Welcome to our September newsletter! Estimated read time: 5 mins

Dear friends and colleagues,

Next week is Climate Week NYC, and we're getting ready.  Packed schedule (we've each made hard choices across those 1000 events).  Packed comfortable shoes (events which are all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, Governors Island...).  Packed batteries (because my phone inevitably starts to fade as the day wears on).  Packed water bottles (yup, the weather forecast is NOT as hot as LCAW, but it's still needed).  

Most important?  We are ready to connect with you! We are hosting several gatherings (workshops, dinners, drinks) with wonderful partners, yet the best part of these weeks are the unexpected ones. Seeing someone on a subway exit we haven't seen in years.  Listening to a debate across issues you hadn't considered.  Sitting next to someone you haven't known, who turns out to be the right person at the right time to make change happen.

Amongst this? Exciting announcements from our UK team with a new colleague joining the fray and a new partnership with the UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

Onward,

Susan Kish, CEO

P.S. next month this newsletter will have a slightly new look — don’t worry, it’s still us!

Announcing our new “Pathways to Commercialisation” program in the UK

What does it take for innovative clean energy technologies to scale? Ask a developer, a financier and a policymaker and you'll get three answers – well-informed, but drawn from different vantage points and a different set of facts.

Constructive is supporting the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) to launch a new program to close that gap. Together with the National Wealth Fund, UK Export Finance and Great British Energy, DESNZ is co-creating a series of "Pathways to Commercialisation" reports with private sector stakeholders. 

The Pathways approach brings market participants together to build a shared, credible view of what these technologies need to reach commercial scale, testing existing assumptions and aligning private capital, industry and government.

The resulting reports are not static documents but a living platform for public-private collaboration that enables structured dialogue and coordinated action.

Each report includes a fact base and cost profile designed to be actionable across industry and government. The reports will be disseminated through a range of communications channels and convenings, and kept live as the market advances.

And the UK remains a market that moves markets: a world leader in renewables that has innovated as much in commercial structures and contracts as in emerging technologies themselves. That combination of technical and financial innovation is exactly what gives the UK its outsized influence, and what makes it a natural place to prove what comes next.

This work is integrated with HMG’s UK Cleantech Innovation Challenges and will support and inform the delivery of the challenges. Innovative Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) and Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) have been selected for the pilot report.

The Constructive team brings industry engagement expertise and learnings from helping deliver the US Department of Energy’s Liftoff Reports. We are serving as the execution partner, leading cross-sector convening, market engagement, and programme delivery, including the market interviews now underway.

This work picks up several threads from London Climate Action Week, where we launched Energy After Fire and hosted a roundtable with senior leaders from government, finance, law, project development and technology on what it will take to unlock private capital for CCUS at scale. The Pathways initiative takes those conversations a step further, turning the questions raised around that table into a structured process for building the shared evidence base that investment at scale requires.

Because the analysis reflects the market's own view rather than a government position, its value depends on hearing directly from the people making live investment decisions. If that's you, we want to hear from you – reply to this email or reach out to krysta@constructive.org.

Latest from the Mountain West Geothermal Consortium

The Consortium is advancing three intervention areas to help unlock responsible geothermal development at scale: improving access to subsurface data, de-risking appraisal drilling, and creating durable pathways for offtake.

1. Data

A major challenge for geothermal is that much of the data about the subsurface exists in paper files dating back decades – or in some cases more than a century – at state geologic surveys, environmental management agencies, universities, and beyond. 

Our efforts aim to improve access to this subsurface data so that developers can carry out exploratory drilling where it is most likely to be successful. The Consortium has stood up a working group to inform project execution and is in the process of hiring a data modernization lead.

2. Derisking appraisal drilling

Financial risk increases at the appraisal stage of project development because appraisal drilling is expensive and traditional capital markets don’t yet know how to measure risk appropriately given technological advancements.

One potential concept is an Appraisal Drilling Revolving Fund, which states could create to better manage risk and support the creation of a pipeline of next-gen geothermal projects. The drilling derisking working group is wrapping up a series of meetings with advisors on the development of a potential program.

In case you missed it, the Consortium’s new research paper Misunderstood and Manageable discusses the challenges and solutions around appraisal drilling in more detail.

