Welcome to our July newsletter! Estimated 5m read

Dear friends and colleagues,

As you will have heard, London just had its hottest week in June — a singularly dramatic (and fitting) setting for London Climate Action Week. Despite the heat, and with the help of handheld fans and the occasional parasol, the week was intense, with over 1,300 reported events across the city.

The sobering reality of a hotter climate was met with another, more encouraging one: electrification has surfaced as a critical pathway to decarbonization — AND to affordability, security, and resilience — with greater clarity than ever before.

Our launch of Energy After Fire during LCAW, and conversations across London more broadly, were grounded in the everyday reality of energy security and affordability, climate risk, and human welfare. The "electrotech revolution" is here — from distributed energy to shared supply chains across industry and security.

What's still needed, alongside this pragmatism, is a bigger, bolder story of where we want to go, more credible pathways to get there, and more productive frameworks for collaboration. As one speaker put it: the decisions need to be happening at the kitchen table and the boardroom.

All in all, it was a galvanizing week!

Be well, and let's work hard to keep cool,
Susan

Susan Kish, CEO

Energy After Fire lights up London Climate Action Week

"Energy After Fire. That's more than a theme. That's a mission, that's a destination, that's a movement." — Ann Mettler, Catalyse Europe

The electrotech revolution is here, and its home is Energy After Fire. Our entire energy system is shifting from one based on fossil fuels to one based on electrons. We need a community and narrative hub to help this shift happen quickly and safely.

We gathered leaders from every sector that touches electrotech at our inaugural Energy After Fire summit to define a new narrative and “physically create the Venn diagram” where energy, technology, climate, and security intersect.

Ember’s Kingsmill Bond, a leading voice on electrotech and one of our founding partners for this new initiative, set the scene by explaining just how much of a step change electrotech is – from burning "a piece of fossilized sunshine," used once and mostly lost, to “harnessing the rays of heaven in real time”.

We then heard four intense and provocative panel sessions with the preeminent thinkers and doers in electrotech:

• Building the Era of Electrotech - where the opportunities are, who’s leading, and what’s next with speakers including Catalyse Europe's Ann Mettler and Octopus Energy's Greg Jackson

• The Electro-World Order - how electrotech is reshaping energy security and defense, with speakers including Harry Krejsa from Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology, Sarah Ladislaw from NEIS, and Columbia University’s Tatiana Mitrova

• A New Day for Europe - how Europe can harness electrotech to escape fossil dependence, regain sovereignty and catalyze growth with the dynamic Michael Liebreich joined by Iberdola’s Miguel Muñoz, Jules Kortenhorst from the Energy Transitions Commission, and others

• From Emerging Markets to Global Leaders - how developing economies are ‘leapfrogging’ developed countries in electrotech deployment with Gurin Energy’s Assaad Rassouk and CATL’s Oscar Luo offering valuable global perspectives

Our speakers wove a powerful narrative of down-to-earth pragmatism, visionary thinking, and stories about about those who need electrotech most — from the UK households grappling with soaring energy bills, to the families around the world who are feeling the direct impact of prolonged heat waves. They also highlighted the power of people who are choosing action, whether it’s installing balcony solar or building village microgrids. 

Energy After Fire is co-organized by Constructive, Ember, CMIST, and Catalyse Europe, in partnership with the Global Renewables Alliance and Cleaning Up Podcast. This inaugural event was supported by Orennia and hosted by Centre for Net Zero at Octopus Energy.

You can see photos from the day here, and keep an eye on the website for videos and slides over the coming weeks. Do reach out if you’re interested in getting involved!

More notes from London Climate Action Week

Electrification was undoubtedly the central theme in London - reflected in Energy After Fire as well as the Global Energy Transition & Electrification Summit (GETES), which we were thrilled to support as a partner.

Headlined by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, the GETES  brought together governments and business to accelerate the policies, investments and international support needed to electrify economies, strengthen energy security, and deliver an equitable energy transition.

We also hosted a roundtable on Carbon Capture, Utilization & Storage (CCUS), bringing together senior participants from across government, finance, law, project development, technology, and the carbon management supply chain.

Discussion explored what it will take to unlock private capital for CCUS at scale, from aligning policy and revenue frameworks with 25-30 year project timelines, to developing fit-for-purpose public finance tools, building domestic supply chain capacity, and establishing government backstops that can catalyze private insurance markets while the sector matures.

