PracticeEnergyLab

DisciplineProposition development

OperatorJames Rees

Experience26 years in sector

Index · 2026 / 01

Growth for energy companies, built into the proposition.

EnergyLab is a commercial practice for the energy sector - suppliers, platforms and services businesses. I design the propositions that unlock growth, and everything that makes them real: pricing, regulation, product and go-to-market. 26 years in UK energy, most recently four years at Good Energy.

Propositions customers choose, regulators approve, and the P&L adds up.

I stay embedded until the proposition is launched, billed and defended - not handed over in a deck.

See selected work ↗ Read the writing ↗

Track record 26 years in UK energy · Good Energy · Drax · Opus Energy · British Gas Business · CGI

26 years, five operators Good Energy Drax Opus Energy British Gas Business CGI

Pricing and propositions leadership through the energy crisis, at a supplier that stayed solvent while ~30 exited the market.

Client testimonial

Will Stratton Head of Business Strategy,
Performance & Change
Ecotricity

“James combined technical depth with strategic breadth and gave our team the confidence to execute.”

What stood out most was his ability to adapt his style to the audience. He could dive into the technical detail with specialists while communicating the strategic implications clearly and credibly to senior executives. That meant the whole organisation stayed aligned and engaged throughout the work.

01 / The problem

Most energy growth problems are not strategy problems. They are translation problems.

Between commercial ambition, regulatory constraint, product reality, and the spreadsheet that has to add up. EnergyLab exists at that intersection.

The engagement is small, senior and embedded. No analyst pyramid. No 80-page deck. When a product has stalled or sales are sliding, I find the real constraint, and either hand you the plan to unblock it or build it myself - embedded with your team for as long as it takes.

02 / What I do

Proposition development, end to end.

I build propositions that grow an energy company's book and get them live in market - not a strategy deck that stalls. From the first evidence to launch, I own the answer until it lands.

One discipline, three stages

01 Evidence

Market and TAM sizing, customer research, competitor and pricing benchmarking, and concept testing. Know the proposition will land before you commit to building it.

02 Design Pricing · Specialism

The proposition itself: pricing and tariff architecture, subscription and energy-as-a-service models, flexibility services, and finance-backed offers that remove the upfront-cost barrier. Built to be chosen, billed and defended.

03 Make it real

Regulation and compliance, product and platforms, partnerships and channels, and go-to-market. Launched, not just designed.

See full scope ↗

03 / How it worked

Two ways of working.

Fixed scope

The Proposition Diagnostic.

A two-week, fixed-scope piece. It located where growth was really blocked, and framed the single proposition worth building next - tested against margin, regulator, customer and operations.

It ended with a decision the board could act on, and a costed plan to build it.

Retained

Retained advisory.

Senior commercial and proposition oversight on an ongoing basis - from light-touch access through to embedded delivery for a launch or repricing programme.

Scoped to the work in hand.

04 / Selected work

Propositions I've led
across 26 years.

EnergyLab launched in 2026 and is now closed to new work. Client work is under NDA. What follows is a selection of programmes I led at previous employers.

01ProgrammeEaaS subscription

Propositions · Energy services

An end-to-end energy-as-a-service subscription - with EdenLab.

Good Energy · 2025 · Director of Product & Propositions

Partnered with proposition agency EdenLab on a ten-week programme to design a scalable energy-as-a-service subscription. Customer research, financial modelling, market and TAM analysis, prototype testing on paid social - plus an FCA-accredited consumer-finance framework to remove the upfront cost barrier on heat pumps, solar and storage. A validated proposition and quantified growth platform, with a defined roadmap to launch.

02ProgrammeHourly Match Credit

Propositions · Licence-exempt supply

Hourly Match Credit - half-hourly matching under licence-exempt supply.

Good Energy · 2025 · Director of Product & Propositions

Designed and launched Hourly Match Credit - a pooled commercial model using the licence-exempt supply framework to match renewable generators with supply customers at a half-hourly level. Blended SaaS and in-house build to balance time-to-market with capex risk. Concept to market in six months.

03ProgrammeEnergy crisis

Pricing · Supplier

Tariff leadership through the UK energy crisis.

Good Energy · 2021–22 · Commercial & Innovation PM → Head of Product & Propositions

Led pricing for domestic and business tariffs at a time when approximately 30 UK suppliers exited the market. Daily commercial discipline, close alignment with CEO and CFO, and translation of volatile wholesale costs into retail prices that kept the business solvent and customers fairly treated.

