We’ve had a busy quarter one. Dr Tony Cocker, the former CEO of E.ON UK, joined us as Chair of the Catapult. Tony brings 28 years of energy experience with him, having worked for some of the UK’s largest energy companies, and with innovators.
In April we launched our Innovating to Net Zero 2024 report. The report explores how the UK can achieve a cost-effective Net Zero energy system, aiming to give people, businesses, and UK government confidence to make investment and innovation decisions, and to take action that moves us closer to meeting our Net Zero targets whilst prospering from green growth opportunities. The report modelled four least-cost future scenarios for achieving Net Zero in 2050; identifying key innovation priorities and low-regret deployment choices for industry and government, with analysis showing that the cost of meeting Net Zero is still within 1% of GDP by 2050. The launch event had over 300 attendees, 23 small and medium sized enterprises (SME) exhibitors and 24 speakers sharing the latest evidence and insights to drive forward Net Zero energy innovation.
Project eFREIGHT 2030 kicked off, led by Voltempo one of the SMEs we’ve previously supported. The project aims to stimulate the deployment of long-haul zero emissions heavy goods vehicles. Moving freight around contributed 20% of the UK’s domestic greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, so this is an exciting project to be working on that will have far-reaching ramifications on the decarbonisation of transport.
SMEs we’ve supported since 2018 have raised £400 million of public and private investment since we’ve worked with them. Recently £6 million of this went to Rendesco, the leading clean heat network developer and owner-operator, who we supported in last year’s Climate Innovation Platform (CIP) cohort. With this funding they are expanding their innovation team from two to eight.
The Singapore Innovating for Net Zero Buildings project aims to promote the transition to Net Zero buildings by demonstrating combined solutions and relevant technologies between the UK and Singapore through pilots and test bed environments and facilitating research and commercial partnerships between the two countries. In this quarter:
We’ve been working with equiwatt on a Living Lab trial. equiwatt’s app automates the control of home appliances allowing them to be turned off, facilitating consumer demand-side response. Our analysis of 50 Living Lab homes, looking at the customer experience, has helped equiwatt validate and improve their app. Successful roll-out will reduce both carbon and energy costs for consumers.
Working with the Grantham Research Institute, London School of Economics, the Catapult has looked at the potential role that the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS) could have alongside existing policies in incentivising decarbonisation efforts in the domestic heating and road transport sectors. We hope to help shape policy decisions in this space.
Meanwhile, we were pleased to see Utility Week launch its ‘Make it a LAEP Year‘ campaign encouraging stakeholders from across the energy sector to push the government to adopt the Local Area Energy Planning (LAEP) framework, mandate it, and fund its roll out UK-wide. Stakeholders who have given their support to the campaign include Greater London Authority, Electricity Northwest, UK Power Networks, and UK100.
Finally, we’ve made 16 datasets available on our new Net Zero Market. These provide actionable insights for people developing Net Zero energy projects, saving time, resource, and effort in bid responses, planning and delivery.
In quarter two we’re looking forward to progressing work on Inclusive Smart Solutions, through which we are supporting four innovators to develop and test their products and services directly with low income and vulnerable consumers.
This is just a taste of what we’ve been up to, check out the latest news, blogs, case studies, and reports. Want to be kept up to date? Sign up to our newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn.