Tech Nation Net Zero

We are excited to announce a new cohort of 32 UK climate tech and cleantech companies selected for our second Net Zero programme.

Emerging trends this year saw an increase in companies developing carbon removal solutions, sustainable supply chains, and using satellite and space technology for environmental monitoring.  

Almost two-thirds of the companies in the diverse cohort are headquartered outside of London, and 41% have a female founder.

The Net Zero growth program launched in September 2020 is the very first in the world to focus on sustainable companies that are helping the UK work towards achieving its goal of being net zero by 2050. Net Zero 2.0 is supported by headline partners BNP Paribas and program partner Sage.

Over the course of the six-month program, the investment received by the Net Zero 1.0 cohort increased from £87.8 million to £131.2 million, while the average headcount per company increased by 50%. 

This year’s successful companies were assessed by 40 judges across key industries. These included climate specialists, investors, and senior representatives from companies such as Google, National Grid, Sky Ocean, Bulb, and B Corp, including Hayden Wood, CEO and Founder at Bulb, Marta Krupinska, Head of Google for Startups UK, and Pippa Gawley, Founder & Director of Zero Carbon Capital. 

Companies were judged based on their scalability and potential to help the UK reach its high-priority net zero goal. Twenty-two of the companies (69%) are planning to expand to international markets in the next 12 months, demonstrating significant growth potential for their sustainable technologies.

“Achieving net zero emissions may seem like an insurmountable challenge, but the reality is that many of the solutions required already exist — they just need to be supported and scaled,” commented judge Mahima Sukhdev, head of product strategy at GIST Impact and senior advisor to Xynteo. “This is why the Net-Zero accelerator is so pivotal.”

Agriculture & food systems

• Better Origin, Cambridge

Founders: Fotis Fotiadis and Miha Pipan

Better Origin develops and operates insect bioconversion solutions that allow farmers and food producers to turn food and agricultural wastes into valuable nutrients through insects. The company’s goal is to democratize access to insect farming so that any farmer can access insect waste repurposing possibilities, in turn helping reduce the footprint of agriculture.

• Bx Technologies Limited, London

Founders: Antony Yousefian and Ben Bardsley 

Bx Technologies fuses technology with nature to transform how we grow food. The company is breaking new ground to digitalize and change the way we produce food through Software as a Service (SaaS) operational tools on farms and creating a market incentive to change practices. Two products tackle the supply and demand of independently verified, data-backed, fully transparent carbon offsets and ecosystem service provision from food production; LOOOP & Earth Exchange.

• Gardin, Oxford

Founder: Sumanta Talukdar

Gardin’s remote sensing technology aims to empower food producers by monitoring and delivering insights on plant health versus the growth environment to reduce waste and make growing food more sustainable. Gardin’s full-stack solution is engineered to measure plant crop physiological traits such as photosynthetic activity, biotic and abiotic stress, and nutritional density. It will also drive correlations between the physiology of the plants/crops and the growth environment so producers can make meaningful interventions exactly when needed.

Buildings & cities

• Ambue, Oxford

Founders: Hamish McMichael and Daniel Tipping

Ambue gives people information and advice to use energy more efficiently in their homes, by creating a unique Digital Twin for each home which is used to analyze the energy use and automatically generate technical documents, so that contractors can carry out the work. Our users save energy, which means they save money, put less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and help combat global warming.

• Satellite Vu, London

Founders: Anthony Baker, Tobias Reinicke, and Simon Tucker

Satellite Vu will monitor the temperature of any structure on the planet in near real-time to determine valuable insights into economic activity, energy efficiency, and carbon footprint. The high-resolution infrared dataset will enable better business decisions and accelerate our journey to net zero. Satellite Vu brings a new category of satellite data to solve our global challenges.

Construction

• Qualis Flow, London

Founders: Brittany Harris and Jade Cohen

Qflow enables developers and construction teams to better manage their materials and waste. Using a unique combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Qflow automates the digitization of material tickets and waste transfer notes as they enter construction sites, independent of supply chain systems. Qflow provides direct access to critical information on-site, ensuring the quality and safety of products.

• Sphera, Durham

Founders: Natasha Boulding, Phil Buckley, and Scott Bush

Sphera is an award-winning specialty materials start-up focusing on low-carbon, next-generation construction material alternatives for the race to Net Zero. Their products include the world’s first carbon-zero and carbon-negative concrete blocks, and admixtures to accelerate concrete curing rate and decrease cement content. These innovations help to simultaneously tackle climate change and plastic pollution.

Data analytics & business intelligence

• Quosient Ltd (trading as Earth Blox), Edinburgh

Founders: Genevieve Patenaude, Sam Fleming, and Iain Woodhouse

Earth Blox is a code-free, cloud-based, Lego-like SaaS that allows the up-skilling of global teams in planetary-scale satellite intelligence. Users can DIY their own Earth Observation Solutions using Earth Blox’s modular blocks to rapidly identify illegal activities like deforestation and mining, monitor a supply chain, manage post-disaster recovery, and support nature-based solutions. Earth Blox enables anyone, anywhere to customize their own satellite intelligence to exactly suit their needs.

