Comment by Mel Abraham, Impact & Business Insight Manager at Energy Systems Catapult

Helping innovative companies scale up is central to our mission. The SMEs we’ve supported since the Catapult was founded by Innovate UK have now raised over £500 million of private investment. That figure reaches £688m when we add in public investment. That sort of commitment accelerates SME growth, propelling their businesses to reach new customers thanks to new innovation.

Funding wins

Notable highlights this quarter include one such SME, Furbnow, which secured £2.5 million to help improve the home retrofit experience. The service they’ve developed – helping homeowners and landlords boost the energy efficiency of their homes – is an important step along the path to Net Zero. It’s great to see them named among the Sifted Future 50 – Europe’s top emerging start-ups.

There’s also Ki Hydrogen, whose process for producing hydrogen and biogenic carbon for greener fuels, attracted £2.2m of investment.

Both companies are beneficiaries of the Climate Innovation Platform a programme of support we’ve delivered for promising SMEs for the last couple of years, led by University of Birmingham and funded by HSBC. There’ll be a new cohort of businesses chosen for support this year, and we are looking forward to working with those selected.

Thriving abroad

We also play a key role in helping businesses access international markets.

This quarter, we’ve seen equiwatt taking part in a virtual power plant piloting project in Singapore, following our programme of support in the country.

Likewise, LiNa Energy and Oomph EV returned to India with Prime Minister Kier Starmer after taking part in the Indian Innovating Transport and Energy System (ITES) programme that we led.

Cosysense, one of the SMEs we’re supporting through the GridFlex programme, was chosen to present at the UK pavilion at COP30. Cosysense also raised £1.5 million this quarter. We’re excited to see the journey they take as the GridFlex programme seeks to equip the energy sector with the solutions needed to cut peak demand for grid electricity by 2 GW.

Policy momentum

This quarter, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) announced changes to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. It will now include heat batteries and air-to-air heat pumps, a decision influenced by the heat battery trial carried out through our Homes for Net Zero project. These changes create opportunities for the heat technology companies we’ve supported.

It’s encouraging that that the government’s response to the call for evidence on improving the visibility of distributed energy assets supports our recommended approach. This is the one we developed in our Low Carbon Technology Connect project. You can download the project’s final reports and API specification here.

Onwards for innovation

Everyone in the clean energy community is acutely aware that we need to keep pushing forward with network innovation. This momentum has entered an exciting new phase following the launch of the Energy Network Innovation Taskforce (ENIT) – a landmark initiative commissioned by Innovate UK and Ofgem.

ENIT is being chaired by Laura Sandys, an innovation and digitalisation expert, and brings together senior leaders from energy networks and industry. It will help define the innovation challenges needed to build a smarter, more resilient and affordable energy system.

We’ve been asked to provide expert coordination, technical support and whole system capabilities to help guide its recommendations.

We’re proud of what’s been achieved in the last quarter and energised by the opportunities ahead. We remain committed to supporting pioneering solutions and fostering collaboration across the energy sector to accelerate economic growth.

There’s an exciting showcase of SMEs sharing their scale up journeys’ at our Innovating to Net Zero event on 25 February. It’s not too late to join us. Register here.

This is just a taste of what we’ve been up to, check out the latest news, blogs, case studies and reports. You can also sign up to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn.