Category: Uncategorized

The theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is ‘nature’. 

We know that being in nature is good for our mental health. It’s not some great new thing we’ve just discovered – it’s fundamental to who we are. Our health is our planet’s health. Our planet’s health is our health.  

Mental health is something we think about at Rebel, in terms of customers and employees (as far as we know, we’re the only energy supplier in the UK that offers each and every employee a paid wellbeing day once a month, to be spent however they wish). 

We’re particularly keen to talk about mental health and nature together, as interconnectedness is our favourite topic – the interconnectedness of us and nature, and of our problems and solutions.  

So bear with us while we explain what our approach to the carbon market has to do with mental health.  

When we started Rebel, we started work on Rebel Restoration. This is our foundation set up to support carbon-removal projects (mostly) in the UK.  

You’ll notice we don’t say ‘carbon offsetting’, and that’s because we think the phrase is misleading. We don’t really believe we can just offset carbon emissions from fossil fuels by paying somebody else to plant trees, and think everything will be ok.  

But what we can do is back projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere, restore biodiversity and empower local communities. While transitioning away from fossil fuels and towards renewables and electrification.  

The more holistic our approach, the better for our landscapes, and, in the end, for our own wellbeing.   

Take one of those projects closest to our hearts: seagrass.  

The ocean is good for us. Walking beside it, listening to the waves, swimming in it. Even just seeing the ocean has been shown to have a positive impact on mental health. These benefits are so clear that time in wetlands is now being prescribed for people with mental health issues.  

So, for our own wellbeing, we need healthy oceans. And healthy oceans are oceans filled with seagrass.  

Seagrasses occupy 0.1% of the seafloor, yet are responsible for 11% of the organic carbon buried in the ocean. Seagrass meadows, mangroves and coastal wetlands capture carbon at a rate greater than that of tropical forests. 

Planting meadows of seagrass means more biodiversity, thriving native species, more bountiful fishing, engaged local communities, better places to visit.  

Or, put simply, healthier oceans equal healthier us. 

This is why we like the ‘nature’ theme of Mental Health Awareness Week. We’re trying lots of things in the interest of good health – from those wellbeing days for our employees to a customer approach that’s caring rather than merely transactional.  

But at the heart of it is a belief that everything is connected. That when we restore our oceans (and peatbogs, and forests), we restore our own health.

It was Earth Day a couple of weeks ago. We could have posted a picture of a tree and said ‘it’s all of our responsibilities to look after our planet and that’s why we supply 100% renewable electricity’.  

But we all know that that’s not good enough. 

Green is no good if it’s the preserve of the already well-off. Renewable energy shouldn’t be a luxury; it should be the default. Every piece of toast that pops out of a toaster on a fair British morning should have been cooked by renewable electricity. Every electron on the grid should be generated from UK-based renewable energy sources.

Anything less means we’re not trying hard enough.

Because we have bigger problems: gas and carbon-offsetting.

Our country is plumbed for gas. All of those emissions go into the atmosphere, and we can’t simply subtract them again…it’s not that simple. Don’t believe anyone that tells you it is. The only real solution is not to burn fossil fuels at all.

So, we need to move away from gas and towards heat pumps, electrification and fuel-efficient houses. And we need to do it urgently.

Until we get there, the whole carbon-offsetting conversation needs to change. Because the system that we have right now does not work. This market is so dysfunctional that a major company recently purchased carbon credits (a carbon credit is a certificate that allows you to claim you have removed X tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, you can learn more about it here), and it did this not by planting trees but by *not cutting them down*.

This is a failure on pretty much every level.

But the good news is that there are better, more effective ways of doing it. Like: investing in community-led projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere and restore biodiversity.

That’s why we, as a UK energy supplier, are backing UK carbon-removal projects. We will also back projects overseas where we believe the carbon, biodiversity and social impact merit it, but we will not forget our own fair isles, where 25% of our mammals are at imminent risk of extinction, where we have vast carbon removal potential, and habitat loss on land and in the sea has reached terrifying levels – 97% of our meadows on land, and 92% of our seagrass meadows are gone.

