Our commitment to driving clean tech innovation and supporting SME innovators has yielded remarkable results. In 2024/25, we made great progress in the pursuit of Net Zero and helping Britain’s innovators to thrive.
Over the first two years of our current Grant Funding Agreement period with Innovate UK (April 2023-March 2028), we’ve provided in-depth support to more than 180 SME clean tech innovators, who have collectively raised £205 million in investment and funding.
We’ve supported trials and demonstrations at home and abroad, helping to shape and open ‘green’ markets around the world. We’ve helped innovators better understand their target markets and the commercial viability of their products and services. For instance, in 2024/25, innovators such as IONATE, Caldera (who ran a two-year trial in our Living Lab), and LiNa Energy (who we supported to run a pilot project in India), collectively raised over £25 million to help accelerate their growth. It’s exciting to see so many of the businesses we’ve worked with growing and leading the way to a cleaner, greener future.
Since 2018, we have provided in-depth support to over 270 SMEs, who have collectively raised more than £560 million in investment and funding; and we’ve provided lighter-touch support to a further 312 SME innovators.
One of our focus areas is helping drive innovation in zero carbon domestic energy propositions. A highlight has been supporting innovators developing inclusive smart solutions for low income and vulnerable consumers through a multi-million pound Department for Energy Security and Net Zero-funded programme. We look forward to seeing where the partnerships with Homely, Changeworks, equiwatt, and Repowering London go next.
47 places now have a Local Area Energy Plan in place and a further 87 local authorities are in the process of developing one – over 37% of the UK. We’re working with the pioneers on the implementation of those plans, helping local authorities and investors get moving on delivering new, low regret energy infrastructure.
We’re not just shaping the future of home and community decarbonisation; we’re pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the non-domestic space. Our pioneering InSite pilot demonstrated the potential for using real data to support non-domestic site decarbonisation and brought together data from over a third of the NHS Trusts in England – collecting over 30 million live readings from over 3,000 energy meters. Meanwhile our tools and guidance are supporting thousands of people across the public sector to move forward in their decarbonisation journeys.
We’ve continued to support the practical digitalisation of the sector, completing the Automatic Asset Registration project with Greensync and working on the Digital Orchestrator with NESO. We’re helping different parties think about what AI means, including Northern Powergrid’s Forecasting Forum.
We’re continuing to influence policy with our thought leadership, including our leading ‘Innovate to Net Zero 2024’ report, published in April 2024. This report has been downloaded over 2,400 times, which is driving dialogue about the innovation needed to meet our Net Zero targets in government, in industry, and amongst SMEs.
Getting to Net Zero is a huge task that is certainly not without its challenges. But the pioneering spirit shown by the UK’s innovators – large and small – is carving a greener path to 2050. £560 million raised in investment since 2018 is a healthy number, but we’re keen to go bigger – we’ve got our sights set on £1 billion. For now, watch this space.
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.