• Spherics Technology, Bristol

Founders: George Sandilands, Ciaran Wood, and Mike Chatziapostolou

Spherics is a cloud-based platform to help businesses measure, mitigate, and manage their climate impact. The system integrates with established software packages and tracks and visualizes the client’s carbon footprint in near real-time. It then makes custom suggestions on how to reduce the impact by matching company data trends with climate science research, to offset any unavoidable carbon emissions.

• Supercritical, London

Founders: Michelle You and Aaron Randall

Supercritical helps businesses get to net zero by measuring their carbon footprint and selling them high-quality carbon removal offsets.

Supply chain

• Sourceful, Manchester

Founders: Shiran Zeng, Wing Chan, and Mary Wang

Sourceful is an end-to-end sourcing and supply chain platform focused on sustainability. With Sourceful, businesses can source, configure, and design sustainable packaging from a network of vetted suppliers and automate their inventory replenishment. They can also leverage Sourceful’s proprietary life cycle assessment tool to understand the impact of product decisions in real time and offset their carbon footprint to achieve net zero.

• Magway, London

Founders: Rupert Cruise and Phillip Davies

Magway is an all-electric, zero-emissions, low-footprint, high-capacity delivery system. It has the capacity to take up to 90% of online delivery vehicles off our roads, drastically reducing congestion, pollution, and the carbon footprint of shopping online. Magway can deliver the equivalent of 20,000 40ft container loads through each 1m diameter pipe per week, giving people what they want, when they want it, efficiently and sustainably.

Carbon removal & offsetting

• Carbon Infinity, London 

Founders: David Izikowitz and Jia Li

Carbon Infinity is developing a cost-effective, modular technology called direct air capture (DAC), removing carbon dioxide directly from the air in the atmosphere. Advanced carbon-capture sorbent material and module design, combined with waste heat or renewable energy and water, can be used to form the building blocks of the industrial economy; whether non-petrochemicals, plastics, synthetic fuels for aviation or shipping, and atmospheric carbon-enriched products (concrete, carbon nanotubes). Carbon Infinity is initially focused on facilitating the de-fossilisation of hard-to-decarbonise sectors.

• PowerMarket, Oxford

Founders: Jain Abhinav and Phil Worthington

PowerMarket is digitalizing and consolidating the entire life-cycle for enterprise solar assets, saving customers over 90% of their time and resources by providing an alternative solution to the current management which is riddled with long, expensive, fragmented, and manually driven processes and software tools.

Energy & electricity

• ACT Blade Ltd, Edinburgh

Founders: Sabrina Malpede, Donald MacVicar, and Alessandro Rosiello

ACT Blade’s vision is to produce the next generation of wind turbine blades for a net-zero future. The company is developing a lightweight and modular blade using sustainable and cost-effective processes and materials capable of delivering a step-change increase in energy production and reduction in costs.

• measurable.energy, Reading

Founders: Dan Williams and Josh Eadie

measurable.energy’s platform aims to eliminate all wasted energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from buildings, automatically and without any extra burden to occupants. The m.e platform focuses on Small Power, sometimes known as Plug Load power, which can account for up to 40% of a commercial buildings’ energy consumption and has no useful management system. The m.e Pplatform is designed to fit into this management gap, reducing total energy costs and GHG emissions by up to 50%, providing around a 4-year payback, and boosting occupant sustainability behaviour.

• Miralis Data, Lancaster

Founders: Michael Gibson and Dr William Maden

Miralis Data develops products that support the transition to zero-carbon vehicles and make companies more productive and efficient through better use of their vehicle fleets and the goods that travel on them. Miralis’ main product is Fuuse, an electric vehicle charge point management platform that enables organisations to deliver more for their drivers, minimise operational costs and create new revenues.

• Solar Polar, Peterborough

Founders: Robert Edwards and Michael Reid

Solar Polar has developed solar cooling that delivers the cheapest Watt of cooling. The system is designed to manufactured in the developing world and provides cooling for refrigeration and air-conditioning without any electricity or gas, using only natural refrigerants.

• ZUoS Ltd, Edinburgh

Founders: Alex Schlicke, David Shields, Jim O’Donnell, and Rosie McGlynn

ZUoS is an energy services platform to plan and operate a decarbonised energy system. ZUoS provides the ability to predict, schedule and control flexible demand at the local level in homes and businesses. By focusing locally, ZUos provides visibility and control enabling more renewables, low-carbon heating and EV charging to be installed within each community.

