The Octopus Interview: Greg Jackson, chief executive

“The amazing thing about innovation is, it’s not a zero-sum game,” Octopus Energy chief executive Greg Jackson said in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of Innovation Zero, the UK’s largest net-zero congress. “You create new value for the future.”

Octopus overtook British Gas as the main residential energy supplier in the UK market this year, but Jackson said growth shouldn’t be an excuse “to slip”.

“It meant more to us that we were named Which? recommended energy provider for the eighth year in a row,” he said. “And we’ve only been going nine years.”

The energy company has been beating the drum for locational pricing, which is already a staple in much of Europe, and is touted as a way of reducing the cost of power in areas of high demand by balancing need with supply.

Zonal pricing is not a “weird new mystical idea”, Jackson said, arguing that it is already the norm for more than half of the electricity in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

He said Sweden adopted zonal pricing in about 15 months and that if the UK government decides to approve the reforms following a consultation, it could become a reality in just 18 months.

“The wholesale price is set for the whole country every half hour by the single most expensive unit generated anywhere in the country, and everyone pays that price,” Jackson said.

“In zonal pricing… the price for each zone is locally. What that means is that the wholesale price will reflect supply and demand in that zone. If there’s a zone where we’ve got a tremendous amount of renewable generation, consumers can enjoy cheaper electricity, supply and demand delivers that.”

A study by FTI Consulting and the energy company suggested that regional pricing could save about £3.7 billion a year.

Jackson said those savings would happen “immediately without shifting any demand”, and that up to £7bn a year could be saved as decisions get made about building more “appropriate” infrastructure.