Fusion finance: could private capital deliver energy's holy grail?

An oft repeated line in the conversation around climate change is that there is no silver bullet to halt its impending threat. Such a multifaceted, complex problem requires change across almost every aspect of our civilisation, from the food that we eat, the homes we live in and the ways in which we travel. Nevertheless, a source of abundant, clean energy on demand - while perhaps not fixing all our planetary woes – would be a pretty good start.

This is the promise of fusion, the fabled technology that could theoretically decarbonise the energy sector virtually overnight. Nuclear fusion is what happens at the core of stars, where hydrogen atoms fuse together to form helium, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process. Replicating this on Earth has proven a challenge, to say the least. The immense gravity in the centre of stars means fusion can take place at relatively balmy temperatures of about 10 million degrees Kelvin. On Earth, temperatures ten times that are required.