Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast features the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
203 Jeremy Leggett - Learning from a solar energy pioneer on making nature recovery bankable
A conversation with solar energy pioneer Jeremy Leggett about the nature recovery industry, the things we can learn from the solar industry, fossil fuel companies and much more. After Solarcentury, Jeremy is now working on Highland Rewilding.
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Today, we have an absolute solar energy legend joining the podcast and sharing why he is so excited about the nature recovery industry. And obviously, Region Ag is part of that. And what we can learn from the solar industry as they went from being laughed out of the room by the fossil fuel companies and government to the cheapest form without subsidies in many places. And it became highly investable and bankable. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume. And it's that we as investors, big and small, and consumers start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet. To make it easy for fans to support our work, we launched our membership community and so many of you have joined us as a member. Thank you. If our work created value for you and if you have the means, and only if you have the means, consider joining us. Find out more on gumroad.com slash investing in regen ag. That is gumroad.com slash investing in regen ag. Or find the link below. Welcome to another episode today with solar pioneer who founded Solar Century, which he started when no one, but really no one believed in solar energy or renewables for that matters. Now he's doing the same in biodiversity through highlands rewilding, betting on a market to develop in the future. So I'm very, very excited to have Jeremy Leggett here on the show today. Welcome, Jeremy. Thank you. And to start with the question, because you sold Solar Century after, not a century, but after a good run of, I think it was 20 plus years. And you've seen it all in renewables, basically. I mean, if people want to know more about that, I will put your website in the description below where you kept a blog. You kept very interesting newsletters over the years, basically battling the gigantic fossil fuel companies. And it's been fascinating to follow that over the last 15 years, I think. But you sold it. You didn't need to do this. You could have bought it. a boat or an estate, which you actually did, and basically maybe continue to write letters from there. But you decided not to do that and potentially be even more busy than you were before. Where did that drive come from? Or where did your energy come from to go at it again, but in a quite different sector?
SPEAKER_01:Well, terror, really, about climate change. And I've been a climate campaigner for more than three decades I consider myself to be such, even though, you know, nominally I'm a green businessman. I'm only a green businessman because I see it as a great vehicle for campaigning. And I could have continued after the sale of Solar Century, you know, in some renewables role, some solar role. There's lots to do still, of course. But the attraction of, you know, even if we get all the solar wind batteries EVs that we need we're still going to have to take carbon down out of the atmosphere in large quantities and we have to do it in a way that you know doesn't continue this dreadful collapse of biodiversity so that's what I thought I'll have another I'll have a go at another campaign I'm not going to go and buy a yacht and sail off somewhere and you know get bored and mortified with guilt as the world goes to hell in a handcart, I'm going to keep fighting. And so that's the motivation, Ken.
SPEAKER_00:And you could have done, I mean, you sort of, I wouldn't say repeating the playbook, but you could have done a campaign campaign, like a nonprofit approach and biodiversity seemed to be reaching a tipping point as well, both on the negative side and on the attention side, finally, luckily. But you've decided, no, I will find, found a company again to build almost an industry or to build a sector or be part of the builders in this space. Why that compared to using the exit you had to finance others or to finance some kind of public awareness campaign around biodiversity? What was the reasoning around that?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the main reason is that if we're going to solve this twin problem of climate change and biodiversity collapse, we're going to have to bring private capital to the embryonic nature recovery industry. In the same way, in the early days of solar, the key was the big financial players smelling the coffee to the extent that they started investing. I saw that. I lived through that. I was part of it with all the compadres I had in the solar industry. I thought there's an opportunity to try and really repeat that trick And it hasn't happened yet. I mean, the Green Finance Institute estimated last year that we would need tens of billions of pounds in the UK alone to hit the nature recovery targets that governments have set. And of course, now codified in the treaty that was agreed in Montreal in December, thank God. But, you know, that's an Everest. Scotland is... the figure is 20 billion pounds. So that's an Everest to climb. We're not even in the foothills. And so, you know, I figure that a company like Highlands Rewilding has the chance to lead an expeditionary force into the foothills and encourage people that ultimately this can happen, that these vast sums of money can be raised. They were raised for the solar industry. Let's repeat the trick. So that's That's my thinking.