As we think about Earth Day 2021, we know we’re not doing enough yet. But we are working towards that. And we have built our company so we are legally obliged to get better, and better, and better.

On Earth Day, we want to talk about fuel poverty.

Fuel poverty affects 3.18 million households in England and is a hard-to-see social problem that wrecks lives.

Why are we talking about it now? Because one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned over the years is that you can’t be green without being socially conscious. And you can’t be socially conscious without being green.

The truth about the mess we’re in is that it’s all interconnected, all deeply tangled together. And the longer we treat environmental issues as discreet from social issues, the longer we delay fixing them.

Look into any one issue, and you quickly find just how tangled it is with other issues. One big driver of fuel poverty is fuel-inefficient houses – old, drafty buildings require more energy to keep them going. And poorer people tend to live in these houses. So poor people pay more money, and more carbon gets released into the atmosphere.

To solve this issue, we need to make those houses more fuel-efficient (triple-glazing and insulation to start with, and better housing stock further down the line). And we need to make renewable energy accessible to all.

You can see why we use the word ‘holistic’ a lot. These problems can only be understood together.

That’s why we talk about ‘renewing the way business is done’. Because it’s not a viable option to simply donate more profit to charitable causes. No, the whole structure of business needs to change – by putting people and justice at the centre of what we do.

This means being oriented towards results, not intentions.

This means being led by the affected and the marginalised.

This means working together and collaborating for the collective good.

Energy is actually a great metaphor for this. The old way – extractive, centrally-owned, simplistic, offshore – isn’t working. So we’re going the new way – regenerative, local, intersectional, accountable.

Because not only can we address climate change and social issues at the same time. We must do so.

Rebel Energy’s first round of crowdfunding finished with a remarkable 335% overfunding. This huge vote of confidence from the investor community lets us take the strongest possible launch into the market.  

We raised more than £500,000 from both small and large donations. Our target was £150,000 – and we reached that within an hour of going public. From then, more and more backers claimed a slice of the rebellion.  

The average numbers of investors on Crowdcube is 269. We got nearly 700. As far as we can tell, this is one of the most successful ever pre-revenue raises on the platform. 

Why? Well, our mission mattered.  

Investor after investor told us that our mission was key. Rebel wants to end fuel poverty, protect the environment and change the way business is done. As far as we’re concerned, our social and environmental missions are the same thing. This resonated. 

One investor summed it up nicely when they said “I absolutely love your mission and purpose. It is a brilliant concept”. In the words of another, “Congratulations on your already successful campaign. It is great to see more investment in renewable energy and also a company with a good social conscience”.   

But it’s not just the mission. Investors were inspired by our lean and forward-looking business model.  

According to our (relatively conservative) estimates, the domestic energy market is set to double in the next 15 years. And Rebel is perfectly designed for this major transition. In fact, we’ve rebuilt the energy supplier from the ground up. Gone are the lumbering IT systems, gone are the unfair pricing structures, gone is the disinterested customer service. Having automated back-end processes, our business is now leaner than our competitors at every stage of growth.  

Not to mention the extraordinary quality of our team, which was noted by one investor, who said, “It’s an impressive proposition and the leaders and non-exec look impressive”.  

Now that we’ve raised the money. What’s next?  

Right now, we’re reaching out to 750 early customers to be our beta testers. This lets us test our systems and make sure everything works smoothly.  

Before our full market launch in the summer, we’ll continue to develop our industry-leading automation. Plus, our smart new website will come out (which will include a few firsts for the energy market).  

There’s a lot to be excited about. Or as one investor summed it up: “What a model for the future.” 

The UK home energy market is set to *double* over the next 15 years. We’ve worked this out based on an explosive combination of new factors (an increase in electric vehicles, more people working from home) with old factors (a growing population, an increase in housing stock).  

We’re pretty sure this will be the biggest-ever period of growth in the market. And companies offering clean energy, affordable prices and superb customer service will see by far the biggest piece of that growth, as customers new and existing will move away from out-of-date suppliers.  

