The Climate Innovation Platform (CIP) Low Carbon Energy Solutions Innovator Challenge supports businesses committed to driving energy technology innovation.
Delivered by the University of Birmingham (UoB) in partnership with Energy Systems Catapult (ESC), the CIP Low Carbon Energy Solutions Innovator Challenge has been designed for SME innovators who are developing low carbon energy solutions. The programme offers successful applicants tailored packages of support to drive the commercialisation of innovative energy products and services.
This video introduces the Climate Innovation Platform and the benefits it can offer to SMEs. (Video transcript)
Supported by HSBC UK, applications are welcomed from SME’s registered in the UK, and particularly those who can travel to Birmingham to engage with in-person workshops.
CIP Cohort 5: Apply Now
We are currently taking expressions of interest for Cohort 5 which is due to commence in June 2025, concluding in December 2025. The deadline for applying is 11:00, Monday 19 May, 2025.
Apply for CIP
For any queries, please get in touch: climateinnovation@contacts.bham.ac.uk or contact Debbie Smith, CIP - Incubation Manager.
Please note: The application process is managed through Google Forms, which often has limited functionality to save your submission throughout, we therefore recommend that you allocate enough time to submit your application in one sitting and/or you may wish to save your responses in a separate document first. To support your preparation, we have provided a list of the application questions.
Climate Innovation Platform Questions (docx)
Those selected for the CIP Low Carbon Energy Solutions Innovator Challenge will have access to several linked opportunities, including but not limited to:
- ESC’s Energy Launchpad Incubation Programme
- Cash grants of up to £5,000 during phase one, with the possibility of further funding for businesses selected onto phase two
- Opportunities to connect into communities/spaces at Tyseley Energy Park and University of Birmingham sites
- Business engagement support through University of Birmingham
- Tailored mentoring
- Access to supply chain partner networks
- Market research and IP strategy
- Collaboration and invitation to events
- Grant writing and bid development
- Investor readiness and introductions
Scope
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This Innovator Challenge call is targeted at SME innovators who are developing low carbon energy solutions to meet the Net Zero Carbon Climate Challenge. Successful SMEs will have access to a range of incubation services sourced from ESC’s energy transition expertise and within the University of Birmingham's Energy Innovation Hub based at TEP. There will also be the opportunity to participate in cross cohort events, to support network development and collaboration with other climate focused entrepreneurs.
This fifth challenge call will focus on:
- Innovative low carbon generation or infrastructure technologies into the built environment
- Low carbon heating and/or cooling innovations for the built environment
- Leveraging end user, infrastructure and network data to create new digital platforms, services and business models that accelerate the transition to net zero
- Energy storage Innovations
- Innovative Energy from Waste
- Innovative hydrogen generation solutions for deployment in the transport sector
- Infrastructure innovations which accelerate the adoption of electric vehicle use
- Energy storage and smart local energy systems innovations for network optimisation
- Enabling active, interoperable control systems that delivers more efficient and flexible operation of the local energy system and networks
- Innovations to decarbonise the textile sector, of particular interest would be natural solutions to decarbonise the product supply chains and unique renewable energy sources
We are looking for innovations that unlock potential, effecting all demand side vectors and supply side technologies. These products and services will aim to maximise all stakeholder’s commercial value whilst, accelerating their adoption.
Impact
Successful applicants can benefit from the following:
- The SME will secure a tailored range of bespoke services, which collectively will support the SME gain a deeper understanding of the opportunities the energy transition is creating accelerating the development of its technology and commercial readiness.
- The opportunity to engage in one to many cohort events
- The opportunity to gain access to supply chain partners to support the development of scalable market entry demonstrators
- The introduction to funding from angels to institutional investors
- ESC and the UoB will deepen its learning of the challenges facing innovators in establishing new markets, and the priorities required to accelerate their opening
Target SMEs
Ideal SMEs responding to this challenge will be seeking to enter or are active across the energy system, using technology to deliver new business models or solutions in an innovative way.
We recognise that innovations come from across all sectors of society, the programme actively welcomes applications which will help deliver an energy sector which is truly representative of the UK’s culturally diverse range of skills and innovators.