SPEAKER_00:And so it's really, that is the playbook, how to get the enormous amounts of money available for investments in, let's say, the institutional capital institutes around the world, the big insurance companies, banks, et cetera, to start taking this seriously. You've seen it in solar. That took a while. Like, what are the crucial steps there? You say we're in the foothills or we're leading an expedition to the foothills. We're not even there yet. And what are the crucial steps to get you the level where this is an investable asset also for people working in the city of London or in New York or in Amsterdam or in Tokyo or Singapore? I mean, the large glass buildings, basically, that much of the money resides.
SPEAKER_01:Well, at one level, it's really simple. You have to come up with a business plan that they can persuade themselves is more of an opportunity than a risk. It's as simple as that. And We have to be aware that most of these folk are not amenable to the argument that the biggest risk they face is continuing climate meltdown and biodiversity collapse, which will leave them with nothing worth investing in ever again. That argument doesn't play with these folks. It should, but it doesn't. Okay. You've tried. I know. Yeah. So you have to come up with a plan. And and make a persuasive case. And I think we are really close to that in Highlands Rewilding. I'm talking currently to big financial institutions, and they are pondering actively really major investments, eight-figure investments on a continuing basis that would provide the kind of capital that would turbocharge an entity like ours, the per Yeah, absolutely. get to the point where the big institutions will say yes, but I really believe they're not far off.
SPEAKER_00:Is it different than solar? What are the main differences that you've seen compared to that
SPEAKER_01:movement? It feels the same. It smells the same. There was a period in the early noughties where you could see the financial institutions transitioning from their start-ups argument, which was, oh, get a life, man. You know, this solar rubbish is never going to be economic. You know, I heard that all the time. You know, we're not even going to listen to your case. And then all of a sudden, you know, more and more solar was appearing and the costs were going down dramatically. And you could see the financial institutions sort of looking at each other saying, hey, there could be a big opportunity here. And wondering which one was going to jump first. And, you know, then ultimately we got to the tipping point and they all started jumping. And that's when the whole thing took off. And the good folk who'd really pushed it in the early, early days, the high net worth individuals, the family offices, the foundations, you know, these, these sorts of folk that have started Highlands Rewilding off in our 50 founders. They've they were then able to say, well, terrific, you know, we helped make this happen. And I think it's going to be the same playbook again with the embryonic nature recovery industry.
SPEAKER_00:And that's in terms of differences, because of course, in solar, you could start seeing these curve, cost curve coming down. And every year there, we beat basically the estimates of the International Energy Agency, which is just hilarious if you look at those figures, how off they were. And And those cost curves just kept plummeting. So of course, people started to smell opportunity. In this case, I don't see a cost curve, like a technical cost curve plummeting as well. For sure, we get way better at restoration, regeneration, et cetera, over time. But there's also this enormous need of doing it now as soon as possible. So what are the big differences there as it's not such a technical cost curve plummeting that you could, okay, say in five years, we think it's there or in two years, we think it's there. Is this more of a... a government or national policies, like you just said, was codified. Luckily, there will be a market because you can see the writing on the horizon. Or what do you see there? Why is it so exciting? Or why are we so close, even though there might not be such a cost curve drop over the next 10 years?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think it's a combination of both. I mean, the difference now is that the governments are doing the right things. They're talking the right language on policy furniture, and they've come up collectively with this really encouraging global biodiversity treaty in montreal so with the early days of solar and renewables you know most governments the british government was a wonderful example were in the camp with the fossil fuel uh industry saying you know this is you're a rootless dreamer that's what uh that's what a minister said to me on a on a platform um early on in the solar revolution a rootless dreamer it'll never be competitive and of course they would you know we had to work really hard to persuade them to come up with the policy furniture, the feed-in tariffs and all that sort of thing. But this time, the governments are talking a really good game. And you can see that reflected already in the market. Nobody, I really mean nobody, doubts that this is coming now. The estate agents, the landowners, all the people you might think would be resistant to it are pretty much saying, hey, you know, this is inevitable. Just let's get on the train before it leaves the station. And then there's one other big, big difference, I think, and that is, you know, we now know in the rearview mirror just how evil the fossil fuel companies were in their defensive vested interests. They would say all sorts of positive things publicly, but we know what they were doing behind closed doors now it's all coming out and this is you know a very modern form of corporate evil we don't have that that incumbency defense today what we have we have an
SPEAKER_00:egg like let's say the chemical input industry is trying everything they can to derail regen and or any type of regeneration of course because their market is going to disappear if that happens so it is there but it's probably in the rest less because, yeah, how can you be against it?