04ProgrammeSmart Export

Pricing & propositions · Supplier

Smart Export - moving FIT customers from deemed to smart-metered export.

Good Energy · 2022–23 · Director of Product & Propositions

Migrated Good Energy's Feed-in Tariff customers from deemed to smart-metered export payments, unlocking embedded benefit revenue. Inherited a stalled programme; restructured the vendor approach and built an in-house meter administration dashboard. Among the first FIT administrators in the UK to operationalise smart export at scale.

Current practice - under NDA

Recent EnergyLab engagements, described in capability terms.
Clients are confidential.

CapabilityProposition development

When a proposition pipeline stalls, the idea is rarely the problem. It's the waterfall sign-off and the governance nobody wants to own. I rebuild the process around outcomes, strip out the steps that add delay not value, and leave the team running it after I've gone.

CapabilityLicence-exempt supply

Licence-exempt supply is talked about more than it's understood. I size the real opportunity - which regulatory modifications change the economics, how half-hourly matching drives them, and whether the unit economics make a sound business case. You get the number and the reasoning, not the hype.

CapabilityInvestor readiness

Founders and new entrants raising capital: I build the commercial spine investors test - the integrated unit economics, the lifetime-value model, the market sizing and the moat - so the story stands up in the room, not just on the page.

05 / How I work

From constraint, to launch - in four moves.

The first two moves - Locate and Frame - are the Proposition Diagnostic.

01 · Locate

Find the constraint

One week. Where is growth blocked - commercial, regulatory, product, pricing, or translation? Most diagnoses are wrong on the first read.

02 · Frame

Frame the bet

The smallest, sharpest version of the move worth making. Tested against margin, regulator, customer and operations - not just the slide deck.

03 · Build

Design the answer

Pricing models, proposition architecture, partner terms, GTM motion. Built to be operated, not just admired.

04 · Launch

Hand it over

Embedded with your team until it is launched, billed and defended. No "implementation phase" sold separately.

06 / Featured writing

Writing on energy, plainly.

Featured piece

Published26 May 2026 TopicTariff catalogue · Data FormatLong-read · 8 min First onLinkedIn

The signals hiding in a UK energy dataset.

Eight years of UK domestic tariff data, pulled from Kraken's public APIs. Three findings about Octopus, EDF, and what the catalogue says that the suppliers don't.

Read the piece →

Also on LinkedIn ↗

More writing 30 Jun 2026 Feed-in Tariff · Solar The forgotten generation: what half a million solar customers are missing out on. → 9 Jun 2026 EV charging · Propositions Is a public EV charge point closer to a gym membership or a mobile network? → 22 Apr 2026 Licence-exempt supply · P442 Licence-exempt supply & P442 - the competitive landscape has shifted. →

See all writing →

07 / Frequent questions

Questions,
answered.

How was EnergyLab different from a strategy consultancy?

No analyst pyramid, no benchmark slides, no 12-week diagnostic. One senior operator, embedded with the team, owning the answer until it landed. The output was a decision and the artefacts to execute it.

Who did you work with?

Energy suppliers first, then energy SaaS platforms and energy-services businesses. The common thread was commercial complexity at the intersection of pricing, regulation and proposition.

What did a typical engagement look like?

Most engagements started with the Proposition Diagnostic - a two-week, fixed-scope piece that located the real constraint and framed the next proposition. From there, either a build engagement or retained advisory across a quarter or longer.

How were confidentiality and conflicts handled?

Single-operator practice with clear non-compete terms per engagement, and conflicts declared before any work was accepted. Client work is under NDA - which is why the proof here is career track record and published thinking.

Did you really do all of this yourself?

The senior thinking, scoping and ownership of the engagement - yes. Where a project genuinely needs specialist help (market research, proposition specialists, FCA finance partners, regulatory counsel, technical SaaS partners), I bring them in by category, with a clear commercial structure that you see and approve. Lean by default; assembled when the scope requires it.

08 / Status

EnergyLab is closed to new work.

EnergyLab is closed to new client work and is not taking enquiries. The writing and research here remain available to read.

Read the writing ↗

Directjames@energylab.ltd LinkedIn/in/jamesreesuk