Business
Rewiring Britain for an Era of Clean Energy
In a career spanning more than 30 years, John Pettigrew has seen big changes in the electricity industry. He started out in 1991, working to introduce natural gas-fired power plants to the grid, gradually replacing polluting coal plants. .
Now, once again, he is managing a tectonic shift to an electrified economy that runs on renewable energy like wind and solar power. But these sources of power generation are far trickier to manage than their coal and gas predecessors.
“Effectively, what we’re doing is reconfiguring the whole network,” said Mr. Pettigrew, chief executive of National Grid, which owns and operates the high-voltage electricity grid in England and Wales.
Mr. Pettigrew was emerging from a tunnel nearly 20 miles long that National Grid has bored deep underground at a cost of about 1 billion pounds (about $1.3 billion). The shaft, which workers ride through on bicycles, will carry new cables to feed the power-hungry offices and residential communities of London.
Mr. Pettigrew and his company are in the spotlight these days. The Labour Party government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, which came to power in July, is taking a close interest in the electric power system, which it sees as a primary vehicle for delivering political and economic goals.
A more robust, versatile grid will be crucial not only for tackling climate change but for securing Britain’s place on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence, which requires vast amounts of power to run data centers.
The government aims for 95 percent of Britain’s electricity to come from what it calls “clean” sources like wind and nuclear by the end of the decade, up from about 60 percent in 2023. At the same time, demand for electric power is expected to surge.
“We haven’t started to think about how seriously we need to invest in our core infrastructures for the resilience of our economy in a digital world,” Dieter Helm, a professor of economic policy at the University of Oxford, said in a recent podcast.
The price tag for an electricity system that can handle such changes is around £40 billion a year from 2025 to 2030, according to the government. National Grid alone has filed documents with regulators to spend as much as £35 billion over five years.
National Grid was founded in 1990 when the Central Electricity Generating Board, which managed the power network in England and Wales, was broken up in an era of privatization. (The company, which is listed in London, also has a large business managing power networks in the United States.) Mr. Pettigrew has run National Grid for nearly a decade, but he may be facing his greatest challenge, industry experts say.
“I think there’s a big question about how can they build rapidly enough all this new infrastructure at the same time as maintaining the same standards,” said Edgar Goddard, a former National Grid executive and now a director of EPNC Energy, a consulting firm.
An electrified economy will require a highly reliable grid for a host of reasons, including national security, analysts say. At the same time, critics of renewable energy say that relying on sources of power like wind and solar, which are by their nature variable, creates new challenges for the system.
On April 2, a parliamentary hearing on the Heathrow outage became a venue for executives from the airport and power companies politely dodging blame. Electricity executives said that there was sufficient power available. Alice Delahunty, National Grid’s president for transmission and a key aide to Mr. Pettigrew, conceded that the fast-changing demands being made of the power system called for a careful rethinking about it’s resilience.
Britain’s high-voltage network, like those of other countries, used to be relatively simple, bringing electricity from large generating plants — often near where the coal burned in them was mined — to London and other cities.
Now Mr. Pettigrew is extending National Grid’s tentacles toward the coasts, sometimes through scenic areas, to capture new sources of electricity like the giant offshore wind farms now being built in the North Sea.
He also must make sure the system can carry a lot more power.
Demand for electricity, which has been sluggish in recent years, is expected to double in the coming decades as more drivers take the wheel of electric vehicles and data centers spring up to handle everything from financial services to artificial intelligence.
There is already a long line of wind farms, battery storage facilities and data centers waiting to hook up to the grid — sometimes with increasing frustration. “Their connections process is very poor,” James Basden, a founder of a power storage company called Zenobe Energy, said about the large power operators.
A small industry has sprung up to advise companies on how to navigate the gauntlet of securing access to the grid. “We’re seeing huge demand,” said Simon Gallagher, managing director of UK Network Services, one of those firms.
The government is betting that installing swaths of wind turbines — both on land and in the seas off Britain’s coasts — as well as thousands of miles of high-voltage cables will attract investment, nurture clean tech jobs and reduce the country’s vulnerability to price swings in energy like those that occurred after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine that led to reduced supplies of natural gas.