SPEAKER_01:That's right. That's what I was talking about. I was talking more about the restoration space. You're quite right about big ag. But, you know, let's put it this way. Combining the two, if you think that we're not going to have rewilding and nature recovery without food production in its heart, and that's That's very much part of the highlands rewilding approach. Then that pooled incumbency is not fighting as hard or as dirty as fossil fuel people did. Well, in many cases still do, of course.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, and is there the risk that I think some ran, I don't remember the exact details, but they were good or even way too good policies in place. I think Spain was an example and some other places. where it sort of got out of hand and retrospectively things got cut, especially around subsidies, et cetera. So people got burned, like some of the early investors were too early or were getting into projects that then didn't get the backing. And so is there a risk with governments talking a lot now and then not following through or potentially starting certain things and not really finishing it and thus cutting down a market at its knees basically when it just starting to stand up.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, there's no escaping it. There is a risk. I mean, anything to do with governments is risky because they don't always say what they're going to do. And they are very amenable to, you know, incumbency arguments. That's why I'm so cautiously encouraged that things are different this time. If you look back on the solar revolution, for example, in the UK, we now know that around 2000 2010, 2011, the then government made a policy decision to kill the embryonic solar industry. The chancellor of the day, Osborne, said to the environment minister of the day, Hune, who subsequently went to prison, of course, you know, you can have the wind industry, Chris, or you can have the solar industry. You can't have both. I'm not bankrolling both. And so they elected to kill the solar industry. They massively cut the feed-in tariff with six weeks' notice, the amount of time it took to get modules from China to the UK, and most of the UK solar industry went bankrupt as a consequence. That's risk. A lot of people lost a lot of money then, as well as all the thousands of folk who lost their jobs. That can happen. I don't think it's going to happen this time. I think what's different now, apart from the nature of the kinds of evil things is that people are really scared by what's happening to the natural world, both the climate impacts that are emerging and, of course, the evidence in front of our eyes of the collapsing biodiversity. So there's too much of a critical mass of people saying, hey, if we don't do something meaningful on all this, nothing is going to matter at some point in the future.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And that argument wasn't really, I mean, it was there obviously, but it wasn't really there around the energy space at that point. I mean, now we were living through the warmest winter ever and we had the warmest summer ever in Europe, I'm saying, and some other places have the coldest. And so the extremes are extreme and it's interesting how that conversation shapes up. So let's talk a bit about Highland Rewilding and what you decided to be, let's say the first camp somewhere in the foothills or under journey to the foothills should be like what was the approach when you said okay we're we're trying to play a fundamental part in this embryonic industry of restoration and regeneration where did you start and why
SPEAKER_01:so the the first and most important thing to do is to get on a trajectory where you can see ethical profitability down the trail because that's what you have to do for your investors obviously and also if you can't do that and landowners who aren't motivated the same way you are can't see that coming, then they're not going to be amenable to changing their current, you know, mostly pretty ruinous land management practices. So that's what we've been working on. We've got a multi-tiered business plan. And obviously, we're assuming that the government's come up with some kind of regime for biodiversity uplift credits and an enhanced carbon credit regime. And that will come in down the track a few years. But in the interim, we'll hold the fort with all the other things you can do on land that improves nature rather than ruins it. So we're doing forestry, we're doing ecotourism, we're doing sustainable agriculture and eco-building, planning to do eco-building. And so it's a multi-revenue stream business model that we have with no magic bullets. And we're intending to wait five years before we take our credits to market for a number of reasons. First, you know, to give governments time to come up with sensible policy furniture. Second, so that we can prove that that we have these uplifts, rock solid, AAA rated, verifiable uplifts. They won't be huge, but they'll be standard. They'll be gold standard in terms of verifying that these uplifts are real. And that's going to be very important for making nature recovery investable or accelerating the investability of nature recovery. And that's basically our game plan. So we're science heavy. We've got a team of scientists on the two estates were working doing frontier science probably way more science than we need to do to have verifiable baselines for a policy regime but we really do want to be a world leader in showing the way with all this and we've started that work and it's super encouraging and if people don't know our first two natural capital reports I really commend them you can download them off our website and we have a world class scientific team in house, in place, literally living on the estate in the case of the co-chief scientists. And we have a fabulous chief data scientist who won an OBE for services to data science in the civil service. And you will know the importance of all that if we do a terrific job in both data gathering and data process We can achieve economies by showing verifiability with fewer and fewer feet on the ground, fewer and fewer devices hanging in trees, measuring insects and birds and all the kinds of things that we'll be doing to get our biodiversity baseline and our biodiversity uplifts measured.
