8 The Sunday Times April 24, 2022
BUSINESS
ments are costing the country £1 billion a
year. And, as more wind and solar is built,
that could soon rise to £4 billion.
Highview, a Leeds University spin-off,
has patented what Pearce calls a “renew-
able power station”. Instead of letting the
excess energy go to waste, it uses the
energy to freeze air to minus 160 degrees
Celsius and compress it into liquid, which
it then stores in large tanks. Then, when
the energy is needed, it heats the air back
up. This makes it expand aggressively,
under so much pressure that it drives a
turbine and generates electricity.
“Instead of having coal sitting outside a
power station in a pile, or gas sitting in a
gas tank, we have wind power stored as
liquid air,” Pearce says in clipped English
tones. Much of his childhood was spent at
the boarding school Malvern College in
Worcestershire. He is mentioned in dis-
patches in The Malvernian magazine for
1978 for his prowess in athletics and
retains a tall, fit build to this day.
Former colleagues at Inmarsat say he
was famous for his infectious enthusiasm
for space, and he has clearly re-chan-
nelled that into green energy. He talks
rapidly, his bald head bobbing with
excitement as he explains the science.
Pearce was a partner at Linklaters
before moving into private equity and
then Inmarsat. He talks persuasively,
utilising that lawyerly skill of talking in
fully formed sentences — no ums, errs
and hums.C
ynics may say they have seen such
well-argued enthusiasm in technol-
ogy hawkers before. Green energy
is one of the hottest technologies
for investors. PwC analysis recently
showed a record $87.5 billion of venture
capital funding went into so-called
climate tech — everything from environ-
mental building technology to electric
cars — in the past 12 months.
Yet to some it feels like the “Cleantech”
boom of 2004 to 2014. Then, as now, bil-
lions of dollars went into environmental
tech companies but many crashed and
burned. Besides which, there are already
some other technologies in place to store
electricity. Drax, the energy company,
has invested in pumped storage hydro-
power, where water held in a reservoir is
released through turbines when power is
needed, then pumped back up when it is
not. Pearce counters that hydro only
works in very particular topographies,
but Highview’s kit can be installed any-
where. Besides, he adds, the need for
storage is so great that many different
technologies will be successful.
Highview has run a successful proto-
type for four years but is yet to have a full-
sized power station in operation. Pearce
is undaunted, though: “Our technology
works, it is mature and we’re ready to
break ground with our first plant this
autumn. We’ll have our first fully operat-
ing renewable power station in 2025.”
Each plant costs £500 million to build,
so it doesn’t take a cerebral type like
Pearce (Oxford, Fulbright Scholarship,
McKinsey) to figure out that the £35 mil-
lion Highview raised a couple of yearsThe future’s bright – and green,
says former Inmarsat boss Rupert
Pearce of his energy storage venture
We have
a chance
to save
the planet
W
hen Rupert Pearce had
his last photoshoot
done for the media, he
was posing next to
satellites and rockets.
All part of the job of
running Inmarsat, one
of the biggest space
technology companies
in the world, with
thousands of scientists and engineers at
his command. This time, the Sunday
Times photographer finds him in a near-
empty shared-office unit sandwiched
between a public library and a theatre in
the West End of London.
Booted out by the private equity own-
ers of the former FTSE 100 satellites giant
last year after nearly a decade as chief
executive, he has eschewed headhunt-
ers’ attempts to entice him to apply for
chief executive gigs at top-flight plcs and
private equity-backed giants. Instead, to
the surprise of everyone who knows him,
he has just rocked up at what is, in effect,
a start-up.
While Inmarsat is now in the process
of being sold for $7.3 billion to the US
space group Viasat — much to the irrita-
tion of some English patriots — Pearce’s
new berth, Highview Power, is a green
energy company with just 35 staff and
little more than £45 million to its name.
However, 58-year-old Pearce does not
see it that way. “Highview,” he says with
undentable confidence, “is a multibil-
lion-dollar company in waiting.”
So, what does Highview do? Well, right
now, not so much, but it has patented
technology to build power stations that
store excess wind and solar power so it
can be released into the national grid
when the wind stops blowing and the sun
doesn’t shine. Pearce explains that, until
we can store and control green energy,
we are never going to be able to turn off
fossil fuel power stations.
Just a few weeks into the role, he is
working, he says, “seven days a week”,
building a management team that will
take the business from its proof of con-
cept stage to producing full-sized plants
in large numbers — at a cost of £500 mil-
lion a pop. He expects to employ 400
staff within two years.
He says: “This is a market we believe is
going to be worth $3 trillion by the 2040s.
And so we are just at the beginning of this
epic journey to create the long-duration
energy storage market for the world.”
Currently, it is feast or famine with
green power. On overcast and calm days
there is none, so we need to rely on fossil
fuels. When it is sunny and windy, wind
and solar farms produce more electricity
than the national grid can cope with. Wind
operators are actually paid to decouple
their supply from the network. Those pay-INTERVIEW
JIM
ARMITAGEback from the Japanese industrialist Sumi-
tomo and investor Janus will not last long.
