Client
Expertise
Venture accelerationImpact
Improving access to innovative energy efficiency technology.CHALLENGE
How can energy and resource efficiency innovations scale from prototype to the factory floor?
Industry remains one of the largest emitters globally. In the UK alone, it accounts for 15% (78 megatonnes of CO2e) of the nation’s annual emissions. To minimise this footprint, it is key to reduce the energy and resource intensity of industrial processes and although many proven technologies exist in their early stages, they struggle to scale up. Investors and businesses are often risk-averse to technologies that have yet to be demonstrated within a fully operational production environment.
The Department for Energy Security & Net Zero sought to tackle this issue head-on to prevent a ‘Death Valley of Innovation’ – where innovations fail before they can be commercialised. Through an accelerator programme, it hoped to demonstrate and prove the commercial viability of select technologies and put these in the hands of industry for testing.
SOLUTION
Bringing innovators and industry together through the Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator
In 2017, the Carbon Trust helped to set up the Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA), then funded through the £505 million Energy Innovation Programme. The £10 million IEEA programme was designed to support partnerships between developers of efficient technologies and industrial companies willing to demonstrate innovations on-site. The programme funded, on average, 40-60% of the costs to install the technology for testing and had two interlocking objectives:- Provide support for innovative energy efficiency concepts.
- Cultivate scalable solutions capable of driving the decarbonisation of the industrial sector.