If you feel your business does not fit into any of these broad categories, but has potential for climate impact, please do contact climateinnovation@contacts.bham.ac.uk to discuss viability.
CIP Cohort 4
In January 2024, CIP welcomed their fourth cohort on to the programme.
Most UK homes have a central heating system which provides both warmth and hot water. The traditionally low price of mains gas and high functional performance of most boilers have made gas fuelled central heating systems the most affordable choice for homeowners throughout the UK and many parts of the world.
Gas boilers have dominated the market for the past 50 years, with around 25 million of them operating within the UK. There is, however, an environmental price to pay for this affordability and convenience. Burning natural gas, in common with any fossil fuel including oil and LPG, releases carbon dioxide; the single largest contributor to global warming.
The Remit Zero product “cylo®” can replace a gas boiler, without compromise, providing the same familiar functional performance, convenience, and low cost of operation but with absolutely zero emissions. cylo® is an electric boiler and thermal store. The vessel uses water as its only storage material, capable of harnessing electricity from the grid when it is in abundance and at its cheapest. This electricity powers the vessel, enabling it to provide hot water and heating around the home without the use of any fossil fuels.
Ki Hydrogen is a deep-tech climate venture reducing the energy required to produce green hydrogen by up to 75%.
We achieve this through biomass electrolysis - directly electrolysing aqueous biomass waste as feedstock rather than the water used in conventional water electrolysis. The only gaseous product is hydrogen while the liquid feedstock is broken down into commodity organic chemicals such as acetic and formic acids.
Ki Hydrogen is building on our CTO’s research experience with waste-to-hydrogen systems at the University of Cambridge to commercialise this innovative technology and accelerate industrial decarbonisation.
MySnugHome Limited is dedicated to reshaping the way homeowners approach energy efficiency. Our user-friendly platform generates personalised energy efficiency plans, connects customers with trusted local installers, and offers financing solutions for these improvements.
We empower homeowners to save money and contribute to a sustainable future by creating and implementing a holistic plan for the home, thus reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Anionix is developing renewable powered Green Hydrogen electrolysers, free from critical raw materials, to enable the energy transition to net zero.
AEON Energy, an Imperial College spinoff, is revolutionizing floating renewables solutions by integrating solar, wind, tidal, and wave sources into a modular platform.
Focused on empowering climate-vulnerable communities in Small Island Developing States and coastal regions to have universal clean energy access, our technology actively tackles land scarcity and renewable intermittency challenges.
AEON Energy is now live with a 60kW pilot in the Maldives, supported by Innovate UK and the Maldives’ Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, and Technology. A second 200kW pilot in Fiji, backed by The Pacific Community and Innovate UK, is on track for implementation.
Tomorium is creating the 'Experian' of Sustainability, which helps companies understand how sustainable they are compared with their peers, improve their sustainability score and earn reputational capital.
This is done by using AI tools to collect data from various sources (both structured and unstructured), enabling comparison of companies and adding context to existing ESG reporting. This will enable clients to win more work, retain talent and understand where they are on their journey to net zero.
Naxca specialise in electronics and IoT solutions, with sustainability as our drive. Our mission is to optimise the way we see and use energy in our houses and electrify space heating.
Our central heating optimiser is a complete technology solution that provides real-time data to remotely diagnose and monitor the energy efficiency of a house and the performance of its wet central heating system.
Nusku is developing technology to revolutionise how we heat our homes sustainably in the future. They are designing a new home heating system, based upon heat pump technology, which will significantly reduce the current barriers to adoption facing UK consumers.
MeterZ removes barriers to collecting and analysing building energy data. Energy data acquisition is a major hurdle to the effective decarbonisation of buildings and the grid.
MeterZ is developing pre-integrated IoT shadow metering solutions for buildings, which significantly undercut existing players' costs to make granular energy data an accessible commodity for all building types and budgets. Together we'll democratise energy data access, and bring all buildings out of the dark and into the light!
LUX is providing a scalable, on-site-on-demand supply of Low-Carbon liquid Hydrogen (LH2) for the Transportation, Energy and Manufacturing markets.