Since that invasion, high energy costs have been a major issue in Britain and across Europe, where governments have been forced to spend heavily to help households pay their bills.
Some analysts, though, say the huge costs of installing a new energy system may at least partly cancel out the low running costs of wind and solar. “There’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built and that’s going to be paid either by taxes or electricity prices,” said Chris Wilkinson, a senior analyst at Rystad Energy, a consulting firm.
Much is at stake for Britain and the wider clean energy industry. If the government’s ambitions prove unrealistic, that could be a blow to the industry, which is already under fire from the Trump administration in the United States.
It certainly won’t be easy to rewire Britain. National Grid is working on 17 large power projects. Some of the schemes involve laying cables for miles offshore to transfer electricity from clusters of wind farms planned for Scottish waters to consumers in England.
Others involve new power lines marching through rural areas on enormous pylons — a prospect that riles up local residents against both the government and National Grid.
The government is taking advantage of its large majority in Parliament to push through legislation curbing the options of opponents of power projects to pursue what it recently called “meritless cases” in court. The government is also planning to offer up to £2500 in compensation over 10 years to people living near the new pylons.
It often takes many years to push projects through the planning system in Britain. Mr. Pettigrew says that process needs to speed up so that Britain can meet its green energy goals.
To achieve anything close to the government’s targets will require an abrupt change in Britain’s leisurely pace of building infrastructure. Offshore wind capacity, for instance, will need to roughly triple. To bring this clean power to consumers will require adding around 3,400 miles of new power lines to the grid, about twice as much as was constructed in the previous decade.
“The way I would describe it is that everybody has to play their part perfectly over the next five years,” Mr. Pettigrew said.
Television City, one of the most famous studios in the entertainment industry where generations of TV shows have been created, is expected to hit the market again as its owner grapples with debt.
It’s the latest sign of distress in Hollywood as the film and TV industry struggles from a sharp falloff in production activity across Southern California.
Television City’s owner, Hackman Capital Partners, is already in the process of selling the historic Radford Studio Center, which gave L.A.’s Studio City neighborhood its name. Hackman defaulted on a $1.1-billion mortgage in January and investment bank Goldman Sachs took over the property, which is now escrow for a sale to Netflix.
The sprawling Television City property is one of the most desirable locations in Los Angeles, sharing fences with the Original Farmers Market and the luxury Grove outdoor shopping center, each of which attracts millions of visitors every year.
If the studio at Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue where “American Idol,” “All in the Family” and scores of other shows were filmed becomes available as expected, the owners of the Grove and the Farmers Market would be among the likely contenders for the property for potential expansion of their businesses, said sources familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment.
Grove owner Rick Caruso was among the bidders for Television City, formerly known as CBS Television City, last time it was on the market and could emerge as a possible bidder.
The highest bid when broadcaster CBS sold the studio in 2019 came from Hackman Capital Partners, an international movie studio operator and commercial property landlord that paid $750 million for the 25-acre site that is near Hollywood, Beverly Hills and and the Sunset Strip.
Hackman Capital’s plan to recoup its investment included continuing to operate Television City as a studio for rent while adding new revenue-generating features.
Last year the city approved Hackman Capital’s $1-billion plan to add 980,000 square feet of offices, sound stages, production facilities and retail space.
The original studio designed by famed Los Angeles architect William Pereira erected in 1952 has city landmark protections, but newer structures on the property do not and there are acres of surface parking that could be converted to other uses.
Both Caruso and Farmers Market owners A.F. Gilmore have sued to limit the planned expansion of the studio, calling it a “massively scaled” development that “would overwhelm, disrupt, and forever transform the community.”
The debate over the development has played out amid a serious downturn in the region’s entertainment industry, with studios shifting film and television production to Georgia, New Mexico and other out-of-state locations.
L.A.’s entertainment industry also suffered a series of blows including the COVID-19 shutdown, strikes by writers and directors in 2023 and cutbacks at studios that reduced demand for sound stages.
A group of Hackman Capital’s lenders led by Deutsche Bank filed a notice of default last month, saying they’re owed more than $357 million. Hackman Capital is still trying to renegotiate its debt.
