Introducing Alternative Currents: the people and ideas powering the energy transition
Gigawatts installed. Billions invested. Records broken and targets raised.
The story of the energy transition is usually told through numbers. But behind every turbine, every solar panel and every grid connection, there are people. Curious, determined, sometimes unconventional people who decided that the world needed to change and got on with changing it.
From eccentric grassroots innovators and community projects to Oxford physicists quietly rewriting what solar power can do, Alternative Currents has been developed to span the full spectrum of the energy transition. The series finds stories at the edges of what’s possible, in the belief that today’s fringe ideas have a habit of becoming tomorrow’s mainstream technologies. And at the heart of every story, there’s always a person worth knowing about.
What is Alternative Currents?
Alternative Currents is a content series produced in partnership with Positive News: the award-winning magazine dedicated to reporting on what’s going right in the world. Together, we’re telling the human stories of the energy transition: the innovators, communities and organisations shaping the future of renewables from the ground up.
The series sits at the heart of TH’s Good Energy Recruitment mission. We’ve always believed that good energy starts with good people, and Alternative Currents is our way of celebrating exactly that. Not the megawatts. The people behind them. Positive News was a natural partner for this series. As an independent publication with a global audience and a genuine commitment to solutions-focused journalism, they share our belief that the energy transition deserves to be told as a story of human ingenuity and purpose – not just statistics.
“Partnering with Positive News on Alternative Currents was an easy decision to make,” says our MD Fiona McRae. “Of course projects and targets and gigawatts are important, but making all of that happen are people. We believe in celebrating every person who’s helping drive the transition to clean energy, and that’s what this series is for. It gives us a platform to tell these stories properly, with a partner who shares our values and beliefs. It’s been fantastic working with Positive News and we can’t wait to see the rest of the articles in the series.”
The series so far
Alternative Currents launched in late 2025 and has so far published three pieces, each finding good energy in a different corner of the renewables world.
Solar, reimagined
The first piece introduced two remarkable figures working at the frontier of solar technology. Jo Fleming, managing director of Corrie Energy, spent seven years and over a million pounds developing the Latitude40: a sunflower-inspired solar tracker that follows the arc of the sun and could deliver a 30% increase in output for solar installations across the northern latitudes. Starting with prototypes made from biscuit tins in a back garden, Fleming and his team are now on the cusp of full commercial rollout.
The second profile featured Henry Snaith, the Oxford physicist whose work on perovskite solar cells has quietly transformed what solar power can do and where it can go. By stacking layers of perovskite-based photovoltaic material together, each absorbing a different section of the solar spectrum, his team achieved efficiency rates matching the best recorded by silicon, opening the door to solar that can be applied as a coating to almost any surface. A commercial company, Oxford PV, has since been spun off to bring the technology to market.
Two very different approaches, one rooted in elegant mechanical engineering, the other in materials science, united by the same driving question: how do we get more from the sun?
Read Solar, reimagined: meet the bright minds pushing it into the future
The energy inside: three people powering the green transition
The second piece turned its attention from technology to the people who deliver it at project level. These are the contractors and specialists who spend weeks offshore and away from home to keep the energy transition moving.
Mike Amos is an offshore paramedic whose base is on the vessels working on some of the world’s largest wind farms, from the South China Sea to Dogger Bank. Grzegorz Kędzierski is an offshore wind commissioning engineer who has worked everywhere from the Mekong delta to Japan – and who spent his savings not on a house, but on an EA300 acrobatic aircraft, in which he now trains for national aerobatics competitions. And Chris Akehurst oversees the heavy-lift turbine foundation installations that turn offshore wind plans into physical reality, coordinating teams of up to 25 nationalities on vessels far from shore.
Three lives shaped by the energy transition in ways that go far beyond a job description. Three reminders that the people behind the structures are extraordinary.
Read The energy inside: three people powering the green transition
Good energy, closer to home
The most recent piece in the series celebrates a different kind of energy story. It’s happening not at grid scale, but at grassroots level through community organisations and non-profits.
In east London, Emergent Energy has installed solar across 28 blocks of council housing in Hackney, benefiting 800 residents and cutting their energy bills by around 15%. And it’s delivered with zero government funding, with the system paying for itself entirely through electricity sales.
People Owned Power is helping neighbours across the country cut their reliance on mains electricity by up to 80%, with some homes generating more than they consume. Repowering London has supported 12 local community groups to form community benefit societies and own their own solar generation. And OffshoreWind4Kids, a TH partner operating across more than 20 countries, is inspiring the next generation of renewables professionals while they’re still in school.
These are stories of ordinary people forming communities and generating extraordinary amounts of good energy. Things you love to see.