We are achieving this by developing a fully-integrated, containerised, modular, rapidly deployable, Hydrogen production, liquefaction, storage & supply system.
The system, designed & built in-house, will be owned and operated by LUX, producing Low-Carbon LH2 on-site-on-demand, direct to users.
This eliminates transport, reduces storage demands, and offers lower minimum order quantities (100kg), reducing barriers to entry.
Standardisation and modularity, allows matching the required number of systems to the user’s requirements, and enables us to increase supply, as our customers’ demands grow.
Smartlayer.ai is a data platform enabling banks to build more targeted, relevant and fair green home finance products, and to engage, educate and incentivise the homeowner to make positive green changes.
We leverage new datasets, such as open banking and open energy data, alongside cutting edge analytical tools, to shine new light on the growing financial and environmental costs of owning a home, and make clear recommendations on how to reduce them.
Casa is making it radically easier to be a heat pump installer through their end-to-end operating system that streamlines the installation process.
They are starting by building a data driven sales engine, saving installers time and money on customer acquisition and support - improving conversion rates, increasing margins, and boosting referrals.
Cognition Cloud helps organisations to understand the environmental impact of their Information Technology and provides services to help mitigate it.
Read more
The GHG emissions generated by the 460m new devices manufactured every year are sometime overlooked. The numbers involved though are surprisingly large. More GHG emissions are generated from computers than from aviation.
The impact can best be mitigated by applying a circular economy model to IT.
This involves:
- Product life extension: repurposing devices with alternative operating systems
- Sharing resources: leveraging the public cloud
- Circular supply: replacing with refurbished, rather than new equipment
Our Previous Cohorts
In February 2023 fourteen cleantech businesses celebrated their graduation from the Climate Innovation Platform’s Low Carbon Energy Solutions, Innovator Challenge (Video transcript)
In November 2021, CIP welcomed its first cohort of 13 SME’s focussed on driving energy technology innovation onto the programme, they graduated in April 2022.
Connected Response’s mission is to use their HeatSage retrofit technology to release the 1.5m households with electric storage and water heating from the shackles of Economy 7-type tariff night-time charging and associated fuel poverty.
Demand Logic is a Building Analytics platform which provides actionable insight to reduce carbon emissions, increase Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and improve maintenance in buildings.
Everimpact have developed an IoT software that combines satellite, ground sensors, and AI data to establish clients’ carbon footprint and are a provider of real-time measures of CO2 emissions at asset and territory level.
Faraday Battery Limited is a young SME, manufacturing battery packs at 0.1 MW to 1 MW scale for critical transport markets including electric trains, electric buses, and electric aircrafts.
The Veritherm Testing solution is a method for assessing the thermal performance of homes, offering an accessible service to measure real-world building performance, with minimal disruption.
Nomad is a technology-based service provider offering deep insights into building behaviour and gathering real time data to enable precision performance analytics and control.
PyTerra is developing a blockchain-backed platform which trades ESG tokens across multiple parties to raise low carbon project funding.
Steamology deliver scalable and modular solutions for industrial steam heat and power, embracing the hydrogen economy, eliminating emissions and replacing fossil fuels and fossil fuel engines.
Sygensys is developing patented technology to enhance the performance of Electric Vehicle (EV) charging and Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technology improving grid resilience.
Data Catalyst delivers Smart Data as a Service - simply, and securely. Founded in 2020, their USP is to take the lessons of Open Banking and apply them to smarten-up shared data across sectors.
The MECHAPRES venture team are developing of a first-of-a-kind multi-energy-vector technology, endorsed by the International Energy Association as a subcategory of thermo-mechanical storage. Find out more on the Engineering website.
Voltempo creates rapid electric vehicle charging solutions for trucks, buses, cars and vans by installing a single megawatt site-wide charger, that can then charge between five and fifty vehicles simultaneously.
Kendra Labs, a subsidiary of Fintricity Ltd is a cloud native data and AI platform company providing an enterprise grade data layer for enterprises.
