GB Energy's £1 million solar investment freed up savings a Hull hospital had left on the table for years. It's an example of what can happen when a state-backed investor takes risks the market won't. GB Energy calls itself an activist investor, built to put public money behind the frontiers where private capital moves too slowly: deepwater wind, long duration storage, public sector solar. The interesting question now is how far this model can scale, and how well it keeps sharing that risk with private capital as it grows.
Dan McGrail, CEO of Great British Energy, joins Ed Porter to explain how Britain's state-owned energy company decides where to invest, and why it's taking on the risks private money won't take first.
They cover:
Why the "activist investor" model can justify riskier bets than pure-return investors would take - and where that logic stops making sense.
How to identify an investment "frontier": the areas of high ambition where private capital isn't moving fast enough to hit national targets.
What a queue of 50GW+ in unsolicited co-investment enquiries reveals about investor appetite for state-backed risk-sharing.
Why community-owned local energy can outperform national schemes on economic impact.
Why chasing niche global market share, not local content quotas, may be the smarter industrial strategy for competing with China.
Transcript available here: https://modoenergy.com/transmission-podcast/2adb893a-eaa3-45e6-bb0f-756bb6be2f1a?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=gb-energy&utm_content=article_page
You can watch or listen to new episodes every Tuesday. Transmission is a Modo Energy production. Your host is Ed Porter - Director EMEA & APAC at Modo Energy.
Chapters
00:00 £1m Solar Saving At A Hull Hospital
00:43 Guest Introduction: Dan McGrail, CEO Of GB Energy
01:11 GB Energy's Company Model And DESNZ Ownership
02:42 Investment Committee Discipline Vs Government Thinking
03:23 The "Frontiers" Strategy Explained
07:44 Floating Wind And The Deepwater Frontier
09:03 ScotWind, Rising Costs And Investor Confidence
12:33 Three Strategic Pillars: Offshore, Onshore, Local
19:56 Public Entrepreneurship Vs Maximising Profit
21:17 The Siemens Story: Why Private Capital Wants In
22:35 50GW Of Unsolicited Investment Enquiries
26:00 Electrically Qualified Workers And The Skills Gap
30:45 Shapinsay's Community-Owned Wind Turbine
34:34 Solar On Hospitals And Schools
37:16 Balancing Solar With Battery Storage
39:56 GB Energy's £8.3 Billion Budget: Progress So Far
41:14 Contrarian View: Industrial Legacy Over Cheap Energy
Music licensed via Artlist.
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Channel: Modo Energy
Published: 2026-07-28
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMGKFXdc7wk