The tech sector has a vital role to play in tackling the climate crisis. Technology has the potential to reduce global emissions by 15%. The time for climate action is now. This is why Tech Nation is delighted to be launching the Net Zero programme for companies who are paving the way to stabilising global temperatures and reaching the UK’s net zero target by 2050.
We are looking for early-stage scaleups which operate across key sectors, including electricity & energy, transport & mobility, agriculture, food systems, manufacturing and building technology. Companies may directly contribute to net zero, with emission-reducing and carbon capture technologies or may contribute indirectly by changing consumer behaviour, or increasing efficiencies.
Net Zero is tailor-made to help innovative, mission-driven founders realise their visions and achieve their potential and scale. The best part? It’s free to join and we don’t take an equity stake in your business.
Learn more about our inaugural cohort >
Net Zero is for fast-growth tech companies which help the UK reduce greenhouse gas emissions either directly or indirectly. Companies may work across digital, hardware and biotech sectors.
Criteria for applicants:
Although we’re not open for applications at the minute, you can pre-register your interest in the programme and be the first to know when we start accepting applications.
Net Zero needs to be a collective effort, and our inaugural cohort certainly recognises this. Working towards a more sustainable future together, the companies selected represent a rich variety of industries and subsectors. Click on each logo to learn more about that company.
London | @Airex_vents
Airex has a mission to end fuel poverty. Aiming to reduce home energy consumption, Airex is an IoT-enabled smart ventilation control that helps reduce heat demand in homes, whilst managing indoor air quality. The system's in-built smart sensors monitor and analyse environmental conditions, while its cloud based algorithms automatically regulate air flow. Airex is approved by UK energy regulator Ofgem to be adopted under the ECO (Energy Company Obligation) scheme.
Leeds | @antonymtech
The road freight market is worth £2.5 trillion, but it's a big culprit when it comes to carbon emissions. Antonym is tackling the issue with smarter, safer, cleaner and greener logistics. Using proprietary in-house EV technology and advanced manufacturing techniques like Metal 3D printing, Antonym offers a bolt-in plug and play solution to electrify existing diesel trucks to make them electric, zero-emissions, and noiseless.
London
Dairy farming emits over 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year, more than five times the global aviation industry. Better Dairy is building the future of food by developing completely animal-free dairy products that are molecularly identical to traditional dairy, using a similar process to beer brewing. Removing animals from dairy production isn’t only great for animals and the environment, but gives consumers better food options and food manufacturers better ingredients.
Edinburgh | @BoxergyLtd
The best way to drive adoption of clean energy is to lower the cost. Boxergy’s mission is to provide home energy cheaper, greener and smarter by selling it, and the hardware required, as a service. Their Hero platform brings together existing low carbon technologies to maximize efficiency and integrates them with their smart tariff. This allows customers to buy energy when it's cheap and green, and use it when they want.
London | @Circulor1
Manufacturing and recycling supply chains are complex, global and often involve dealing with human rights or environmental issues. Circulor empowers businesses to fully manage their supply chains and drive responsible sourcing and recycling. Circulor creates an immutable record of the chain of custody of materials, linking the end products to their source. This traceability data also enables organisations to make informed decisions to reduce their carbon footprint.
London | @connectedkerb
Moving to electric vehicles en masse is impossible without the corresponding infrastructure. Connect Kerb’s EV charging and smart cities infrastructure champions sustainability, connectivity and flexibility. Connected Kerb are innovating and developing an entirely new, environmentally sensitive combined infrastructure that has the potential to enable everyone to transition to electric vehicles, while providing an interoperable platform for current and future technologies.
London | @cup_club
CupClub is a platform for brands and retailers to manage and track consumer reusable packaging for the Food and Beverage industry. On a mission to reduce single-use plastics from circulation, CupClub enables customers to halve CO2 consumption by switching to reusable packaging. CupClub manages its end-to-end reuse system by charging customers a flat per order fee to collect, sanitise and redistribute their packaging.
London | @projectearthly
Earthly is a tech platform giving businesses a new way to lead the fight against climate change. Focused on natural carbon removal, Earthly helps businesses invest in natural climate solutions that take them beyond carbon-neutrality to become climate-positive. Investments support projects that protect, restore and re-establish crucial ecosystems like forests, peatlands, mangroves and seabeds. Each project is vetted by an independent scientific board, monitored by satellite, and visualised on a shareable immersive platform.
