How energy’s smoothest lobbyist wooed Whitehall

LONDON — When Octopus Energy boss Greg Jackson appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2023 — one of the U.K.’s longest-running, most-loved BBC radio shows — his first song choice was a 1980s banger: Yazz’s “The Only Way Is Up.”

The optimism was on-brand for Jackson, one of the energy industry’s most polished lobbyists with half of Westminster on speed dial.

Octopus, the clean energy start-up he founded in 2015, this year became the single largest provider to U.K. households. The multibillion pound firm has its tentacles firmly around the corridors of power, selling politicians on its vision of homes aided by smart meters, solar panels and other green tech.

Within days of Labour’s sweeping general election victory in July, Jackson was in the Treasury, a poster boy for new Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ promise to hook clean energy ambitions to economic growth.

And he wasn’t just courting Reeves. 

Jackson and his colleagues met new Labour energy ministers 10 times in the 12 weeks after the election, according to official records. They were picking up where they left off — transparency data shows the firm had dozens of meetings with Conservative ministers in their final full year in charge of the country.

Jackson has always brought “interesting and novel” ideas to Whitehall, one energy policy veteran said admiringly. He is a “likable” guy, said a former senior Westminster official also lobbied by Jackson, and a “key voice” in the green debate, according to Wera Hobhouse, a Lib Dem MP who has seen Jackson up close from her seat on parliament’s Energy Security and Net Zero Committee.

Now the Octopus boss has his lobbying sights set on an obscure technical change to the energy system, which comes with huge potential consequences.

He is trying to persuade ministers to overhaul completely how electricity prices are set — precisely the sort of reform which would hand a newer, tech-driven business an advantage over its rivals.

And he might just win.

My friends Ed and Rishi

Those Whitehall meetings included four chats with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. (“My friend,” as Miliband cheerfully called Jackson when the two shared a stage at an Octopus-backed event last November.)  

Jackson has an unerring habit of getting access to the very top. 

When the Conservative government announced plans in fall 2023 to water down a series of net zero policies, then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak found time that morning to call the Octopus boss with a quick heads-up. 

These days, Jackson sits on the board advising Labour on its industrial strategy, where he rubs shoulders with former Energy Secretary Greg Clark and Shriti Vadera, once Gordon Brown’s right-hand-woman in the Treasury. The board’s inaugural meeting was hosted by Reeves and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds.

Jackson’s business success helps explain why ministers, desperate both to breathe life into a flagging economy and to honor a promise to clean up the energy grid by 2030, want him around.

Financial backers have coughed up hundreds of millions of pounds for stakes in his company. (Jackson still has a four percent share). The massive Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has put in cash. Generation Investment Management, co-founded and chaired by former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, struck a $600 million deal in September 2021.

Now Octopus has a net asset value of over £7 billion, operating across 32 countries. Its sprawling high-tech central London office is all a bit Silicon Valley — open plan, floor-to-ceiling windows, fridges filled with beers. There are enough screens to grace a NASA mission control room.

Informal around the office, the boss favors a quarter-zip fleece and jeans. “I’ve worn a suit, I think, to Buckingham Palace,” Jackson told POLITICO in February, referring to a visit to see King Charles III two years ago. Presumably unused to formal attire, Jackson split his trousers in the car on the way, forcing a last-minute dash to the tailor.

Jackson paints these connections — with prime ministers and vice presidents, kings and government ministers — as a natural extension of his work. Not everything is rosy (Octopus lost money each year until 2023 and this year its earnings slid nearly 60 percent), but Jackson is bullish.

“We’re the biggest energy retailer so, with seven-and-a-half-million customers, we’ve got very strong views on what’s needed to drive prices down and improve standards,” he said.

On the inside

Those views have found a receptive audience in the corridors of power.

Octopus are very effective lobbyists, said Adam Bell, an ex-official who spent eight years immersed in energy policy at the old Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. 

“Octopus, unlike other retailers at the time, tended to bring forward regulatory asks that were interesting and novel — things intended to give them freedom to experiment with new consumer offers,” he said. The firm “became quite popular in the department.” 

