I reflect on Great British Energy's first year and ask an honest question: what has actually changed for the places that have been on the wrong side of industrial decline for a generation? The answer is complicated, but there is a genuine reason for optimism. The coasts, the estuaries, the old industrial heartlands are, by an accident of physics and geography, exactly where the energy transition has to be built. For the first time in decades, the map of where the next economy needs to land overlaps with the map of where the last one was lost. But geography creates the opportunity; it doesn't guarantee it. I make the case for counting the social returns the system currently ignores

How has Denmark prospered from one big industrial bet? How did South Korea build an industrial economy that excels in everything from shipbuilding to cutting-edge batteries? Why did Japan keep its heavy industries when everyone else let theirs go?

Each made deliberate choices. Each sustained them across decades and changes of government. Each underpinned them with competitive energy. And each now has options that countries without industrial depth simply do not have.

Britain has done the opposite. Four industrial strategies launched and abandoned since the early 2000s. The highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world. A manufacturing share of GDP that has halved in a generation.

In this episode, I look at what the countries that built lasting industrial strength actually did, what happened when the United States tried to do it at speed and then reversed course, and what Britain can learn whilst it has the chance.