Climate-tech scaleups play an outsized role in tackling the climate crisis. 40% of emission reductions rely on technologies not yet commercially deployed on a mass-market scale. This is why Tech Nation is delighted to launch Net Zero 2.0, supporting scale-ups to achieve scale and accelerate the UK’s goal to drive down global emissions. We are looking for early-stage scaleups which operate across key sectors, including electricity & energy, transport & mobility, agriculture, food systems, manufacturing and building technology.
Net Zero is tailor-made to help mission-driven founders realise their visions. The best part? It’s free to join and we don’t take an equity stake in your business. As we have already closed our second callout for the Net Zero programme, you can pre-register your interest to be the first to hear about application opportunities.
From Agriculture and Foodtech all the way down to Smart Cities and an eclectic mix of subsectors in between, this year’s cohort presents some of the most exciting and innovative climate-tech trailblazers in the UK’s tech ecosystem. Click on each company logo to discover more about the cohort member.
Edinburgh | Energy & Electricity | @ActBlade
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.
Oxford | Buildings & Cities
Ambue gives people information and advice to use energy more efficiently in their homes, by creating a unique Digital Twin of each home which is used to analyse 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.
Cambridge | Agriculture | @BetterOrigin
Better Origin develop and operate 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 democratise access to insect farming so that any farmer can access insect waste repurposing possibilities, in turn helping reduce the footprint of agriculture.
London | Carbon Removal & Offsetting | @BxEarth
Bx Technologies fuses technology with nature to transform how we grow food. The company is breaking new ground to digitalise 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.
London | Carbon Removal & Offsetting
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.
Belfast | Transport | @Catagen
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 which mines the unique data and uses models to create a software technology platform to inform individuals about their emissions footprint to create behaviour change.
Edinburgh | Environmental Monitoring | @EarthBlox
Earth Blox is a code-free, cloud-based, Lego-like SaaS that allows 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 customise their own satellite intelligence to exactly suit their needs.
Oxford | Transport | @EAVcargo
EAV are 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.
London | Smart Cities | @emsol_iot
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.
Oxford | Agriculture | @GardinAgritech
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.
London | Supply Chain Solutions | @Magway_Limited
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.
Reading | Energy & Electricity | @MeasurableUK
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.
Lancaster | Energy & Electricity | @Fuuseio
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.
Oxford | Washing | @oxwash
Oxwash offer 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.
London | Transport | @EvPaua
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 centralised billing function and a fleet managers dashboard.
Oxford | Energy | @PowerMarketAI
PowerMarket is digitalising 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.
London | Buildings & Cities | @QualisFlow
Qflow enables developers and construction teams to better manage their materials and waste. Using a unique combination of artificial Iintelligence and machine learning, Qflow automates the digitisation 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 quality and safety of products.
London | Energy | @RippleEnergy
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.
London | Buildings & Cities | @satellitevu
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.
Peterborough | Energy | @SolarPolar
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.
South East | Energy & Electricity | @solivus
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.
Manchester | Supply Chain Solutions | @sourceful
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.
Durham | Buildings & Cities | @spherauk
Sphera is an award-winning speciality 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.
Bristol | Carbon Calculation | @Sphericstech
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 visualises 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.
London | Transport | @sunswap_ltd
Sunswap is developing hardware and software to accelerate the decarbonisation 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.
London | Carbon Removal & Offsetting | @gosupercritical
Supercritical help businesses get to net zero by measuring their carbon footprint and selling them high quality carbon removal offsets.
London | Carbon Removal & Offsetting | @SylveraCarbon
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.
London | Transport | @Tyre_Collective
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.
Leeds | Finance
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 plants 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.
Cambridge | Biotech & Life Sciences | @Unicornbio
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.
Cambridge | Biotech & Life Sciences | @XamplaUK
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.
Edinburgh | Energy & Electricity | @ZUoS_energy
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.
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.
Net Zero is for fast-growth tech companies which help the UK reduce greenhouse gas emissions either directly or indirectly. Companies may work digital, hardware and life science sectors.
Criteria for applicants:
“Improving the long-term resilience of our planet is the most important issue of our time. If you are a young, innovative company focused on decarbonising our lives, being on the Tech Nation’s Net Zero programme gives you ‘the oxygen’ to develop, hone and grow business capability… and help you on your journey.”
Mark Hodgson, CCO, Cervest
“Last year, the Tech Nation Net Zero programme brought together the most exciting founders with a great selection of mentors, investors and partners. I really saw the value to the participating companies as they developed throughout the programme, and I’m honoured to be supporting it again. We need to give the most innovative companies all the support we can to accelerate the zero carbon transition.”
Pippa Gawley, Founder, Zero Carbon Capital
BNP Paribas is one of the world’s pre-eminent banking groups, and Tech Nation is lucky enough to have them as our partner for the Net Zero programme. Headquartered in Europe, they are active globally and have a major presence in the UK and are a world leader in sustainable finance.
Sage is the market leader for integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, supporting the world’s entrepreneurs. They help today’s business builders with a new generation of solutions to manage everything from money to people.
Scroll through to see the calibre of our expert judges
Marta Krupinska
Head of Google for Startups UK
Emily Brooke MBE
Partner, Revent
Dan Avery
Venture Lead, National Grid Partners
Christian Hernandez
Partner, 2150
Sam Kimmins
Head of RE100, The Climate Group
Faye Walsh Drouillard
Founder, WakeUp Capital
Jeffrey Eneberi
CEO, Sustainable Seaweed
Susannah Mcclintock
Investor, Sustainable Ventures
Pippa Gawley
Founder & Director, Zero Carbon Capital
Azeem Azhar
Founder, Exponential View
Chris Turner
Executive Director, B Lab UK
Katya Akulinicheva
CFO, ZeroAvia
Jamie Rowles
Head of Environmental Investments, Sky
Hayden wood
CEO, Bulb
Lucy Clarke
Investor, Octopus Ventures
Beverley Gower-Jones
Managing Partner, Clean Growth Fund
Alex Hook
Senior Investment Director, Nesta
Natasha Jones
Investor, Octopus Ventures
Jim Totty
Managing Director, Viridis Capital
Zheela Qaiser
Strategist, Index Ventures
Jeffrey Krogh
Managing Director, BNP Paribas Corporate and Institutional Banking
Michael Wilshire
Ex-Head of Strategy, BloombergNEF
Shan Millie
Founder, Bright Blue Hare
Naveed Chaudhry
Co-founder, The Greenhouse
Luke Olly
Energy and Environment Lead, COOP
Stewart McTavish
Chief Platform Officer
Cansu Deniz Bayrak
Senior Partner, Bethnal Green Ventures
Matthew Gilmour
Corporate Finance, BDO
Mayank Girdhar
Founder, Upspark
Tom Jarman
Director, Low Carbon Journey
Mahima Sukhdev
Head of Product Strategy, GIST
Maria Wagner
Investment Director, Beringea
Reinier Zeldenrust
Associate Partner, Foster + Partners
Erica Purvis
Director, Technical Nature
Michael Langguth
Co-founder, Carbon13
Celia Francis
Global Head, Terraformation
Jon Coker
Founding Partner, Eka Ventures
Joe Bond
Principal, ProFounders Capital
Mark Hodgson
CCO, Cervest