SPEAKER_00:So basically, you bought two estates. I think you're in the process of potentially buying a third and brought a very heavy scientific focus to it. Plus, of course, a lot of management changes, both in the forestry and the ag side. And to really show these changes that have been happening now for a year plus and will be happening for hopefully decades. But let's say you're looking at a first five-year period. You're waiting with selling any credits. We're bringing anything to market, but relying on the other income streams the retreats the agriculture piece and the forestry to basically keep afloat or holding the fortress and making sure to wait until this sector of uplifting credits develops further matures further to basically serve you which could be earlier as well but you're taking a conservative approach like it will take at least five years for that to come so we'll plan for that and make sure we're still around in five years to bring to market what we've learned and then apply it to others which i think is the big part of this of course it doesn't shouldn't stay on two estates even three estates because scotland is very big and the rest of the uk is enormous um is that a fair um a fair summary of of the business approach you've taken until now
SPEAKER_01:completely accurate very very uh very good very good succinct summary yes
SPEAKER_00:and and does it like in case let's say it takes seven years for for a proper market for you that you're happy with to to come alive like how do you you would you need to raise more or how long can you wait basically before you need to really start selling? Like how robust is the business case without credits anytime soon?
SPEAKER_01:Well, this is for people to judge. We've got a hundred page business plan and we argue, of course we would, wouldn't we? That it's the assumptions we've made are conservative all the way through. So roughly a quarter of the revenue in the 10 year 10 years of the plan is coming from things other than natural capital. And, you know, a good few of these we can tune up if we have to wait to use the figure you did seven years instead of five. You know, we can turn up the volume on these other revenue streams. And we would, you know, we would do that in order to, as you say, hold the fort and So, yeah, we think that we're using conservative numbers. There's plenty of upside in the model, especially if we hit an updraft with providing data and land management services to other landowners who, you know, don't want to get into the kind of detail that we are and would be prepared to let us remove the pain from them and do everything for them. for a reasonable and fair win-win share of the proceeds. If we persuade a large number of landowners to do that rather than the small number that we've assumed in the plan, then we really do have a scalable model that there could be a very attractive business. Speaking now as a sort of entrepreneur, as much as an environmental campaigner, there's exponential potential in there. The
SPEAKER_00:service side of helping others to do the same of course is quite large and like on the investing the banks I know you're talking to some on the debt side like how you said we're very very close why do you we're very very close let's say on the large investor side in institutional ones are they comfortable with that five year vision like we might have to wait five plus years for the market to mature and that we're comfortable with selling credits. Is that a discussion or is that too far? What do you sense in the market at the moment in terms of long-term news?