Jackson is “one of the best communicators around on the consumer and technology trends driving the energy transition,” agreed another former Whitehall official, granted anonymity to discuss lobbying. He “has a really useful role to play in communicating this agenda to the public,” said a further Westminster figure.

Not everyone is a fan, mind.

Some industry figures suggested Jackson enjoyed access to the new government mainly because ministers doubt he will rock the boat.

“Labour see him as the ‘no-new-friends strategy,’” said one. “As in: They knew him beforehand, and kind of see him as on the inside. Is he using that to his personal benefit?”

Another industry figure shrugged: “He tells people what they want to hear. If you only tell people what they want to hear, then they tend to listen to you.”

Like any seasoned lobbyist, Jackson insists he will work with politicians of any stripe. But the Labour links are undeniably there — he was once head of the left-wing pressure group Labour List. 

“I mean, briefly, yeah,” he admitted. Companies House data shows he was a director at the group for over six years. Jackson insisted that was just “to keep the lights on until they got a management team.”

“I’ve been in the room more with the previous government than this one,” he said.

The Westminster hobnobbing is certainly relentless. Octopus met Conservative ministers 41 times in 2023, out-lobbied in the energy sector only by industry giants EDF and BP, according to Global Witness data.

Jackson shrugs off the criticism. Rivals “find it easier to grab your shirt to try and drag you back than to improve their own performance,” he said.

The next fight

Octopus has plenty of experience fighting (and winning) lobbying and legal battles.

It repelled attempts by larger firms in 2022 to tighten rules on financial reserves. A year later it prevailed in a protracted legal battle with British Gas over the takeover of collapsed provider Bulb.

Now Jackson’s eyes are firmly set on another big prize: electricity market reform.

It would be the most seismic change to the market since privatization, replacing a single national electricity price with hundreds — possibly thousands — of prices across the U.K., determined by local supply and demand.

It comes down to an obscure government consultation process opened nearly three years ago and still unresolved: the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA.)

Advocates for locational pricing say it would bring down bills for consumers everywhere. It would certainly boost firms like Octopus which rely on tech and a much more flexible electricity grid. The offer of cheaper bills is not a purely altruistic lobbying move, of course, given the chance it would also help Jackson gobble up even more U.K. market share from his rivals.

Many big developers are just as staunchly opposed and are lobbying ministers just as fiercely. They argue it could make electricity pricing unpredictable and deter investment essential to the U.K.’s green goals. Trade bodies like Renewable UK, Solar Energy UK and Steel UK are lined up against it, too.

The lobbying spat will continue until a REMA decision arrives, expected in the summer. The government says only that an update will come “in due course.”

The second industry figure quoted above was scathing. “He doesn’t build anything,” they said of Octopus’s contribution, adding: “His argument means not building any new infrastructure, but this network needs investment.”

Chris O’Shea, boss of British Gas owner Centrica, is critical, too, even if he avoided mentioning Jackson by name. “I think we [should] listen to companies that are actually putting their hands in their pockets. I think we should be dubious about companies that have not put their hands in their pockets,” O’Shea said.

“It’s not true to say we don’t build stuff,” parried Jackson, pointing to the renewables assets operated by Octopus’s energy generation arm. 

He batted away the broader criticism. “I think companies are typically acting in what they think [is the] public interest,” he said — before suggesting it involved a dose of special pleading from developers, too. “It is notable that the companies that earn money from building wind farms, whether they’re turned on or not, are also the ones that earn money from building grid, right?”

Octopus has allies in its fight. 

Ofgem, the energy regulator, backs reform. “[W]e do see the attractions … in something that begins to separate the country into different zones and allows prices to settle more organically where they are,” Chief Executive Jonathan Brearley told POLITICO in December. 

Tech firms, also a highly influential lobbying voice, reckon local pricing would help them power energy-hungry data centers. Small retail suppliers like Good Energy back the reforms, too.

“It’s the needs of 30 million households and businesses that should come first,” Jackson said on X in February, pressing the case for reform.

On his Desert Island Discs playlist, Jackson also chose “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers. In public, and in the closed-off rooms of Westminster, he has laid his latest bet.