3. Offtake

The third intervention area is creating pathways for geothermal offtake and interconnection. The Consortium is in the process of hiring a lead for this workstream — if you’re interested or know someone who might be you can read more about the position here.

Finally, if you haven’t yet, sign up for the Consortium newsletter to get more updates and insights about next-generation geothermal from the Consortium Director, Mike O’Connor.

DERVOS 2026 is coming - everything is DER

If you haven’t yet, please fill out the State of the DER Industry survey and let us know what you think about:

• The risks and accelerants shaping distributed energy

• Where we should focus our efforts 

• What you want to learn at DERVOS 2026 and beyond

As a reminder DERVOS is taking place at Duggal Greenhouse, NYC on November 5th. The theme is “Everything is DER” and the program promises to be another great one. You can buy tickets here!

ASME CATALYZE updates

ASME CATALYZE is coming to Detroit in April 2027. Visit the website to see which speakers will be there and to explore the program as it continues to develop around four tracks: powering growth, industry reimagined, next-gen manufacturing, and future workforce. 

Head to the Exchange page to explore recent insights such as ASME Standards Spotlights and CATALYZE webinar takeaways.

If you are interested in serving as a strategic collaborator to support and help deliver the inaugural CATALYZE event, please reach out to david@constructive.org.

We’re thrilled to introduce Joshua Swift, our new UK Programme Manager. Josh is working with our UK Programme Director Krysta to deliver our Pathways to Commercialisation programme and brings a distinctive cross-sector perspective across policy and investment in climate and energy.

The Constructive team will be at Climate Week NYC next week. We’re hosting, speaking at, and attending various events:

Monday Sept 21

• We’re supporting a workshop with Mission Possible Partnership to accelerate clean industrial development

• Our Senior Fellow Hadia is moderating a panel titled “Energy Transition: Who Bears the Burden, Who Shapes the Solution?” with the Quebec Government

• We’ll be at Future Currence to hear about clean energy and the AI buildout

Tuesday Sept 22

• We’re co-hosting a private Energy After Fire dinner on electrotech and AI with Catalyse Europe, Ember, and CMIST

• Hadia is speaking on “How to decarbonize our cities and infrastructure this decade”

Wednesday Sept 23

• We’re holding a roundtable with ASME to explore nuclear workforce requirements and the role of standards in scaling clean technologies

• We’re co-hosting a roundtable with Currence on load flexibility

If you’ll be in NYC and want to meet up, let us know by replying to this email!

Check out the Energy After Fire session recordings and full takeaways!

Impossible to choose, but some video highlights:

• Jonas Birgersson on what electrotech can learn from the Swedish telecoms revolution

• Harry Krejsa on the convergence of climate and defense tech

• Tatiana Mitrova on Europe’s opportunity to be an architect of the new energy system

• Andy Hackett on a brave new world of algorithm-enabled demand flexibility

• Danny Kennedy on the “lots of littles” driving electrotech adoption globally

The wonderful Hannah Ritchie (from Our World in Data) just released US Energy Data, which takes EIA data and makes it easy for policymakers, journalists, and the general public to navigate and actually use.

The project is free to use and funded by Arnold Ventures and hosted by the Institute for Progress (IFP). It’s also beautifully designed and a breeze to navigate.

You can explore a treasure trove of EIA data on electricity generation and sources, demand, reliability, prices, and more at the national and state-by-state level. Here are a couple of examples:

• Krysta is reading Ember’s new annual deck, The Age of Power (hot off the presses) on how the electrotech and information revolution are converging and what this means for energy, markets and geopolitics.

• Susan is diving into The Carbon Wave, a new book by our colleague Leah Stokes about spearheading landmark climate legislation at the same time as becoming a new parent.

• Rosie is reading “Europe Needs a Draghi Report on Policymaking” – the latest from Catalyse Europe’s Ann Mettler on why Europe needs to focus less on what it should do and more on how to actually do it.

• Jake is digesting the UN’s new report, Limiting Overshoot, which finds that global temperature rise is set to cross the 1.5°C mark within the next few years, pushing climate risks to increasingly dangerous heights and making a stronger case than ever for resilience and adaptation.

• Josh is listening to Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s new podcast, exploring how energy shapes our world.

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.