Sustainable Business:
to m p a k e n h a m
the car in the most efficient and sustainable
way by drawing down power at moments of
low demand and also when there are surges
of renewable energy such as wind.’
He is also excited about the opportunity
in vehicle-to-grid technologies — which is
where you can discharge your excess unused
energy from your car battery back into the
grid. ‘We are a world leader here,’ says Tom.
‘It’s still too expensive to have as mass rollout —
but we are getting there,’ he adds.
Tom sets out four ‘big drivers of change’
in the energy system today — decarbonisation,
digitisation, the decentralisation of distribution,
and democratisation (which envisions greater
participation by us all in how the energy system
is designed and used). ‘To decarbonise society
you need to electrify the two remaining sources
of carbon which are transport (liquid fuels) and
heating (mainly gas) and move all of this into
electricity,’ says Tom. ‘This way the grid will
have a much bigger burden placed on it. It’s an
industrial revolution scale change in the way
we run our electricity systems — and energy
systems in general.’
Tom has just moved from his role as Head
of Electric Vehicles to Managing Director of
OVO Home. It’s a big opportunity, made even
more so by the acquisition (for £500m) of SSE
Retail by OVO in the autumn of 2019; this
adds an additional 3.5m customers to OVO’s
existing 1.5m, making it the second largest
energy retailer in the UK. ‘We can bring
them on the journey to decarbonisation,
which is exciting as it’s scaling our impact
which is what I originally set out to do.’
It’s every entrepreneur’s dream to have
impact at scale. But Tom is far from satisfied.
‘I feel like I have not yet achieved what I
want to achieve — nowhere near in fact.
In simple terms, the real ambition is to see
millions of people living lives that don’t result
in real problems for the planet,’ says Tom.
‘The sustainability industry is on a long
journey to mass impact. How we use energy
to date has had real negative impacts, not
just on some far-away place, but on our own
lives. My real ambition is to convince everyone
that we can live a much healthier, happier life
by taking a more sustainable route.’
34 The Wykeham Journal 2019