SPEAKER_01:Let me talk about the banks and the financial institutions treading very carefully and being generic. Of course. Forgive me for that. But first of all, on the lending, yeah, we honestly think we're very close and we're hopeful of an announcement during the course of the campaign pain, we're not yet able to persuade the banks we're talking to do anything other than completely discount any revenue from natural capital. I mean, they just assume that's not going to happen, which is a very big and, I think, frankly, wrong assumption but that's the the risk aversion they have so it's we're in the game of obviously leveraging the assets we have the land the value of the land the value of the properties on the land but also crucially persuading them that we have viable revenue streams in everything other than that natural capital that's the state of play at the moment and i think it's almost
SPEAKER_00:better like it's more like if you're able to get a loan based on that completely not counting the biodiversity credits or potential revenue from that it's it like it's sort of a worst case scenario but if you're still able to if they think you're still able to pay back the loan it puts you in quite an interesting position
SPEAKER_01:yes and you know you could say what what risk are they taking really because you know at the end of the day if it all goes wrong um you the land gets sold and you hold up your hands and say look i'm sorry guys we tried really hard here but it didn't work. And now we're going to have to sell. And so, you know, they're really in from the perspective of someone like myself, there's not that much risk. But anyway, it is what it is. And of course, the natural capital will kick in. And then the whole thing will snowball once you've started. And the other thing everyone will be aware is that once you start with a financial institution crossing the line, it's easier to get the next one and the one after that. So very important day it days and weeks ahead. And then with the financial institutions, the ones we're talking to, several have said, look, this is a really great story. We do believe it's coming, but we can't quite get our heads around it yet. Come back in six months. And so we, of course, will come back in six months. But in the discussions that we've had, it's very clear that we have an interesting asset, which is the mass ownership angle of Highlands Rewilding. This is seen by everyone who we've discussed it with as an asset for a major investor rather than a liability. And the reason is politics, really, the politics of land inequality in a place like Scotland, and I think many other countries would echo this. If you're an enormous corporate and you waltz in and buy land, a vast acreage of a country and then try and operate it remotely from London or Amsterdam or Rotterdam or wherever you are. You know, this doesn't play well with local communities at all. And in Scotland, that's putting it mildly. But so we have a mass ownership model where, you know, people can become shareholders and we're actively marketing to local communities. And as you saw with our crowdfunding, It's going pretty well. And the story is not over yet. It's going to be a very interesting two months. We've already sailed past our target one month into the campaign, two months to go. And a lot of marketing ammunition we haven't even fired yet. So this is going to be a very interesting one to watch. And so the big financial institutions are telling us, yeah, that makes it more attractive for us because we're kind of, it gives us a degree of social life. The politicians are saying we really like this because, you know, it's a way for citizens to co-own this land in recovery. And, of course, the local communities tend to tell us, not universally, but they tend to people in the local communities tell us, you know, we'd much prefer to just own all the land around where we live ourselves and sometimes that happens with these wonderful community buyout projects but they're difficult to get away they rely on philanthropy and you know the second best is a mass ownership progressive company like Highlands Rewilding so we're really hopeful that we've got a model here that is broadly of appeal across the entire stakeholder base not to everyone of course you're never going to come up with that but it has appeal And the acid test for us is the Scottish Land Commission, which exists to try and repair this dire land inequality situation in Scotland. And their view of us is that we're much more part, and I quote, we're much more part of the solution than we are part of the problem.
SPEAKER_00:And is that something you learned from the renewable energy space as well? Of course, there was and is a lot of pushback on especially larger projects. projects, not in your backyard, etc. But as soon as people had ownership, were able to invest in it, were able to take a piece, I think Denmark is one of the countries and many others followed that have sort of mandatory local ownership when you do these kind of projects, a lot of the pushback disappeared. Of course, it's different if you push up a massive wind farm next to your house, or a solar, a massive solar field compared to a land in regeneration. But the same principles are at play like if you're owning even a piece of it and you share in the upside or both financially and socially and of course then a lot of the pushback should be less at least in theory is that very much on is that a lesson you learned in renewables and how are you applying like what kind of involvement or how much of the raise now is hopefully coming from smaller investors compared to the larger ones or is it symbolic because yeah a lot of money obviously isn't London and not necessarily in local towns. Unfortunately, because a lot of it has been extracted over the last centuries.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, obviously my experience in the renewals industry, it plays here, but it's also, you know, it's a question of politics. I'm a founder of the, I was a founder of the Green New Deal group in the UK back in 2008 in the wake of the financial crisis. So, You know, some of these arguments are core political arguments, if you like, if you are of a liberal persuasion. And, you know, that plays. Yeah, so is the crowdfunding token? Certainly not. We're past half a million pounds and counting. That said, of course, it's very difficult to imagine a situation where it's a major part of the total raise that we have to come up with. But it's significant way beyond the money because of the co-ownership vehicle that it provides.