Commentators call it ‘the energy transition’, and Rebel Energy was founded to make it accessible to everybody, no matter what your income is.  

The pandemic has accelerated all of these factors – and added a new one.  

There is a sudden awareness that we can tackle the big issues facing us, and that these issues are interlinked anyway. We saw an incredible wave of altruism and a determination to buy local and to help the people around us.  

And people mean it. A number of studies have shown that, since the pandemic, people are making more ethical, sustainable and environmentally friendly choices. 

This is what change looks like.  

That’s what makes Rebel the energy supplier for this unique moment. As well as supplying clean, affordable energy, we keep things local. We generate our energy in the UK, and we invest in carbon-removal projects throughout the country. And the issue that is dearest to our hearts – ending fuel poverty in the UK. 

There has never been a greater urgency for businesses that tackle social issues. For people who were struggling financially before COVID, the added pressures of the past year have been devastating. The status quo—the poverty premium, rising prices, stagnant wages and disinterested business—is just not going to cut it anymore. 

When you support Rebel, you help us support the people who need it. 

We always knew now would be a good time to go to market. But we never imagined just how remarkably timely a company like ours would turn out to be. 

The team that we’ve put together at Rebel has a list of collective achievements that would make anybody sit up and take notice.  

Industry veterans, rising stars and eye-catching innovators – all working together to transform the energy market. To get one of these people is great. Two, really impressive. But all five? Ridiculous.  

Here’s a quick look at our recent hires.  

Mark Neveu, Head of Sales & Partnerships 

The indefatigable Mark is something of a legend in the energy world. In a 15-year career, he has directly negotiated partnerships with the likes of Google, Tesla, Oxfam and Waitrose. His results speak for themselves: a nine-fold expansion of Tonik Energy’s customer base and 50% year-on-year growth at Ecotricity. 

At Rebel, Mark is forming partnerships that will help shape the future of energy.   

Bwalya Kasase, Head of Operations 

Bwalya is one of the most highly-regarded people in operations in the energy industry, with over 14 years of brilliant work behind him.  

As our Head of Operations, Bwalya has already mapped out and automated most of our back-end processes. This is more disruptive than it sounds — many companies don’t do this for years, let alone before going to market. This makes us highly competitive from the off.  

Rich Faulkner, Head of Pricing & Risk 

Frankly, we don’t think there’s anybody sharper than Rich Faulkner when it comes to pricing and risk in the energy market. Before joining Rebel, he set the purchase strategy for a £1bn/yr commodity portfolio (during a time of sweeping regulatory and market change, no less) and pushed for investment in renewable energy. 

Rich brings nearly 15 years of experience to Rebel (plus an MPhys in Physics from Oxford). He is steering our work on pricing, and has already developed some ingenious strategies that allow us to help those in need.  

Seb Fox, Head of Commercial Projects 

Seb has had a bright start to his career in energy. He joins Rebel after being one of the key people at the hugely successful Future of Utilities Summit in 2020. A remarkable achievement for someone so new to the game. 

We’re delighted to have Seb running our commercial projects. In the past weeks, he has put together a masterful crowdfunding campaign for Rebel (which is currently live & can be viewed here).  

Ellie Rowlands, Marketing Communications Lead  

Ellie has already made a name for herself in the sustainability world, less than two years after graduating from the University of Exeter with a 1st. Her launching of a global behaviour change project with the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives and her stellar communications work at the ground-breaking Devon Climate Emergency caught our eye, and we’re delighted to have scooped her up before anybody else did.  

At Rebel, Ellie is leading a multi-channel communications strategy and developing partnerships with top agencies. 

We can’t imagine a better team to start transforming the energy market. 

Pancake Tuesday is a favourite day at Rebel HQ for all the obvious reasons (which are: eating pancakes, and then eating even more pancakes).  

This year, we probably won’t be giving up anything for Lent. Because, well, we’ve all given up quite a lot already and a slice of cake here and there might be just what we need to carry us through.  