London | @ElectronDLT
Electron is an energy technology company unlocking value in decarbonising energy systems by enabling granular, market-based interactions. Electron’s product, ElectronConnect, is a market platform for use by network operators, distributed energy resource operators and others to optimise the combined use of network capacity and zero carbon, zero marginal cost power. Ultimately, the deployment of multiple applications of ElectronConnect will deliver a system-wide market infrastructure offering opportunities for innovation and efficiency in energy system management which are not available in the undigitised systems of today. Electron is accelerating the energy industry’s transition to Net Zero.
London | @elmodrive
elmo is a carbon neutral electric car subscription service providing flexible and affordable EV 'usership'. The platform offers fully-integrated, personal e-mobility, with insurance, maintenance, breakdown, road tax and a carbon offset donation included as standard. On top of this, elmo is the world’s first MaaS (mobility-as-a-service) platform to include a home charge point, discounted renewable energy and public charging access - all wrapped into a single monthly bill.
Edinburgh | @rideember
Ember is the world's first 100% electric intercity bus operator and is building its own ultra rapid charging network. Ember's mission is to make a zero-carbon, zero-traffic world a reality. Its tech led approach delivers an integrated platform for managing vehicles, chargers, routes and drivers - allowing them to operate EVs at a higher utilisation than anyone else. Ember’s technology improves the passenger experience, supporting a modal shift away from cars and improving social inclusion.
London | @ensotyres.com
Tyres are the automotive industry’s big dirty secret, contributing enormously to carbon-emissions, air-pollution and micro-plastic pollution. Despite electric vehicles (EVs) accelerating towards a carbon-neutral future, tyres have thus far been neglected. EVs are heavier and have higher torque, wearing tyres faster and creating more harmful tyre pollution than normal cars. ENSO addresses this problem by developing more efficient, durable and sustainable tyres for EVs.
London | @GikiEarth
The average UK carbon footprint is 9 tonnes per person per year. To help people live more sustainably, Giki’s mobile app enables people to find more sustainable and healthy products in UK supermarkets. Giki Zero is an interactive, step by step guide to a sustainable life, which helps people to understand, track and reduce their environmental footprint, drive change through their own actions and set their own personal path towards net zero.
Leeds | @harksys
How businesses and big buildings consume energy needs to change if we’re going to hit net zero in 2050. Hark is tackling this issue by helping enterprises increase efficiency, maximise yield and reduce waste. Hark provides energy analytics and industrial IoT for enterprises, allowing Energy Managers and Asset Operators to easily connect to, monitor and control their buildings, energy meters and industrial process assets.
Bristol | @LettUsGrow
LettUs Grow design the farms of the future. Their aeroponic farming technology and farm management software for indoor and vertical farms delivers higher crop yields, reduces the environmental impact of agriculture and makes farmers’ lives easier. The products also enable people to grow produce nearer to the point of consumption, which reduces the carbon footprint left by fresh produce.
London | @LixeaNews
Tackling the issue of unsustainable materials, Lixea’s BioFlex process takes any type of woody biomass that normally would be unrecyclable and separates the components to make them usable by converting them to products, such as high-quality fine and bulk chemicals, bioplastics, renewable fibres and biofuels once again. It does this by using low-cost, environmentally friendly solvents, called liquid salts or ionic liquids.
London | @NakedEnergyLtd
Naked Energy is redefining solar energy solutions and tackling the global challenge of decarbonising heating and cooling. Their product ‘Virtu’ is 44% more efficient than existing solutions and takes up 40% less space. Virtu combines solar heat and power, saves the customer money and saves the planet - all within a single elegant product that is easy to install and maintain.
Birmingham
Petalite wants to reinvent the electric vehicle industry by creating a charging technology that’s cost efficient and more reliable. Their patented SDC charging technology lowers charger costs, increases reliability and lengthens lifetime - all whilst keeping similar efficiency to existing competition. Petalite's goal is to be a key player in the adoption of electric vehicles over the next 5 years.
Poole | South West
Pivot has created a living building energy model designed to attract more development for eco-friendly houses in the UK’s social housing sector. The platform uses machine learning and AI to generate an energy efficiency projection that is 90% + accurate. Once a project is designed, Pivot’s industry-leading performance insurance guarantees the results, de-risking investment decisions.
