April the First, so no more fooling about, it’s time to say what I’m doing.
It has taken me a while, venturing from Mull to Marrakesh and multiple points in between, but the past six months have afforded me the rare luxury of time to think hard about what I want to do next in my varied and rewarding career.
I’ve taken the opportunity to speak to many trusted friends and colleagues from across industry, to consider their advice and insights, and settle upon where I think I can make the most impact. Because that is what it has boiled down to: where can I play a role that I feel I can make the most meaningful contribution and positive impact upon the issues for which I am passionate?
My conclusion, in part, is that it is not within another corporate role, from where I have been privileged to experience extensive highlights over the past thirty plus years.
Over the past decade and more, I’ve had the opportunity to watch at close quarters both the considerable successes and the near misses of the renewable energy industries. Putting those into the context of the social and political climate that we have today, we have to recognise that, for any of the short falls in terms of UK content, supply chain growth and job creation, we have also not made the most of the impact that has been delivered.
Remarkable cost reduction in renewables generation, driven by supportive policy, low cost of capital and innovation, has not yet been felt by consumers, who continue to pay a high price for energy due to geo-political influences and the continued tether to gas prices.
Scepticism and even outright hostility have been fostered by an almost unprecedented political dynamic of disharmony and division. Long-term environmental benefits on a path towards an abstract concept of net zero are given little credit by people suffering a cost-of-living crisis that has been impacting lives since the pandemic.
The only way to win hearts and minds and ensure widespread support here in the UK for the continued development of industries that should define the 21st century is to ensure far greater recognition of the immediate benefits and impacts of those industries. The only way to do that is to ensure that every small success, every company growth story, every new career, every community investment, is recognized and celebrated.
My 12+ years at ORE Catapult afforded me extensive opportunity to work with many of the innovative and ambitious SMEs and supply chain companies behind those success stories, as well as community leaders seeing the difference that renewable-led investment can make. Amongst them are some extraordinary, inspirational communicators, but many small, engineering-led businesses or educators do not have the resources or expertise to most effectively tell their stories.
These are the things that I’ve been mulling over: an industry needing to turn up its collective, positive voice and the companies and communities at the heart of the transition, creating the real impact, restricted in their capacity or indeed reason to do so.
So, newly unchained and unfettered, I’m today launching Regard Communications, with a two-fold mission: I want to work with innovative, small businesses from across the energy transition, helping them – affordably – to better tell their stories, reflect their impact and grow; but the impact of doing so, one business at a time, can only go so far. That is why I hope to work also with the organisations that seek to support innovation, to drive economic growth from its potential, to drive a real shift in the volume of positive communications of the opportunity and impact of the transition towards clean energy.
In so doing, I hope that we can win back the hearts and minds of a general public that has become skeptical of the value.
Please get in touch if any of this chimes with you, and let’s collectively turn up the volume before we are drowned out and the opportunity passes us by.