But we will be thinking about the sacrifices people are making this Lent – not seeing friends, not seeing family, not going on holiday, not going out for a bite to eat, etc. And how all of those sacrifices are for the good of each other.  

Because, lets face it: usually our big sacrifices have a personal focus. Slimming down, saving money, doing dry January. All good things, of course, but the benefits probably aren’t rippling out too far. 

What we’ve learned in the last year is that we can make sacrifices for the greater good — sacrifices for the people around us, sacrifices for people we don’t even know. And those are the sacrifices that really matter. 

At Rebel, our belief is that, with will and imagination, we can solve the problems that have so far appeared unsolvable. And despite it all, this last year has shown us that a better world is possible. That things can change for the better.  

And a fairer, healthier, cleaner future isn’t a bad thing to think about over your morning pancakes. 

Earlier this week our Chief Commercial Officer Penelope took part in a webinar hosted by MarketForce, which brought together a series of experts from across the utilities sector to discuss the critical topic of customer experience and how digital transformation can be used to better interact with customers.

Getting this right from the start is something that is taking up a large amount of our time right now.  A typical energy customer will think about their supplier for only around 7 minutes a year (yes, a year!), and usually that’s only because something has gone wrong.  Here at Rebel we want to give our customers a compelling reason to engage with us – whether that be to find out more about our ‘renew’ approach to the environment, or to discover more about our strategy to alleviating fuel poverty.

One of the key themes that came out of the session looked at how customer expectations have changed over recent years, and this has only been accelerated by the upheaval of the last few months.  People are using more energy as they spend time at home, and are keen to understand what they can do to be more efficient and spend less on their bills. But the biggest change we’ve seen is how people are looking to brands to provide positive leadership – both in how ethically they do business, but also in their approach to sustainability.  Customers are also demanding a more personal connection with the business they use and ironically enough, it is technology that will enable better personalisation of the products and services that we offer

Right now, as we design and build our business ready for launch, we are focussing on making sure that we are using AI and cutting edge automated processes to free up our customer services people to be able to have genuine and useful conversations with our customers – using technology to allow people to have better human interactions with their energy supplier.  And because we’re not constrained by legacy technology, like the traditional energy companies, we can build faster and better.  It is that technology, and the data that it manages, that will allow us to help customers get out of fuel poverty, by being able to make more accurate decisions about credit risk and move vulnerable customers onto the cheapest tariffs.  It will also allow us to offer an easy quoting and switching process – giving more accurate prices that mean no nasty bill surprises when you become a customer.  And it will mean that our ‘Rebels’ should have more, positive reasons to talk to us.

The conversation on Monday also discussed how innovation needed to be a key business driver in order to keep up with the pace of change.  Innovation is a key part of our DNA.  Creativity is one of our key values and we will be striving as a business to constantly innovate in the way that we, and the wider industry, does things – driving down costs, and improving the quality of our service.

We are creating a rebellion – big business can be good business.  Join us – be a rebel!

 

Yesterday we were really pleased to support our partner Blue Prism, in their announcement about how we were working with them to create a digital workforce.  One of the things I’ve been really clear about from day one is that we need to take a ‘digital first’ approach to building Rebel – automating standard industry processes and creating systems that can handle a lot of the ‘day to day’ repetitive work that comes from running an energy supplier.  This means we can create roles for our people that are more purposeful and engaging, allowing them to build genuine relationships with our customers and focus on problem solving, rather than correcting data or trying to manage data flows.  Our partnership with Blue Prism is a key part of our strategy to build a better business – one that enables our people to build fulfilling careers and helps us to keep costs low for our customers.

And as you may have seen – the media seemed really interested in our story!  We were overwhelmed with the positive response, and we’re really looking forward to continuing to tell the world about Rebel over the next few months as we get ready for launch.

You can read some of the pieces by following the links below, and if you want to find out more about what we’re doing, making sure you sign up to read our newsletter here.

Energy Live News

Current News

Power Technology

Connecting Industry 

Smart Energy International

We were also in Utility Week and Bloomberg, but both of these are behind paywalls, so we haven’t linked them here.