Beverley Gower-Jones, managing partner of Clean Growth Fund, talks to PMP about the scale of the clean economy, the investment opportunities, and why innovation is critical to growth.
Beverley Gower-Jones is the managing partner of Clean Growth Fund. The UK venture capital fund recently achieved first close of Fund II, with three LGPS cornerstone investors committing £49 million. It is now actively preparing for the second close, for which it has secured a further 10 million.
PMP: How important are the opportunities being created in the clean economy?
Beverley Gower-Jones: The UK net-zero economy created £83 billion in gross value added in 2024. Much of these gains come are from the supply chain. The supply chain is often overlooked, but it’s critical, particularly in regions such as West Yorkshire.
The sector delivered 10% growth in 2024, even as the wider economy contracted. It now supports around 950,000 jobs, which are on average 38% more productive than typical UK roles. And of the 15,000 employers in the sector, 94% are SMEs. Supporting SMEs and innovation is vital, not least because this growth is spread across the country, with hotspots in the Midlands, Yorkshire and the Southwest – not just London and the Southeast.
So far, the biggest drivers have been renewable generation and electric vehicles, but the transition will touch every sector – from industry and buildings to agriculture and waste. Innovation will drive the next wave of growth.
PMP: Where are the most exciting opportunities?
Gower-Jones: It’s broad-based but, for example, industrial biotechnology is a huge area. We currently derive about 3,000 products from a barrel of oil – everything from cleaning products to tyres – and these all need to be replaced alternatives. That’s an enormous opportunity.
Another area is alternatives to plastics. Packaging and other plastics are energy-intensive, so we need to sustainable replacements. Algae is one promising route, and we’re seeing new approaches emerging. But the challenge is vast. We’ve become very good at squeezing value from barrels of oil – now we need to replace it.
The UK’s diversity of regional innovation means the best deal flow comes from across the country, not just London.
Beverley Gower-Jones, Clean Growth Fund
PMP: Can plastics still play a role without causing large-scale carbon emissions?
Gower-Jones: Unfortunately not. At their end of life, most plastics go into waste-to-energy plants, which release hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. Landfilling plastics isn’t sustainable either as they don’t degrade, which just leaves the problem for the next generation. And we have all already absorbed enough microplastic into our bodies.
PMP: Are alternatives such as algae-based plastics attracting demand?
Gower-Jones: They will have to. Humanity is using a year’s worth of the planet’s resources in eight or nine months. That’s not sustainable. We need to reduce use, recycle and upcycle far more, and treat disposal as a last resort. We’ve simply got too used to throwing things away.
PMP: Is the Mansion House Accord influencing the investment outlook?
Gower-Jones: It’s a call to action for the UK to invest more in illiquid assets and back UK growth. For venture capital, place-based investing is critical. The UK’s diversity of regional innovation means the best deal flow comes from across the country, not just London.
At Clean Growth Fund, our portfolio shows what’s possible. For example, we backed a geothermal company building district heating networks. It now has £15–17 million in sales and multiple projects underway. Another is Sunswap, which decarbonises refrigerated transport in HGVs and already has over £6 million of sales orders and work with brands including Tesco and DPD. These are great examples of economic opportunity aligned with impact.
People sometimes ask if there’s a trade-off between impact and returns. There isn’t. It’s about profit with purpose, not one at the expense of the other.
PMP: Has the energy transition reached maturity, with more attractive opportunities now elsewhere in clean tech?
Gower-Jones: In some respects, yes. Offshore wind, for instance, was once considered high-risk. The government’s development banks invested in some of those early projects, but now they’re seen as de-risked project finance investment. There’s fierce competition for a small number of wind and solar projects.
The next wave of opportunities lies in new net-zero technologies. They need capital, but investors want to approach them with acceptable, risk-adjusted strategies. That’s where we come in. Venture is often seen as ‘super risky’, but if it’s a small allocation – say 1–2% of a portfolio – it can deliver high rewards and meaningful impact.
Technology commercialisation is a known process. If fund managers have deep sector expertise, they can identify where companies are on that journey, how to de-risk the next step, and how to support them through it. That’s critical to making these opportunities investable.
Gower-Jones will be speaking at Longview Networks’ Institutional Venture & Growth Forum at the London Stock Exchange on 24 September.