• Ripple, London

Founder: Sarrah Merrick

Ripple enables people and businesses to part-own large scale wind farms and have the low cost, green electricity they produce supplied to them via the grid through utility partners. Ripple is the UK’s first clean energy ownership platform, making fractional wind farm ownership and supply simple and affordable. The mission is to make clean energy ownership affordable and accessible to everyone.

• Solivus Limited, London and Manchester

Founder: Joanna Parker-Swift

Solivus’ mission is to enable mega-buildings, homes and communities to lower their carbon footprint and generate their own local green energy through a suite of solar solutions. The company uses new organic thin-film solar technology to design products that are opening up vast new markets previously unavailable to traditional solar, both in the UK and internationally. Solivus makes a positive difference by creating truly sustainable, clean energy products, made using the latest innovations in renewable energy. One of Solivus’ solar fabrics, which is manufactured by Heliatek, won the 2020 Innovation Award at the World Energy Summit.

Finance

• Sylvera Ltd, London

Founders: Allister Furey and Samuel Gill

Sylvera considers itself the equivalent of Moody’s credit ratings for carbon offsets. The company uses machine learning and satellite data to rate nature-based offset projects. The market reference data produced is being adopted by the biggest buyers, traders, and exchanges.

• Tred, Leeds

Founders: Will Smith and Peter Kirby

Tred is a consumer fintech whose mission is to make money work for people and the planet. Its first product is the UK’s first green debit card that lets users track, reduce, and offset their carbon footprint as they spend, and plant trees with profits. The company will soon be launching more products, like green investing and a sustainable marketplace, to help people turn more of their money green.

Biotech

• Unicorn Biotechnologies Ltd, Cambridge

Founders: Jack Reid and Adam Glen

Unicorn Biotechnologies is developing a fully automated manufacturing platform to enable cellular agriculture producers to seamlessly scale products from the lab bench to supermarket shelves. The full-stack platform combines hardware, software, and analytics to completely automate cellular agriculture manufacturing, reducing costs and increasing product quality. By providing a clear path to take cellular agriculture products to industrial scales, the company aims to drive the transition to animal-free agriculture.

• Xampla, Cambridge

Founders: Marc Rodríguez Garcia and Simon Hombersley

Xampla makes a replacement for specific microplastics and single-use film packaging, targeting three launch applications with a patented, next-generation material: plant protein. Xampla aims to become one of a handful of biobased majors by 2040, supplying plant protein and other related materials to the major plastics customers.

Transport

• CATAGEN LTD, Belfast

Founders: Andrew Woods and Roy Douglas

CATAGEN is a clean air data company providing emissions testing services to the world’s leading car and motorcycle brands. It uses a proprietary toolset to help these brands meet or exceed global emissions standards. Using this knowledge and data, CATAGEN is developing PED, a new product that mines unique data and uses models to create a software technology platform to inform individuals about their emissions footprint to create behavior change.

• Electric Assisted Vehicles Limited, Oxford

Founders: Adam Barmby, Leigh Barmby, Nigel Gordon-Stewart and Richard Prosser

EAV is the leading provider of last-mile transport solutions specifically designed for our evolving urban environments – making them zero-emission, low-cost, reliable, and future-proof.

• Paua Tech Limited, London

Founders: Niall Riddell, André Pinho, and Amelia Riddell

Paua makes public electric vehicle charging a simple experience with a mobile app for drivers to find, charge and pay for charging through aggregating chargepoint providers and drivers. Businesses are supported with a centralized billing function and a fleet managers dashboard.

• Sunswap Ltd, London

Founders: Michael Lowe, Andrew Sucis, and Nikolai Tauber

Sunswap is developing hardware and software to accelerate the decarbonization of transport refrigeration. Sunswap’s battery- and solar-powered transport refrigeration unit (TRU) replaces dirty and loosely regulated diesel incumbents currently used by supermarkets and other refrigerated fleet operators.

• The Tyre Collective, London

Founders: Hanson Cheng, Hugo Richardson, Siobhan Anderson, and Deepak Mallya

The Tyre Collective is a cleantech company building innovative solutions to save our air from tyre wear. Tyre wear is the second-largest microplastic pollutant in our oceans and a stealthy source of air PM pollution. The company is spearheading the capture and monitoring of tyre wear, accelerating the shift towards zero-emission mobility.

• EMSOL, London

Founder: Freddie Talberg

EMSOL deploys leading-edge air pollution monitoring in conjunction with state-of-the-art, real-time vehicle tracking technology. By intelligently combining these datasets, EMSOL can, with unparalleled accuracy levels, identify exactly the who, what, where, and when of pollution. This allows EMSOL customers to evolve from passive ‘observers’ into proactive climate heroes and achieve their net-zero goals.

Services

• Oxwash Ltd, Oxford

Founders: Kyle Grant and Tom de Wilton

Oxwash offers sustainable, on-demand laundry and dry cleaning services to both B2B and B2C market segments. Oxwash is a tech company at heart, with an in-house team of developers building a scalable solution to power the international laundry revolution.