In July 2022, CIP welcomed its second cohort, they graduated in February 2023.
Airhive is developing a modular Direct Air Capture technology that interfaces with the rapidly growing stock of air source heat pumps to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere.
CarbonTRACK is enabling the UK’s transition to net zero by providing a simple, affordable way for owners of consumption, storage and generation energy assets to contribute to the energy eco system.
Emergent exists to accelerate the decarbonisation of homes. To do so we turn solar PV and other residential decarbonisation technologies into investible assets.
Hy-Met Limited was established to help the transition to a sustainable energy economy by tackling key measurement challenges that are barriers to adoption of clean technologies.
Incube Space enables commercial real estate owners and tenants to reduce energy waste while providing optimal indoor air quality to occupiers
Microcab is a UK based SME specialising in the design & development of Low Carbon mobility platforms, in particular the use of hydrogen and fuel cells to achieve zero emission mobility.
NOCO is a London based ClimateTech start-up that breaks down national net-zero pathways to the local energy system level.
Olsights is a clean energy advisory analytics and web app developer founded in June 2020. Our purpose is to accelerate the energy transition by providing timely clean energy insights.
Perlemax is a development company focussed on microbubbles. Currently there are two created techniques, which will impact many different processes, through improving yields, cutting power consumption or allowing new techniques to be realized.
OXTO Energy has developed a new generation of mechanical batteries. Our mission is to support the acceleration of the energy transition.
Surple removes the barriers to energy efficiency by making it easy to understand your energy consumption.
Sherwood Power reduces industrial and commercial business user cost by storing excess wind and solar electricity to release it during expensive periods to and/or generate revenue.
Quantenergy provides accurate data-led insights to fast-track cleantech investment decisions that will achieve Net Zero targets and substantial financial savings for commercial and public sector property owners.
In July 2023, CIP welcomed their third cohort on to the programme.
ELPS Energy are creating a one-stop shop platform for energy efficiency works connecting vetted suppliers and consumers and providing innovative Pay-For-Performance (P4P) financing solutions.
Nested Loop develop and sell smart home energy storage systems, that empower people to increase the amount of renewable energy they're using, save money on their bills, and contribute to the energy security of wider society.
Checklist Films Ltd will become a pioneer in the UK film industry for decarbonising all of our activities thus ensuring we make film productions that take nothing from our planet but give much to society.
Kaasai is a software company building fast automated data processing pipelines and light weight fast automated data connection capabilities for stakeholders in the renewable and energy transition industry.
Daphne Water Solutions have developed a sustainable technology that removes chemicals contaminants from waste water enabling its reuse. The technology meets the zero-pollution ambition for a toxic-free environment.
Peer Carbon delivers hourly, location based carbon accounting and through its Carbon Flex API can enable businesses to reduce carbon emissions by a further 10 - 15%.
Salinity Solutions have developed a disruptive technology to dramatically reduce the high carbon footprint of water treatment. They can support a wide range of industries in the effort to solve the emerging global water crisis.
First Editions is the largest, specialist trade manufacturer of British-made, branded sports bottles and drinkware. They place sustainability centre stage and offer complete transparency throughout our supply chain.
Furbnow delivers low-carbon homes without the hassle from plan to delivery with our vetted marketplace powered by our Home Digital Twin Platform. They help homeowners and private landlords looking to invest in energy efficiency in their property
At Hubl Logistics, we empower mid and last-mile delivery companies, SMBs, and fresh & frozen food producers to achieve sustainable, cost-effective temperature-controlled transportation by utilizing our cutting-edge Coolrun pods.
The ScanTheSun software is an innovative approach to the design of cost-effective and energy-efficient solar installations and tools for their sale by manufacturers and installers.
Origin21 has a solution to lower the cost of extracting hydrogen from water using sonication, thereby making green hydrogen more affordable and competitive with grey hydrogen.
Rendesco is the UK’s leading company in the design and build of low-carbon heat networks using heat pump technology. Their heat networks provide heating and hot water for 3,000+ homes across the UK.
Delivered by the Birmingham Energy Institute
In partnership with Catapult Energy Systems