The Constructive team were out in force, attending several events each day and expanding our partnerships to accelerate action. A highlight was the Octopus Energy Tech summit, which was well attended by Octopus retail customers and made the case that electrification is no longer just a climate cause but a practical strategy for affordability and energy security.

Energy customers are firmly at the heart of this story with a focus on better service, lower bills, and easier adoption of heat pumps, EVs, batteries, and smart tariffs.

In various roundtables and workshops we grappled with tough challenges such as cutting potent greenhouse gases like methane, advancing finance for resilience, and moving industrial decarbonization forward at the same pace as clean power.

It was great to attend so many solutions-oriented events — but we must continue to close the gap between intention and delivery. It’s one thing to have a good discussion; another to design and facilitate that discussion so it leads to real world action and outcomes.

DERVOS 2026 early bird tickets now available

Constructive is teaming up with DER Task Force again to help organize the fifth annual DERVOS summit. Like last year, the main day will be held on the beautiful Governors Island and cover topics including:

• The state of DER regulation

• AI, data centers, and how to power them

• The age of solar and electrotech

Find out more and buy early bird tickets here!

2025 feedback 

“Constructive & DER Task Force accomplished magic this year. Thank you for your incredible work weaving each of our stories into a common tapestry”

“DERVOS was pure signal… We’ll look back at these events as the catalyst that accelerated the 4th Industrial Revolution”

We’re also bringing back Leadership Day this year - if you are interested in learning more, please get in touch at info@constructive.org.

Mountain West Geothermal Consortium Updates

This month we’ve been digesting the great input from the kickoff workshop and standing up working groups around our three intervention areas - finance, procurement, and data.

The four Consortium member states have made real progress, with Arizona committing $1.5M in its 2027 budget to geothermal resource characterization, Colorado signing a new law to advance geothermal energy, New Mexico starting to design a new permitting structure, and Utah embarking on a statewide geothermal strategy.

Over the next few months, we’re planning to release papers and other resources that outline the most promising interventions to advance geothermal energy. Please let us know if you are interested in engaging with the Consortium and helping inform these interventions.

We’re also kicking off a quarterly webinar series which provides you with the opportunity to engage with Consortium staff and State Officials. Our first webinar is Wednesday, July 29, 2026 from 3-4 PM MT - you can sign up here.

Finally, check out the photos from our launch and our exclusives in Deseret News and Heatmap if you missed them last month. And if you would like to follow our geothermal program more closely you can sign up for the newsletter here!

• Jake will be attending the inaugural Resilient America summit in Chicago next month, where we’re excited to partner with The Resiliency Company to learn how public finance leaders are embedding resiliency into capital projects and planning.

• Head to our Energy After Fire YouTube channel to see Susan Kish ask Kingsmill Bond (Ember) and Harry Krejsa (CMIST) some tough questions about electrotech. We’ll be uploading recordings and videos from the event itself soon!

• CTVC did a great writeup of London Climate Action Week with several takeaways – and hot takes – from Energy After Fire

This month we had to share our favorite chart from Energy After Fire: Ember’s visual of the “electric fast-track”. 

It shows how regions have moved from using biomass to electrons, with the US and China embarking on what Ember characterizes as a significant “fossil detour” while emerging economies taking a shortcut to electrotech. 

This means not only avoiding fossil emissions, but also, crucially, avoiding the pitfalls of legacy fossil infrastructure.

The runner up is this helpful diagram of an electric vehicle drawn by one of Constructive’s junior fellows. It demonstrates the core electrotech concept of harnessing energy (engy) directly from the sun:

• The team is revisiting some foundational texts behind Energy After Fire: Ember’s Electrotech Revolution and Electric Asia decks, CMIST’s Electrotech Moneyball, and Make Electricity Cheap Again! by Michael Liebreich

• Jake read that if effectively applied in key areas, AI could outweigh its global power consumption through emissions reductions. At the same time, Americans now “overwhelmingly” oppose data centers. Difficult decisions lie ahead.

• The Energy After Fire playlist is keeping the energy levels high after an exhausting week in London!

Thanks for reading! Please send this on to a friend or colleague - and if you were forwarded this email, you can sign up for future updates below.