SPEAKER_00:And how important is the agriculture and the food piece in, I mean, the term rewilding is used everywhere and everywhere. And some people say it's much better as a wilder food production, a wilder agriculture. It also got political very quickly, which is unfortunate. But how important is the food side in these estates? I don't know the Highlands very well in Scotland. Like how crucial is that? Or is it like after forestry still relevant? I know the sheep industry is quite large, but also very degradive until now. What's the food piece and the agriculture piece as you've seen now in the estates that you're working on?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's vital because we have to have community in the heart of what we're doing and food production has to be part of that. So our second estate, Beldorny, is where the rubber hits the road here. This is 80% grassland on the estate and very degraded when we bought it it was massively overgrazed by sheep and cattle but now we we have cattle on the estate we're doing rotational grazing our co-chiefs of regenerative agriculture are experts on this from grampian graziers and it's fascinating to watch even early impact we're not even a year into this now but there are areas where you can see species of returning to the tired grasslands. And it's easy to imagine carbon going in greater quantities down into the soil. Of course, we're going to be measuring all this. We have done the baseline already, and that's in our second report. But in a few years' time, the results are going to be utterly fascinating as the impacts of moving the cattle around become clear, breaking up the sward just enough not too much getting carbon in the poo of the cows down into the ground and you know we will measure all this and we have great hopes of it and it's very good food production and we'll be doing a whole range of other stuff across regenerative agriculture including high value horticulture as we get into the swing of things after this second fund And
SPEAKER_00:how... I mean, why hasn't that been done before? In a sense, the regenerative grazing movement has been going strong for quite a few decades. I can't imagine it hasn't hit Scotland yet. And what has kept that, you think, to hit more estates or more people to change the management? Because it seems like you don't need yet. I mean, it's a very nice extra, a very nice cherry on the cake. Obviously, if you get the soil carbon credits the biodiversity credits, et cetera. But there's also a very simple business case in lower costs, higher quality meat or higher quality other produce. Why hasn't that taken off yet? You think in the estates, why was it you or your team introducing that sort of new a year plus ago and thus seeing these quite significant results in terms of biodiversity and grassland management?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I don't know. I mean, I think obviously the subsidies have been important because the subsidies have encouraged behaviour other than this. And it's only been relatively recently that the government has said to the farming community, guys, look, this is going to have to change. We're not going to give you subsidies for the things we were before. There's going to be a system change in economic rewards for land management. So that's all relatively new. But our guys, Grampian Graziers, Nicky and James the Oxal, they have been experts in this for a number of years and practitioners on different farms. And they're not alone. There are other folk in Scotland pursuing regenerative techniques in this way. But this is the one area where my expertise is wafer thin. I come to this as a real newcomer and I'm on steep learning curves. So I'm not going to have terribly coherent answers as to why this particular thing hasn't It doesn't happen faster. It does, like so much of the debates that we have about climate and biodiversity, it all seems so blindingly obvious. But why didn't it happen earlier? That's a much more complex question. And much of the answer probably depends on neuroscience as much as history.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, of course. And looking from, let's say, the side, from the outside a bit in terms of your renewable energy experience and just looking at the ag piece, what do you think investors, but also practitioners in general, could learn or should learn about? Because we talk often about how to make it bankable, et cetera, et cetera. And it's a nice term, but doing it or getting institutional capital into the space has been, it's starting to speed up, but has been slow because of a lot of different reasons. What do you think we, just looking at the food or ag piece specifically, should learn from the solar space of, okay, how do you get these larger institutional players really, really committed to it and starting to put money to work and not just talking about it, which they've been doing until now?