How Can Octopus CEO Greg Jackson Influence UK Energy Policy?
Octopus Energy Group CEO and founder Greg Jackson has stepped into a new public leadership role, joining the UK Cabinet Office Board as a Non-Executive Member.
His appointment, running from July 2025 to 2028, comes at a time when the UK government faces mounting pressure to align infrastructure with climate targets and deliver on long-term energy reform.
The Cabinet Office Board sets strategic direction for the Cabinet Office, bringing together officials and external experts to feed into policy execution and departmental performance.
Non-executives like Jackson are tasked with providing independent scrutiny and – where necessary – challenge to ensure government programmes meet objectives efficiently and transparently.
Energy leadership in the boardroom and beyond
As CEO of Octopus Energy, Jackson leads one of the UK’s fastest-growing renewable energy suppliers.
Since launching the company in 2015, he has scaled it from a challenger brand to a global clean power player with operations in 18 countries and over four million customers in the UK alone.
Octopus now manages £6bn (US$8.1bn) in energy generation assets and maintains a clear focus on cutting both carbon emissions and consumer costs.
Jackson’s leadership style reflects a blend of commercial sharpness and public-minded urgency.
Within three years of founding Octopus, he secured a major energy procurement agreement with Shell and grew the customer base to nearly 200,000.
This expansion is paired with a commitment to transparency and climate performance, with Octopus generating 100% of its electricity from zero carbon sources between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024.
In 2024, Jackson received a CBE for services to the energy industry, an acknowledgment of his influence in reshaping the market.
His new position in the Cabinet Office Board provides a national platform to apply that same thinking to energy governance.
As policy discussion intensifies around how the UK can decarbonise without driving up costs, Jackson now has a ringside seat at the heart of the conversation.
Confronting inefficiencies in the energy system
Octopus Energy’s strategic insight into infrastructure challenges is already having an impact on the UK’s approach to energy.
Its ‘Wasted Wind Ticker’ highlights a key issue with the UK’s current electricity grid – the inability to handle excess renewable energy generation. The live tool shows how much money is spent paying wind farms to shut down due to grid limitations.
As of July 2025, the tool has revealed that more than £650m (US$881m) worth of wind power has gone unused – a figure over 50% higher than the same period the previous year.
This waste stems from an outdated grid system that continues to rely on fossil fuel plants when renewable energy cannot be efficiently distributed.
Jackson has a solution that is targeted and data-driven. Octopus proposes a zonal pricing model, where electricity prices vary depending on regional supply and demand.
This method, already in place in other OECD countries, incentivises smart infrastructure investment and more balanced power flows.
"Britain needs more infrastructure, but investments must be smart and efficient otherwise they’re not investment, they’re waste," he has said, adding that "zonal pricing removes the need for tens of thousands of pylons, saving £27bn (US$36.6bn)."
For Jackson, cost-saving and public buy-in go hand in hand. "Reducing the number of new pylons we need would not only save enormous amounts of money, but help maintain public support for clean energy," he says.
He’s also direct about current policy gridlocks: "We shouldn’t let a handful of highly profitable giants, with the most powerful lobbyists, block these efficiencies and keep an increasingly expensive, broken system in place."
"Zonal pricing is not difficult – it’s the proven way to keep costs down and is the norm across much of the OECD," he continues. "The longer the UK stays an outlier, the more British citizens will pay the price and the less competitive our industry will be."
Investing in tomorrow’s clean power systems
Octopus oversees US$6.8bn in assets globally and a generation capacity of more than 4.4GW, with 3.9GW coming from renewables. Its investments power over 2.6 million homes annually and spans wind, solar and community-led energy models.
As one of Europe’s largest renewable energy investors, the company manages over 270 utility-scale projects.
This footprint gives Jackson a critical view across policy, technology and market dynamics – all key elements he’ll now bring to the Cabinet Office Board.
By positioning a clean energy CEO at the core of government strategy, the UK opens the door to applying practical business models to complex policy questions. Jackson’s presence adds commercial urgency to political debate, linking grid reform with investment outcomes.
