The biggest net-zero challenge of the next decade is electrification: switching our heating and transport over to running on green electricity. Between them, electricity, heat and transport make up more than half of the UK’s carbon emissions and reducing these will be crucial to tackling climate change.

To do this, we’ll need to make changes to our everyday lives: how we heat our homes, how we use and conserve energy and how we travel to and from where we live. The UK is currently falling badly behind on these changes compared to the US and Europe: how do we speed up the shift? 

We gathered experts from policy, government and industry to explore how a Labour government could accelerate the transition to using green electricity in our homes.

Labour has announced five missions to focus their plans for government. But how can this approach be turned into reality to solve some of the UK's biggest societal challenges? What lessons can be learned from the mission-driven approaches applied elsewhere to make a mission-driven government as effective as possible?

At Nesta, we take a mission-driven approach to solving some of society's biggest problems, with the aim of creating a society that gives people a fairer start, healthier lives and a sustainable future. Our recently launched policy project, UK 2040 Options, offers policymakers the opportunity to think ambitiously together about the future we want to create - and the different pathways government could take to achieve change.

We’re convening experts from across the policy and government landscape to explore how a mission-driven approach could lead a future government to future successes.

Five years ago, loneliness was a major focus across the UK. How can we make it so again?

Deputy Director for Nesta’s healthy life mission, Lauren Bowes Byatt, and Head of Policy at the Red Cross, Olivia Field, discuss the government's loneliness strategy and the challenges that lie ahead.

Julie James, Minister for Climate Change for the Welsh government joined Nesta's Andy Regan to discuss transitioning Welsh homes to net zero.

In this special live episode, Nesta's Chief Executive, Ravi Gurumurthy speaks to Chris Blattman, Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The University of Chicago’s Pearson Institute. They discuss Chris’s new book, Why We Fight, and how social science can help us understand conflict.

Recorded in January 2022, Nesta's Chief Executive, Ravi Gurumurthy speaks to the CEO of the energy regulator Ofgem, Jonathan Brearley, about the long term questions: how we get to net zero and what our energy system will look like in the future.

Have you ever wondered how Wikipedia makes sure its information is accurate? And why don't other sites use this business model to for their content? Join Nesta's CEO Ravi Gurumurthy as he speaks to the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, about building online communities and avoiding the spread of misinformation.

In this episode of The Mission podcast, Ravi speaks to William Isaac, a Research Scientist at DeepMind, a company that researches and builds safe AI systems. William works on fairness and governance of AI systems and in this episode he discusses the ethics around facial recognition, Instagram and algorithmic bias in the criminal justice system.  

We're back! In the first episode of 2022, Nesta's CEO Ravi Gurumurthy speaks to Indra Nooyi, former chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo. During her time at PepsiCo, Indra steered the company towards healthier products and reinvented its environmental profile.

Our first episode of the Nest on 1st December was a conversation between Nesta’s Oliver Zanetti and Vattenfall’s Head of Customer Experience, Bindi Patel. This conversation centred around the role of heat networks in low carbon heating and their contribution to meeting net-zero by 2050.