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's coherent and holistic strategy. And if you have governments that can do holistic strategy and keep going with policies with a long-term plan And then, of course, you're going to do much better than the kind of slightly haphazard approach that many governments tend to take. And in renewables, the disasters for many investors came because of capricious changes in policy from government. So we really do have to try and avoid those scenarios in nature recovery going forward. And as I said earlier, I'm more than cautiously optimistic that we will. simply because, you know, to be fair to governments, if the incumbency and renewables came along and said, you know, this is going to be bad, you're going to strand hundreds of billions of assets in fossil fuels, it's going to be a disaster. The pension funds are massively overweight in fossil fuels. If you accelerate these renewables too fast, you will bring down the London stock market. You know, this is the kind of thing they were saying, these lobbyists from fossil fuel. And so there won't be those kinds of arguments this time. There can't be. I mean, you know, it's not credible in any way. People are too scared of the collapse of the insect population and the devastating rollout of climate impacts. So I think we have the chance for policy coherence and continuity. And let me tell you an anecdote that it is the kind of thing that I draw my encouragement from. We had a workshop in our facility at Ardachian Bun Lloyd with the Cairngorm National Park Authority and a few other Confederates. Obviously, we're working with the other organizations that want to see coherent policy furniture like us. It was a good workshop. It was all day and a couple of government officials that were invited along and then the Next day, I had an email from Nature Scott, the government agency. And we heard about your workshop. Can we come to Bundle 8 and have a good old tour and then discuss all these things with you and your team? And I said, of course you can. You're welcome. How many are coming and when do you want to come? Answer, 30 next week. And, you know, wow. It's like that from the history of renewables. And so they altered And my goodness me, what a fascinating day it was. And it becomes completely clear that, you know, there are a lot of government officials, people of talent and integrity, who are working very hard behind closed doors on a coherent policy regime, backed by, you know, a government with ministers saying all the right things at the moment. So reasons to be cheerful, number one, you know, very different from the history of renewables.
SPEAKER_00:And what would you tell, obviously without giving investment advice, but what would you tell investors where to look or where to dig a bit deeper or which direction, like what's exciting to you? Is it the tech part? Is it the land part? Is it the forestry part? Or maybe the water part? I mean, the new estate you hope to buy, there's going to be some very interesting blue carbon pieces. Like what is exciting? If we would do, I always say, if we do this, in a theater and the room is full of investor people. We do this in the center of London, for instance, in a nice one. And what would be your main message? Like when they walk out that, okay, tomorrow morning, start working on this or start looking into this or start digging a bit deeper here and there. What would be your main message?
SPEAKER_01:Well, um, you've just pretty much summarized it. You look for, you look for variety, you look for resilience in the business model. Um, and you, you, you, you listed some of the things and there are more. So the Highlands Rewilding business model, at the risk of sounding like a salesman, has resilience built into it because of the multiplicity of the revenue streams and the diversity of the terrains where we're operating, plus, of course, this data manipulation and processing component. So those are the things I would advocate looking for. And your next question then is, okay, well, you know, how many can for investment. And here, this is a bit of a problem. It's like there was a period with solar when the investors were saying, okay, we're persuaded. We've put together a WeFund and we're now going to start investing. Where do we invest? And you look around and there aren't that many good, there weren't that many really good propositions. And it's the Same this time, but it's a quality problem. You know, that disappears very quickly when it becomes clear that the investment is starting to happen. So, you know, we have to just sort of break out of the catch-22 to a terrain where we have a multiplicity of good investment plays, of which Highlands Rewilding is, you know, just one. And the investors have crossed the divide and are now persuaded that this is going to be a big growth story that they have to find a place in
SPEAKER_00:and it really feels like that's the developer phase like how do you find the developers that are gonna the project developers that are gonna create these projects and make them and bundle them nicely or present them nicely so it's not it doesn't feel too risky or doesn't feel too weird or too strange or too different from other things people have invested in but yeah you need you need 50 million, 100 million, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, we're not there yet, but those kind of investable, bankable projects need to be developed in a language that makes sense for big banks and the like. And what would you do if you would be in charge? I mean, I can guess a lot in Scotland, but maybe also outside. If you'd be in charge of a£1 billion sterling investment portfolio tomorrow morning and you had to put it to work, what would be your priority areas, what would be your first steps if you would be on the investor side?