“The studio market is evolving, and the financing environment for studio assets remains complex,” Chief Executive Michael Hackman said in a statement. “We are engaged in active discussions with our lending partners and are carefully evaluating all of the alternatives.”
A person familiar with the process but not authorized to speak about it publicly said Hackman Capital will be hard-pressed to pay its debt in light of challenges facing the industry. The notice of default is “the baby step to put Television City in play” for new buyers, the source said, “and it is in play.”
Already in play is Manhattan Beach Studios, another Hackman Capital property encumbered by a $240-million loan from Deutsche Bank that the lender is in the process of selling. A buyer could foreclose on the property and potentially change its use to advanced manufacturing such as aerospace or defense, which is in high demand in Southern California.
Brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, which is managing the sale, emphasized in marketing materials that the 22-acre site has “significant available power capacity” and “offers flexible uses” on “some of the most irreplaceable underlying land in the South Bay.”
After showing worryingly weak early interest, World Cup fans showed up at the last minute to boost Los Angeles hotel occupancy and room rates.
Ahead of the last tournament game in Los Angeles is on Friday, hotels popular with soccer fans said they were full and charging higher rates.
In early May, the American Hotel and Lodging Assn. reported a lack of hotel bookings just a month shy of the games.
About 80% of respondents said hotel bookings were below initial expectations, and more than 65% of L.A. respondents said bookings were lower than a typical summer. In the report, half of the L.A. hotel respondents said they assumed that visa barriers and distance from venues were contributing to the low early bookings.
The turnout that many were concerned had also been hurt by high ticket prices ended up being better than those first projections.
The Pierside in Santa Monica has been exceptionally busy during the World Cup, with many tourists opting to stay near the beach despite the longer trek to SoFi Stadium where the games are held. The Pierside has no rooms for this weekend.
“We’ll have a day or two gap, but other than that we’ve been full,” said a Pierside manager. “I think beach-side hotels have been busier, because tourists are more interested in going to the beach while here.”
In the so-called Stadium District, the Anthem Hotel saw even greater numbers of tourists than they had initially expected for the tournament, including both domestic and international guests.
Its few remaining rooms were going for more than $500 per night late in the week.
“Many guests are planning longer stays, using match days as the centerpiece of a broader Los Angeles itinerary,” said Ruben Flores, general manager at the hotel. “Being in the heart of the Stadium District puts us in a unique position to welcome fans who want the energy of the tournament to extend beyond the stadium.”
Downtown L.A.‘s Hotel Indigo got a surge in bookings the days leading up to the July 2 knockout game between Spain and Austria. Previously, FIFA had reserved thousands of rooms downtown for staff, media, and other stakeholders, but later canceled the reservation.
The American Hotel and Lodging Assn. attributed the delayed booking boom to young international travelers waiting until right before the game to book hotels in search of last-minute deals.
“Demand has picked up, consistent with a recent trend toward shorter booking windows for events of this caliber,” Rosanna Maietta, the association’s chief executive, said in a statement. “Unlike typical leisure travel, many travelers finalized plans and secured tickets closer to the start of the games.”
Not all hotels have seen the last-minute boom in bookings. Hotel June next to Los Angeles International Airport said its bookings were lower than expected.
“We were expecting more reservations, but I think it’s because the rates have gone up,” said Kira Moreno from Hotel June. “We have still been steady but not been too full or too busy, pretty similar to any other day.”
Airbnb proved to be a popular alternative to traditional hotels, with offers like the World Cup bundle, which included free World Cup tickets with select Airbnb stays at an average price of $365 per night.
In recent years, L.A. has struggled to bring tourists into the city. Last year, the number of international tourists went down by 5.5% from the year before, marking the first time tourism had fallen since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
Immigration raids and wildfires dissuaded tourists from visiting, and even Canadian tourists who typically make up the largest number of foreign visitors to California dropped 21%.
Increased flight costs also discouraged many tourists. With the U.S.-Iran conflict continuing and the Strait of Hormuz closed, jet fuel prices skyrocketed, making international travel unrealistic for many tourists. International air travel to L.A. County had already fallen 30% from August to November 2025.
