Al Gore puts $600M into UK Green energy-tech startup Octopus Energy Group
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The UK energy market is near collapse because wholesale prices for gas have gone up 10x and retail prices are capped in law. This means many energy suppliers are making massive losses. 80% of energy companies are expected to go bankrupt (ones that did not hedge/insure against this eventuality). When an energy market participant goes bankrupt, their debts get paid by being spread between all other users of the market in a process called 'smearing' - payments must be made in 89 days. When asked to pay the debts of all failed companies you get a cascade failure...
Octopus is one such energy company, and presumably they will use this $600M to pay for their losses and the losses from the smearing process, and avoid bankruptcy, with their reward that they end up with a lot of potential new customers and little established competition.
The fund where Al Gore is serving as Chairman did.