SPEAKER_01:If it were a billion pounds, I'd be struggling, wouldn't I? Yeah, a bit
SPEAKER_00:of time. It doesn't need to be tomorrow to put to work all in one day, obviously. It can be a longer term. Maybe you fund a lot of project developers to create the deal flow for you or the pipeline.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I would be looking at scattering a lot of seeds across the embryonic industry, for sure. That would be a good and obvious place to start. And, you know, we're also talking about land, so I I would look at land acquisitions with a sum of money like that. That would be transformative. And I think it's a bit of a straw man because we need to get from the stage where we are at the moment where there are millions coming into the embryonic industry through the tens of millions. We need to get into the foothills first before we can say sensible things about what happens further up Mount Everest.
SPEAKER_00:So it would be almost too much, you would say. So you might put part of it in solar to generate returns and then part of it invest. And when the sector is more ready, you can switch it or you can put it to work in biodiversity.
SPEAKER_01:And in Scotland, Scotland is a big country, of course. But every year there are only 20 or so of these tracts of land that come on the market. So, you know, I think last year it was something north of 200 million total acquisition of land. So you see the enormity of what a billion pound fund would have to do if it were just focused on the UK, which is why so many of the funds that are being set up are focused on large tracts of land. land in the developing world.
SPEAKER_00:And are you, like you chose specifically Scotland, are you interested in places, I don't know, Brazil or other places, let's say, where things grow faster, where seasons are longer, where... Well, first... Is that interesting to you, or if we fix it here, we can apply it anywhere?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, it's a livable planet, so of course it's interesting, but not commercially. I mean, you know, we have to focus. Scotland's a great place to start. There are all sorts of terrains up here where very clearly there's huge potential for biodiversity and carbon uplift, you know, whether we're talking about peat or restoring the temperate rainforests on the West Coast or
SPEAKER_00:arable rivers. The peat piece was massive in the first report, I remember, right? Was that a surprise?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was. It was. But I think, you know, it's a frontier and scientists are learning lots all the time on it So there's so much potential in Scotland, and we want to have a crack at helping to lead the way here first. And if it then turns out that there's an opportunity to go further afield, then, of course, we will look at that. We will be a scaling company in every sense of that
SPEAKER_00:word. And... If you had a magic wand and could change one thing overnight in this space or any space, honestly, could also be let the evil fossil fuel companies disappear or input companies. What would you do if you could change one thing, but one thing only overnight?
SPEAKER_01:I think it would be a pioneering financial institution saying to a company like Highlands Rewilding about nature recovery, okay, we get it. We've got an enormous endowment, and we are going to commit to a program of work with you where we'll turbocharge you through the first scaling and do so with the view to multitask. multiple investments of eight figures going forward as you acquire more land. So we're in for the long haul. We're in for you. We're breaking the mold, and we're going to hope other financial institutions will follow in our wake. That would be a game changer. A big name plus significant ticket, let's say. Yes. That's what, obviously, I'm living in hopes of without, for a moment, taking away the importance and achievements of, you know, the founding funders in Highlands Rewilding who've got us so far, so quickly with, quotes, only, in inverted commas,£7.6 million of equity invested.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, which is nothing and a lot of money at the same time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, both at the same time.
SPEAKER_00:And any other final lessons? If you look now at the solar, if you wouldn't be doing this, what would you be doing in solar?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the thing is the people angle. And here, I was outrageously lucky in solar century. It was a magnet for super talented people. And so it's proving to be with Highlands Rewilding if you just look at the bios of some of the people that are gravitating the project that's just wonderful to see and of course you know a good few of them are really young it's their first jobs and they're doing really well and you know how cool is that that's that's what we need and that's what people like that need they need jobs with hope red with hope. And this is how we fashion a survival reflex in our troubled world, by people gravitating to projects that are candles for hope and investors coming with them.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's a perfect place to end this conversation. Thank you so much, Jeremy, for coming on here, obviously, and taking the time. And for all that you do, I'll make sure to put all the links below in the description and we'll be following this over time, I'm sure. So thank you so much for your time today and good luck over the next weeks, which are very, very fundamental and very exciting and scary at the same time, I can imagine.
SPEAKER_01:My pleasure. Thank you very much, Kurt.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks again, and see you next time.
