The UK now has a state-owned clean-energy champion. Can it succeed?
Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.7 • 219 Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When the UK handed the Labour party a parliamentary majority last July, it promised to build a new state owned energy company called Great British Energy. It's almost exactly one year since its creation, and GB Energy now has a budget of £5.8 billion to get the organization off the ground. It sounds like a lot of money, but is it? And what exactly will the organization do with all of it? On Zero this week, Akshat Rathi spoke to Dan McGrail, interim CEO of GB Energy, to find out the answers.
Explore further:
- Watch the video of this conversation
- Great British Energy website
- UK’s New State Energy Company Will Spend £1 Billion on Grants - Bloomberg
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:04.5 | I'm Steve Strogetz. |
| 0:06.1 | And I'm Janelle Levin. |
| 0:07.3 | And this season on The Joy of Why from Quantum Magazine, we're sitting down together. |
| 0:11.8 | We have our own research areas, but we don't always get the chance to speak deeply about science and math beyond our fields. |
| 0:17.6 | We'll ask researchers about moments big and small that inspire them and lead |
| 0:21.9 | to incredible discoveries. Lots of science news outlets provide coverage on applied work like |
| 0:26.7 | health and tech, but we cover big questions in the study of life, reality, numbers, and |
| 0:31.8 | information. We hope these stories spark your curiosity too. Join us for the joy of why from |
| 0:37.3 | Quantum Magazine. |
| 0:39.3 | Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. |
| 0:41.3 | This week, the UK's publicly owned energy champion. The Labour government was elected last year to much hope from climate advocates. |
| 1:01.0 | One reason was a big promise to develop a new state-owned energy company. |
| 1:07.0 | It was imaginatively named Great British Energy, or G.B. Energy for short. |
| 1:12.6 | It's almost exactly one year since its creation. |
| 1:15.6 | And it's only in June that the government announced G.B. Energy would receive a budget of 5.8 billion pounds |
| 1:21.6 | to spend over the next four years and get the organization off the ground. |
| 1:25.6 | Sounds like a lot of money, but is it? |
| 1:29.4 | And what exactly will G.B. Energy do with that money? |
| 1:32.7 | How can it have maximum impact in cutting UK's emissions and energy costs? |
| 1:37.9 | And which technologies, does the company believe, will help UK achieve its targets? |
| 1:43.5 | I put these questions to Dan McGrail, interim CEO of GBI Energy, in an interview that was |
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