“Yeah,” he acknowledges. “Pretty
soon, this year, we’ll be looking at a pri-
vate fundraising.” He’s coy about how
much, but with plans for a plant near
Manchester and another immediately
after, that’s £1 billion needed for starters.
Even so, doesn’t this start-up world all
feel like a comedown from Inmarsat,
where his expertise was running thou-
sands of staff, corporate finance func-
tions, huge R&D teams? “We will be there
within five years,” Pearce shoots back.
“This is a company that’s looking to
deliver programmes into the UK alone
that will require £10 billion of investment.
We are going to be generating thousands
of jobs, directly and indirectly, into the UK
alone in the next decade and we’re going
to be repeating that all over the world.”
Pearce’s pitch is a dizzying whirl of
positivity, despite it being regularly punc-
tuated by coughs and sniffles — a remnant
of a recent Covid bout.
Kyle Whitehill, chief executive of the
satellite operator Avanti, says: “He’s
really, really charming and really bright.
He’s someone who in any new job will
become very industry-savvy very quickly.
He’s very intellectual.”
A former Inmarsat executive recalls:
“He was a very inspiring guy to work for,
always on a mission. The problem was,
the vision and the mission was not always
as clear to us as it might have been. He
took you with him but you weren’t always
sure where you were going.”
Another says: “He has a brain the size
of a planet but did sometimes keep hiscards close to his chest. He tended to
chop and change quite a bit.”
A kind interpretation of that could be
that the space market was changing dra-
matically. Demand from customers
shifted from voice to data. Kamikaze
competition to launch new satellites
meant prices plunged, only worsening as
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos poured billions
of dollars into their space ventures. Only
this month, Avanti was forced into a res-
cue refinancing, while OneWeb is on life
support, funded by UK taxpayers.
Pearce compares the current satellite
market to the grim days of overcapacity in
2000, but adds: “The difference today is
that the people bringing that capacity into
the market have unbelievably deep pock-
ets, or reality distortion fields around
them... that allow them to carry on rais-
ing capital until everyone else is dead.”
Inmarsat shares were about 400p
when Pearce took over in 2012. It was
sold in early 2020 to private equity inves-
tors including Apax and Warburg Pincus
for 546p a share, having at one stage been
above £11.40.
Did it hurt when he got the phone call
from his PE investors giving him the
boot? “No,” he laughs. “That’s just what
happens, that’s ‘situation normal’. Look
at the stats — I’d been at Inmarsat for 16
years, CEO for nearly 10 and I’d had a very
good, long run. I was proud to take the
company private smoothly and help it
thrive through the teeth of the pandemic.
It was time to hand over the reins.”
For years he has been talking with the
evangelist’s zeal of the important role sat-
ellite firms play in giving the world’s pop-
ulation access to the internet and data —
being “connected”, in the jargon.
Now he’s switched to another purpose.
“Long-duration storage is the magic bullet
to get us to net-zero. We have the opportu-
nity here to green the planet. And nothing
is more important than that. It doesn’t
matter if you’re connected if you can’t
breathe the air on the planet. If desertifi-
cation has destroyed our food, the planet
has become toxic — what’s the point?”
Pearce’s plans for Highview are hugely
ambitious, with the potential to boost
Britain’s place in the green energy world.
We should hope that his confidence is
well founded.Instead of having
gas sitting in a
tank, we have
wind power
stored as
liquid air
THE LIFE OF
RUPERT
PEARCE
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: March 25, 1964
Status: married, with three
children
School: Malvern College
University: Christ Church,
Oxford; Fulbright scholar at
Georgetown, Washington
First job: lawyer, Linklaters
Home: Wandsworth,
southwest London
Car: blue Audi Q7
Favourite book: any of
Michael Connelly’s Harry
Bosch thrillers
Drink: Burgundy, Puligny-
Montrachet
Film: Dirty RottenScoundrels
Music: Banners
Gadget: my Garmin
headset for the bike
Watch: Seiko — “my
grandfather’s vintage
Omega got nicked
when I was at the gym
and I’ve never been a
jewellery person since”
Charity: Comic Relief,
Sports Relief, Macmillan
Last holiday: skiing, Val
d’IsèreWORKING DAY
The newly employed
energy chief rises at 7am
and gets into his central
London office at about
9am, Tuesdays to
Thursdays, holding
meetings back-to-back
until 6pm as he sets up
the company. Mondaysand Fridays are more
commonly spent working
from home or remotely
elsewhere, but Rupert
Pearce says: “I am a
massive believer that we
still need to come
together in the office.
Those seven or eight
impromptu meetings can
be golden.”
He says he is on call
“24-7” but tries to keep
evenings free. “Often,
the best work is done
when you’re not working,”
he explains. “Solutions
come to you when you’re
not thinking about it.”DOWNTIME
Pearce is a keen skier and
cyclist. “We’re a very
outdoorsy family.”
He says it is important for
all executives and
employees to use their full
holiday entitlement as part
of a happy, healthy work
culture.Pearce studied
at Christ
Church, Oxford,
and he drives an
Audi Q7. His
favourite film is
Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels,
starring Michael
Caine and
Steve MartinLong-duration storage is the ’magic bullet’, says Pearce, now head of Highview Power, a green energy companyTOLGA AKMEN FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES