Harwell Campus calls for stronger energy tech clusters and larger funding rounds to meet the global climate challenge
Experts at Harwell Campus the UK’s leading science and innovation campus based in south Oxfordshire are calling for an increase in ‘later stage’ investment and smarter support for scaling energy tech organisations to prevent ‘pilot-itis’ and to tackle the global climate challengeafter a new report from Harwell and Tech Nation showed it was 200% harder for energy tech start-ups to transition to late growth than tech start-ups in other sectors.
As a resultnearly half (47.6%) of UK energy tech companies are still at ‘seed stage’.
The report released last week by Harwellhighlighted the unprecedented growth in global investment in the energy tech sector in 2021 (at $22.2bna rise of 124% from the $9.9bn raised in 2020) and conversely how challenging it is for innovative energy tech companies to thrive and mature to later stages of growth due to the technical politicallegal and financial complexities of commercialising breakthroughs for use at scale.
WATCH AGAIN: Harwell Energy Tech Conference 2022 (20 January 2022)
UK energy scale-ups received 36% more investment in 2021:
In 2021the UK received over £1.5bn of investment in ‘seed stage’ energy tech firms (a 36% increase from 2020); more than Germany France and the Netherlands combined and second only to Sweden in Europe.
The UK government has also supported the UK’s emerging energy tech startups and scaleups by putting in place a ten-point plan for a green industrial revolutionwhich promises to increase investment levels in energy tech companies tenfold by 2025.
Gerard Grech Founding CEO Tech Nation said: “We support the government’s plans to increase investment in the UK’s drive for net zerowhich would equate to an additional $15bn invested by 2025.
“We believe up to half of this investment could come from VCs to accelerate the growth of promising energy tech scaleups and technologies and the rest from other organisational investors.
“It’s crucial that alongside this new investmentwe continue to systematically improve the UK’s innovation environment to enable more clean energy companies to thrive. Failure to secure later stage investment is too common for scaling energy tech companies because of the inherent complexity of moving advances from the lab into the energy grid. More multi-sector and multi-disciplinary working and coordination is crucial to support this burgeoning sector and will be crucial to the UK achieving net zero by 2050.”
Helping the UK’s energy tech scaleups to reach later growth stages through Energy Tech Clusters:
The report identified that clustering organisations together provides opportunities for cross-fertilisation to occur organically which when combined with the right infrastructure will provide the confidence for investors to support sustainable long-term projects that solve societal problems.
In the energy tech sector this will lead to scaled energy technologiesallow energy tech firms to reach later growth stages and will position the UK as a global hub for net zero technologies.
The 950 UK energy tech organisations that are clustered largely in Oxfordshire but also across the UK in areas such as Glasgow Manchester Chester Liverpool Aberdeen Newcastle London Cambridgeshire South Wales and the West Midlands are fundamental in helping energy providers develop cutting edge net zero technologies across renewables battery research zero carbon energy storage zero carbon fuels integrated energy systems connected and autonomous travel solutions and digital and data services.
Harwell’s Energy Tech Cluster brings together national institutions such as the Faraday Institution academia and industry to accelerate the rate of global innovation. In three yearsthe cluster has grown from 19 organisations to over 80 today and together with its net zero living laboratory – is a good example of the benefits of clustering where new insights from fields such as quantum computing and space tech are applied to energy tech.
The Living Laboratory recently saw the launch of an autonomous shuttle trial which demonstrates the potential of battery powered zero emission5G self-driving vehicles to operate in a real-world setting.
Dr Barbara Ghinelli Director of Clusters and Harwell Campus Business Development UKRI-STFC said: “It’s really important to invest in commercially scalable and collaborative approaches to ensure we’re making the biggest difference to the climate emergency.
“At Harwell we’ve seen rapid growth in our energy tech cluster which brings together talented researchers multidisciplinary facilities and innovative businesses to drive the transition to net zero and support growth and job creation in a sector that will shape the UK’s future economy and society.”
Three scaling SMEs; AMTE Power Brill Power and Starke Energy are also joining forces at Harwell’s commercial-scale testbed to demonstrate new innovative energy storage products bringing their solutions one stage closer to market – The first time that these technologies are being deployed in a commercially relevant project.
The testbed will demonstrate AMTE’s sodium-ion battery module a more sustainable and safer alternative to lithium-ion alongside Brill Power’s battery management system (BMS) which ensures optimal battery usage lifetime performance and safety and Starke Energy’s artificial intelligence system which determines how best to distribute this energy linking stored energy into the electricity grid and markets.
For example the energy stored in a network of batteries placed in homes or industrial buildings can be used to smooth out the peaks and troughs of energy supply and demand that currently limit national grids.
Improvements in the competitiveness of intelligent energy storage technologies such as these will accelerate the uptake of small-scale renewable electricity generation and will reduce our reliance on fossil fuels
- Rob Panting
- Communications Manager
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