Edinburgh | @reath_id
The true extent of the environmental and climatic impact of our throwaway culture is becoming worryingly clear. Reath enables businesses to break the pattern and transition away from single-use, by applying track and trace technology to solve the data problems inherent in reuse models. They are currently developing the world's first global Open Data Standard for reusable packaging.
Cardiff | @RouteKonnect
Route Konnect makes traffic more predictable and more eco-friendly by making smarter junctions and predicting the amount of vehicles and people. By using real-time automated insights from their combined camera and LiDAR traffic sensors, they’re able to produce a dashboard giving the ability to see the road network at any time during the day, enabling people to make smarter choices that avoids traffic jams and causes unnecessary pollution and burning of fossil fuels.
Cardiff | @sero_group
Changing the focus of the housing industry to decarbonisation, Sero supports housing providers and their residents to reach net zero by sitting at the intersection of home comfort, construction and energy. Sero develops homes that complement changing energy systems using their energy platform, expertise, optimised design, construction and the new commissioning process of new and existing homes. This saves residents money, effort and it’s more planet-friendly.
Salisbury | @smallrobotco
Small Robot Company is reimagining farming to make food production sustainable. By using robotics and artificial intelligence to maximise the yield from crops, they offer a brand new model for sustainable, efficient and profitable farming called Per Plant Farming. It involves their farmbots individually caring and farming each plant. This increases yields, soil quality, biodiversity, and reduces carbon emissions and chemicals by up to 90%.
Newmarket | @sparkevtech
Spark EV Technology develops and supplies personalised journey prediction and map display software for electric vehicles of all sizes. By combining data (such as vehicle size, driver experience, weather predictions) with Machine Learning algorithms, it significantly improves journey prediction accuracy compared to existing vehicle systems. Their goal is to accelerate EV adoption by providing their automotive customers a trusted on board system to remove range and time anxiety for drivers.
Newport | @SurpleUK
Surple helps businesses make smarter energy decisions through their energy management software. They pull data from buildings into their cloud-based software, which runs analytics to provide actionable insights to their users, helping them to reduce energy use, carbon emissions and ultimately their costs. Businesses in the UK have an opportunity to collectively save £6bn through energy efficiency and Surple is making this process easier to manage.
Maidenhead | @tepeoheat
Tepeo tackles the UK’s biggest challenge to achieving it’s Net Zero target: rapid and low cost decarbonisation of domestic heating. Their product combines electric resistive heating with ultra-high density dry core thermal storage (40kWh) to deliver the performance of a fossil fuel boiler without the associated emissions. In parallel, the enormous amount of flexibility it provides supports self-consumption of renewables and supports balancing of the electricity grid.
Edinburgh | @topolytics
Topolytics analyses waste at scale and generates invaluable insights for the recycling industry and waste management sector, preventing more materials from ending up in landfills or seeping out into nature. By using data science, they make the world’s waste visible, verifiable and valuable. Analysing data on commercial, industrial and post-consumer waste from multiple sources and systems, they use machine learning and mapping to make sense of this complex combination of materials.
Manchester | @wondrwall
Creating intelligent homes for a sustainable future, Wondrwall is a technology company dedicated to changing the way we live and how we use energy. Combining intelligent AI powered home automation with clean energy production and super efficient heating systems, Wondrwall helps the world's homes save money, time and the environment.
London | @zeigoenergy
Zeigo uses machine learning to reduce the complexity surrounding renewable energy procurement, making it easier for corporations, renewable energy developers and suppliers to switch to, or offer, renewable energy solutions. It’s a one-stop-shop for stakeholders to transition to clean energy through Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) and short-term contracts. Zeigo uses data insights to increase market transparency.
The fellows are slightly later stage companies or Tech Nation alumni, in the unique position to benefit from the programme and elevate it simultaneously. Their experiences of scaling so far will be additional wisdom for the cohort, while our fellows too will learn and grow. Click on each logo to learn more about that company.
Northern Ireland | @ArtemisTechLtd
Artemis Technologies is an applied technologies spin-off from the successful America’s Cup team, Artemis Racing. The company provides design and engineering services to both high-performance and commercial clients, as well as developing unique hardware and software products. They are leading a Belfast based consortium developing new hydrofoil high-speed vessels and propulsion systems.
