Accelerating Sustainability: Cleantech Venture Day Unites Visionary Investors and Innovators
In the words of respected climate champion Erik Solheim ‘the world is moving forward with green transformation much quicker than we think’.
Addressing the audience of impact investors and climate tech innovators at Cleantech Venture Day, he said that due to life expectancy sky rocketing, access to education improving, and people being in much better health than any other point in history, there were many reasons to be happy.
But the former UN Environment Executive Director and Under-Secretary General of the United Nations warned there was much more to be done in the fight against climate change and urged the UK and US to be more competitive.
“More than 80% of solar panels produced are used in China and 60% of electric cars are sold and used in China,” he said. “The Chinese view competition as a good thing whereas the UK and US are too self-absorbed. We need to catch up fast. I’m very optimistic we will be able to do this, but we need more cooperation.”
While not wanting to impede the acceleration and adoption of cleantech, he said the priority should still be on restoring nature. “Because when you stop human interference in nature, the world becomes a much healthier place,” he explained.
Held at KPMG’s headquarters in Canary Wharf, the seventeenth year of Cleantech Venture Day provided the perfect backdrop for 19 finalists across the transport, built environment, circular economy, and energy sectors to pitch their innovative solutions to impact investors.
Joe Faulkner, Senior Partner at KPMG, told the pitching companies: “It’s a real privilege to be in a room with so many innovators and entrepreneurs; the growth of our firm comes from businesses like yours who are looking to scale and grow to become the blue-chip companies of tomorrow.”
Transport and Mobility
The first pitch session covered Transport and Mobility. Each startup was given a five- minute time limit to deliver their investor pitch with a further five minutes to answer questions from a panel of experts including Inger Anson, HCR, Catherine Fraser, Carbon13, and Estia Ryan, Eka Ventures.
Alex Howard, CEO of Clipper introduced his clean EV technology to upcycle fleet vehicles and London cabs. Mohammed Faisal, COO of Hubl Logistics, talked about his CoolRun pod that eliminates 100% of emissions from handling temperature-controlled goods. Charles Hall, Co-Founder of NEVA Group, spoke about his range of Pixii electric day boats and tenders for the maritime industry. Auroskanda Vepari, Founder and Director of MOLE unveiled his automated adaptive EV charging solution for LCV, HGV, AGV, buses and consumer cars. Phill Davies, Co-Founder of Magway, pitched his linear motor and control technology designed to decarbonise supply chains through zero emission goods delivery. The system uses 80% less energy to move the same volume of goods. Duncan Roberson, CEO of Dogtooth Technologies unveiled his intelligent robots that can reduce fruit harvest labour requirements by 10 times, unlocking a £20 billion agri-robotics market and dramatically reducing the environmental impact of fruit production.
Circular Economy
Lamia Sbiti of ReLondon, a partnership of the Mayor of London and the London boroughs to improve waste and resource management, opened the second session of the day on the low carbon circular economy. She told the audience nearly half of all global greenhouse emissions are down to decisions we all make as individuals.
45% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from all the food, materials, and products that we make, use, and consume everyday
75% of the food thrown away in London’s food services is edible.
Halving the amount of food lost and wasted in London could achieve a 10.5% reduction in our emissions.
Londoners dispose of 142,700 tonnes of clothing each year – 40% in the bin.
Viola Jardon, CISL, Josh Simpson, Alan Boswell Group, and Jim Totty, Viridis, were the panellists selected for the Circular Economy.
Karl Pärtel, Co-Founder of RAIKU, showcased his 100% compostable, natural, and protective material that substitutes single-use plastics and high carbon packaging. Shruti Grover, Co-Founder of Pattern Project, spoke passionately about her AI-driven, on-demand manufacturing platform that can help reduce the 40 billion unsold items of clothing annually (30% of total production), which amounts to $300 billion and 49 million tonnes of CO2e wasted yearly. Xiaobin Zhao, Director of Cambond, told investors about his bio-adhesive solution that produces 60% less CO2 than traditional oil derived, energy intensive adhesives with bio-resin plastics. Christian Peters, Co-Founder and CEO of Seloxium, a spin-out from Oxford University, explained how their patented selective flocculation technology Selectal™ can extract valuable metals from wastewater and combat freshwater pollution by purifying aqueous metal streams by removing any impurities. Lars Ronning, Founder and CEO of Ailuna, introduced his employee and customer sustainability behavioural change app and platform.
Building Technology
Shruti Iyengar, Future Planet Capital, Robert Hokin, Greenbackers, and Kirree Gooberman, Business Isle of Man , made up the panel to quiz Building Tech finalists about their climate solutions for the built environment.
Dr Jana Voigt, CEO and Co-Founder of InferSens, explained how their patent-pending deep learning sensor technology for properties can recognise water flow and temperature, saving cost, water, and carbon. With the UK predicted to have a shortage of 1.25 trillion tonnes of water by 2040, this could be a game-changer. Yulia Colney, Director of Environment, Sustainability and Growth for Teknobuilt pitched her company’s machine learning project management technology that delivers projects faster and with real-time carbon optimisation. Alex Murdoch, CTO of Thermulon outlined how their technology can produce the next generation, net-zero super-insulating aerogel materials for buildings 80% cheaper and at scale. Deborah Learoyd, CEO of Freesuns, demonstrated how to use solar tiles for residential, commercial and heritage buildings and, by doing so, combining traditional trades like roofing with modern solar cell technology.
Energy Transition
Maurits van Tol, CEO of Catalyst Technologies, Johnson Matthey, introduced the final session of the day with an inspiring speech on the Energy Revolution. “The global population will rise to 10 billion by 2050 but society and industries are currently unsustainable,” he told the audience. “We are seeing the devastating impact of climate change across the world, we need to decarbonise and transition to more sustainable fuels at a faster pace.”
To reach net zero, he explained, required collaboration across the value chain, before outlining a three-step action plan:
1) transitioning to more sustainable fuels
2) using carbon hydrogen to decarbonise heavy industry and transport
3) doubling down on technologies that are available now to help us reach net zero
“The first Apollo missions were fueled by hydrogen fuel cells, the technology is already there,” he reminded the audience.
The panel for the fourth and final session of Cleantech Venture Day consisted of Sam Hill, Clean Growth Fund, Joe Simon-Brown, J A Kemp, and Adam Croft, KPMG.
Nikita Uzhegov, Co-Founder and COO of SpinDrive explained how their active magnetic bearings technology increased system energy efficiency by 15%, a significant outcome when electric motors consume 46% of global energy consumption. Alex Zorniger, Vice President of Business Development for Power to Hydrogen, joined via video conference from the US to introduce their commercial AEM electrolyser that produces high pressure hydrogen, oxygen, and energy storage. Dominic Vergine, Founder and CEO of Monumo, a deeptech engineering company focussed on creating the world’s best electric motors, showcased the optimal design technology his firm has created for improved drive train and power generation systems performance. James Strickland, COO of Verv, pitched predictive maintenance and real time energy wastage monitoring for smart, sustainable buildings. And, did you know that keeping people cool with aircon uses 10% of global energy consumption?
Sam Goodall, CEO of Cambridge Cleantech, called on pitch day finalists to continue to inspire through cleantech innovation. “We must continue to create impact through our work and become the catalyst of conversations on climate positive technology,” he said. “We have a distributed ecosystem of global partners looking for climate tech innovation. The technology is out there, we just need to find it, support it, and use it.
As a highly successful Cleantech Venture Day drew to a close, participants were left optimistic on the challenge that lay ahead while reflecting on the famous words of UN Secretary General António Guterres.
‘Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.’