Business
Billionaire exodus? California drew 10 times more venture capital than any other state this year
Despite concerns that California’s costs and regulations are bad for business, the state has attracted an unprecedented pile of capital this year, and no other state is even close.
The Golden State’s deep pool of talent, rich investors and other tech infrastructure have made it ground zero for the artificial intelligence explosion. That has helped it attract more than $335 billion in venture capital funding this year, according to PitchBook’s private market funding data released Thursday.
Its next biggest competitor, New York, raised less than a tenth of California’s total. Texas raised 1/40th of the amount.
“California has far and away the most [deals], obviously, a huge amount of that sits in the [San Francisco] Bay Area,” said Kyle Stanford, director of U.S. venture capital research at PitchBook. “Los Angeles, San Diego has a really strong tech market that I think benefits a lot from capital moving easily between San Francisco and L.A.”
Although a campaign for a new tax on billionaires has convinced some ultra-rich residents to shift to other states and businesses often complain that high property and energy costs and an anti-business regulatory regime make it too tough to make money in the state, the inability of the top talent, companies and investors in AI to set up elsewhere shows California’s enduring attraction.
The state’s economy grew 5% last year to a record $4.25 trillion, making it larger than every country other than the U.S., China and Germany. It is home to nearly 400 billion-dollar startups — more than any other state, according to CB Insights.
Southern California has emerged as a go-to address for fast-growing space and defense tech companies.
“California’s workers, entrepreneurs, and innovators continue to prove that investing in California delivers real results,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement last week in response to strong productivity numbers for the state. “As one of the largest economies in the world, the Golden State demonstrates that a strong workforce, economic growth, innovation, and performance go hand in hand.”
In the three months that ended in June, 1,087 California companies raised $108.8 billion in venture capital. Just three companies — Anthropic, Jeff Bezos’ Project Prometheus and Anduril Industries — absorbed 75% of that total. Anthropic alone raised $65 billion, which valued it at nearly $1 trillion.
Among metropolitan regions, Los Angeles ranked behind only Silicon Valley and New York, which attracted $98 billion and $11.5 billion in venture investment, respectively.
“Capital is flowing back into American innovation with real force,” said Bobby Franklin, president of the National Venture Capital Assn., an industry group that put out the report with PitchBook. “Investment activity is picking up, fundraising is improving, and there are early signs the IPO market is beginning to reopen.”
Investors poured in nearly $8 billion across 207 deals in the Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana metro areas, up 28% from a year earlier, according to PitchBook.
The top deals in the region were led by aerospace and defense companies Anduril Industries, which raised $5 billion, and Impulse Space, which attracted $500 million.
Companies in industrial parts, software, consulting and life sciences were the other sectors in the Southland that attracted venture investments. El Segundo-based industrial supplies company Advanced Manufacturing Company of America and Huntington Beach-based aerospace company Mach Industries each raised $300 million.
To be sure, the surge in the size and number of monster deals could be overshadowing other money-raising efforts from smaller companies and investment by smaller funds, industry experts said.
Nearly 90% of invested dollars went to AI firms, up from last year, when around 65% of new funds were allocated to AI.
“If you’re a tech company and you’re not an AI company, you have a very, very difficult opportunity ahead of you to raise capital,” Stanford said.
This concentration of capital in AI leaves smaller, middle-of-the-road venture funds without large AI holdings struggling to return capital to their investors.
Only the largest funds, such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital — which possess the war chest to back OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX — stand to gain from their initial public offerings of stock.
“It’s going to concentrate the fundraising over the next few years as well into these already very large names,” Stanford said.
Beyond the two potential blockbuster listings — Anthropic and OpenAI, each valued around $1 trillion — the IPO pipeline is thin.
“We don’t really have a strong IPO market,” Stanford said. “Obviously, SpaceX’s IPO is great. OpenAI and Anthropic, if they go out this year, will be very large drivers of distribution. But a vast majority of investors do not have exposure to them, and so that money will not make it back to them.”
Whether California’s venture-investing boom can continue at this record-breaking pace now hinges on how the IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI perform.
“If Anthropic and OpenAI have really strong financials, that’s a big push of support for the rest of the market,” Stanford said.
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Legendary Television City may be be sold in further blow to Hollywood