London | Artificial Intelligence | @greyparrotai
Waste composition information is key to increase recycling/recovery rates, give quality guarantee to buyers, mitigate against risks and waste crime, and understand the carbon footprint of the products and waste we generate end-to-end. Greyparrot provides AI-powered computer vision software to increase transparency and automation in recycling. Their “Automated Waste Monitoring System” is currently deployed on moving conveyor belts in recycling facilities to analyse large waste flows.
London | Tech For Good | @OLIO_ex
OLIO is an app that connects neighbours to give away surplus food and other household items, for free. Via their Food Waste Heroes Programme they also connect over 8,500 volunteers with local shops to collect and redistribute their unsold food at the end of the day. There are currently 2 million OLIOers who have together shared over 5 million portions of food.
London | @ProjectEtopia
Project Etopia combines energy, construction and intelligent technologies (Ecitech) to build the homes of the future, pioneering Eco-MMC (Modern Methods of Construction). MMC no longer refers solely to the construction method used, it is the thought process and harmonising of these three key industries that ensures the end product is not only modern today but for years to come, whilst also satisfying as many UN Sustainable Development Goals as possible to help build the Smart Eco Net Zero Cities of the Future.
Our Net Zero Report offers a holistic view of the sector, challenges it will face and how we can achieve the Net Zero by 2050 goal. The report offers insight into the sector from both a global perspective and the UK point of view. It also features our Net Zero 1.0 companies with their expert predictions and thoughts on their sector.
The UK Net Zero Ecosystem Map captures the pioneering companies operating to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. These firms are working to embed sustainable practices across the UK, through other businesses or helping the general population to do so. Net Zero companies have a keen economic interest – with nearly £4.6bn investment received by the 1,315 companies identified.
Net Zero is a six-month, free growth programme for tech companies that are creating a more sustainable future. We run masterclasses, insight sessions and peer to peer networking events for our fast growth, sustainable cohort.
Founder focused sessions delivered by entrepreneurs who have lived the journey. Tackle fundamental growth barriers such as financing, sales, talent and culture.
Sessions for your leadership team to upskill themselves. Explore challenges faced in marketing, operations, finance, product, tech, and HR functions.
Work with leaders, experts, influencers and stakeholders to quantify your company’s impact and potential in the tech ecosystem and on the planet.
Gain positioning as a fast-growth UK sustainability company through Tech Nation marketing and press. Be on the radar with government, corporates and investors.
We are delighted to have BNP Paribas with us as our Net Zero partner. They are the world leaders in sustainable finance and the bank for a changing world.
We believe that sustainable business has a positive impact on our environment, society and economy - it is ambitious for all its stakeholders. Avieco is a market-leading independent sustainability team based in London. We work with great organisations that value our input and expertise – they include Google, Lloyds of London, the UK government, the European Investment Bank, Seasalt, Croda, Johnson Matthey, Royal Mail and many, many others.
We are hard-working and collaborative sustainability champions from diverse backgrounds. Together we take on each client’s sustainability challenge as if it were our own.
Business Declares is a not for profit organisation comprising individuals with a vast range of experience from the SME, B Corp and FTSE100 sectors.
We recognise that business has a major part to play in tackling the climate, ecological and social breakdown. We exist to raise awareness of this agenda across the business sector and support acceleration of their action in balancing people, planet and profit. We work with other climate initiatives, including an official partnership with the COP26 Race to Zero Campaign, always amplifying and collaborating, not competing.
Greenhouse is a specialist communications agency on a mission to accelerate the transition to a zero carbon economy, working exclusively with pioneers, entrepreneurs, and NGOs, to help drive companies to scale and deliver impact.
If you are unsure about your eligibility or have questions about the programme, here are some resources for you:
Tech Nation is aiming to support a range of different companies, which means you can operate in a variety of industries and create products that supports sustainability in different ways – It’s not just all about carbon! Although the UK’s Net Zero initiative focuses primarily on reducing carbon, Tech Nation wants to showcase and support the range of solutions needed to combat the climate crisis.
We have an open call out for companies who share our values and ethos when it comes to Net Zero initiatives. We’re actively looking for partners to co-build prepositions to ultimately help you reach your objectives. If it’s brand awareness, thought leadership or generally being involved in the Net Zero tech community, you can directly reach out to the Net Zero team, or leave your information below and we’ll be in touch soon.
