in. So how do they ever come in? perseverance and determination and that never taking no for an answer. And, you know, kind of just the bounce back getting back up on you'd had a big knock and going at it again. And I had an advisor from one of the you know who I could cry on the shoulder off and did yeah, audition, who, you know, can at least give some practical advice? And then I Yeah, and you have to have that belief in what you want to do and achieve, and you have to stick to it. Cool.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 35:17

I would add that that belief, it's not built out of air. I mean, in your case, it's grounded in many decades of experience, not in the fund management, but in very adjacent skill set of advice to small and growing enterprises as encapsulated in that commercial readiness level. So I think there's, there's a difference in believing yourself on something you've never done. Almost no right to claim, whereas you are going to were a bit adjacent. And you could use the existing skills and networks. And to some extent, that track record to point at why you were a great person to set up that fund.

Beverley Gower-Jones: 35:55

Yes, I did use a track record. So Bo Hurst, which is independent database tracks the value of the companies that I had supported through the energy entrepreneurs programme, which was a government programme, so government that 72 million pounds into 135, companies that CLT provided to support on for over eight years, and the value of those companies on Bo Hearst is now over 2 billion pounds. And that's unrealized. But that is what I used, as my track record.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 36:26

Wonderful. If there was one thing policymakers could do, which would make your work significantly easier, and you only learn one thing. What would that be?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 36:39

All right, so looking at the inflation Reduction Act, right, and looking at Fit for 55, or the carbon border adjustment mechanism, which is the EU's, you know, kind of response, I think the single biggest thing that policymakers could do would be to provide tax credits to investors who are investing in clean tech, low carbon businesses, and projects. Right, so that that would then enable and encourage corporates and institutional investors and fund managers to all invest in sustainable solutions to help us get to net zero. So that wouldn't just be for me, but that would benefit society as a whole.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 37:21

Wonderful. And finally, what are your organization's priorities on innovation going forward? And why?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 37:30

So we have a number of a number of priorities. The first one, I've started to think about Clean Growth Fund 2. And you know, what that's going to look like to have big that's going to be you know, what stages of investment is that going to cover? What types of sectors market sectors Is it is it going to look at, I think that's key. I've just been launched the clean tech for UK, which is a founder as one of the founders. And that was put together with Breakthrough Energy ventures in the clean tech group. And you might have seen the photo of Bill Gates and Rishi the other week. But that's really looking at the UK response to the inflation Reduction Act. And what we need to do about that, so that's a real key driver and thing that I want to achieve in the next, you know, short while that long. And I'm also on the Net Zero Innovation Board as an independent member. And so driving through policy change across the government departments. So that's chaired by Sir Patrick Vallance, and as the chief science advisors, so kind of driving through that, you know, that those kind of messages to across all, all departments of government is really key to make sure that we're kind of on that, on that net zero journey.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 38:59

Wonderful. And without wanting to say anything commercially sensitive for either clean growth, one or two, are their priority technology types. Are there domains, which you think are worth attention? Because they're sort of ready, and they're important?

Beverley Gower-Jones: 39:17

Yeah, so I think there are a lot so I get that to get asked this question. I think so we absolutely need long term energy storage, right? If we're going to be able to roll out renewables offshore wind and solar in the way we want to, we absolutely need long term energy storage. And so that's a kind of a critical piece that we should have a joined up, you know, plan on is the UK and I think investment could play a role in that in innovation as well as in projects. We absolutely need industrial biotechnology. You know, it's much more efficient in terms of pressure and temperature and therefore cost and efficiency to We use biotech to do a number of the things that traditionally we would have done, you know, kind of the the energy intensive way if you like. So, I see a huge, and UK is excellent in that domain, carbon capture and storage and as has been talked about a lot. But, you know, we do have a number of really innovative carbon capture storage companies, or use use and storage, I should say, here, and I think that's a huge point source is, so capturing carbon dioxide from an industry, you know, from an industrial plant is cheaper and more cost effective than doing the direct capture at the moment, not to sell all that out. But the thing, if you're going to start, let's walk before we run. So I think that's key, sustainable aviation fuel, there's an awful lot of talked about that, I think that's a much longer term play, and to get the cost down, will be quite a thing. I'm a real fan of domestic heating. And I think the Sustainable Energy Association and Prasad just put out a report, looking at the fact that, you know, Heat pumps are good for maybe 50% of our homes, but we need solutions that fit. And so, you know, thermal storage for those types of properties, I think is a must, on the, you know, in the built environment side. So, you know, how Liz and I

David Bent-Hazelwood: 41:42

were, and I think what that speaks to is, firstly, we're talking about a whole new economy, the level of innovation, like every single sector, every single part of every sector is going to need to do innovation, on its energy use. And then the other thing is, that implies lots of distributed technologies, rather than a small number of big plant, like, it's not just build a lot of nuclear power stations. And when done, it's in every home, it's in every community, it's in every garden, it's in every factories in every shop, it's like, there's going to be technology, which is all around the place, and therefore the diffusion of that technology, and the take up, get there behavioural change, so people are willing to use it challenge is also going to be an incredibly important part of what needs to happen next. I want to say a huge thank you, Beverly, you've referenced a couple of things I just want to say, on technology readiness levels. One of our other conversations on this series with Carl Grant, who was unnecessary interest, he talks about technology like readiness levels. We did speak to James Cora, who's a CCLA, who is one of the funders in the Clean Green Growth Fund. And then finally, Lee Hudson, who is at an international airlines group, and she has been working on sustainable aviation fuels for 10 years. You can hear about her challenges with that. It's episode six, where I want to say a huge thanks to you, Beverly, it has been absolutely fascinating to hear about the fund and all of that work and the way in which you've codified your experience into the commercial readiness levels and then turn that into some profound impacts. So thank you very much.

Beverley Gower-Jones: 43:21

Thanks very much.