The climate is our business

Meet the startups shaping our vision of The World in 2050

By Ian Mundell

What might the world look like in 2050?

The technologies that will help us live with climate change and slow its progress are already here.

Some are newly on the market, while others are on the threshold of commercial viability. The World in 2050 (as recently envisioned by Imperial’s Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment and Imperial Tech Foresight) is nearer than you might think.

To reach this point, the innovators and entrepreneurs behind these new technologies have put in many years of work. Professor Richard Templer, Director of Innovation at the Grantham Institute, has seen their dedication first-hand, and the effort needed to convince sceptical investors.

"When we started the Cleantech Accelerator at the end of 2011, not many people were interested in climate change innovation," he says. "There had been a boom and bust that started around 2003, and by 2010 about $1.5 billion had been lost in these investments. So we were seen as crazy to work in this area."

The accelerator, which supported startups developing technologies expected to have a positive impact on the climate, was part of the Climate Knowledge Innovation Community (Climate KIC), part of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology. It responded to the market's scepticism by arguing that a strong startup is worth investment, no matter how it is labelled.

"We took in good teams, people we thought could make the transition from having a great idea, to having an investable business. And we helped them transform that promise into a good business proposition."

The challenge was not lessened by the fact that most of the startups were developing physical technologies, which demand more time and money to commercialise than digital applications. Instead of needing around $100,000 to launch a digital startup, which might pay back in seven years, a climate innovator typically needs $1 million or more to get started, which only starts paying back after 7-15 years.

Yet two thirds of the companies that passed through the accelerator succeeded, attracting investments totalling around $300 million since 2012. "These startups have all had a hard journey, but they are run by brilliant people with very deep vision," says Professor Templer. "They understand that they are trying to do something very difficult, and they have the determination to see it through."

What might the world look like in 2050?

Back in 1990, cheap short-haul flights were rare, and the smartphone was still decades away and there were only four TV channels.

In another 30 years, climate-friendly innovations could transform our relationship with the planet.

This Imperial Stories feature accompanies The World in 2050, an interactive feature from Imperial Tech Foresight and the Grantham Institute about a world in which existing startups and technologies like those profiled here have transformed our way of life.

The World in 2050

When we started the Cleantech Accelerator at the end of 2011, not many people were interested in climate change innovation," says Professor Templer. "There had been a boom and bust and $1.5 billion had been lost. So we were seen as crazy to work in this area."

Professor Richard Templer

Professor Richard Templer

Flying with hydrogen

Part of that determination has involved waiting for attitudes to change – for example, towards the use of hydrogen as a carbon-free energy carrier.

"When we started H2GO Power six years ago, hydrogen was merely an interesting molecule to talk about," recalls the company's co-founder Dr Enass Abo-Hamed. "Now the same investors who wondered why we were wasting our time with such ideas are queuing up to understand what we are doing and how it connects with everything happening in the market."

The next step will be to adapt the technology to larger craft. "This will have an important impact on decarbonising flight, as we scale-up the systems from commercial drones to larger vehicles, such as electric vertical take-off and landing craft," says Dr Abo-Hamed.

The company's core technology, developed at the University of Cambridge, is an innovative way of storing hydrogen. The conventional approach is to put the gas into heavy duty metal cylinders, under pressure – but this is cumbersome and can be unsafe. H2GO Power has created a system that enables hydrogen to instead be absorbed, stored and released in a highly controlled way without the costly process of compressing the gas.

In parallel, it has developed technologies such as 3D-printing hydrogen storage units for drones. These storage units are light, safe, and efficient, since they can be custom printed to fit the drone's shape.

"This a high-growth market," says Dr Abo-Hamed. "There's a lot of interest in extending flight-time, and our product can solve a big problem and there are not many competitors." Test flights have been successful and the company is discussing deployment with civil aviation authorities. "We are hoping to sell by the end of 2021."

The next step will be to adapt the technology to larger craft. "This will have an important impact on decarbonising flight, as we scale up the systems from commercial drones to larger vehicles, such as eVTOLs [electric vertical take-off and landing craft]."

In another application area, the company has developed a system that captures and stores renewable energy as hydrogen, for use in situations where the surplus renewable energy would be wasted. Doing this without involving carbon is a major advantage.

"Whether you need energy to power flight, heavy industries, homes, or to store renewable energy, this is a solution that can have zero carbon emissions, end-to-end," Dr Abo-Hamed says. "That contributes to decarbonisation really fast, allowing you to reach your climate targets sooner."

Dr Enass Abo-Hamed is co-founder of H2GO Power, a company offering an innovative way of storing hydrogen with several applications in the power market. Photo: H2GO Power

A man in a high vis vest installing a piece of plasterboard

Breathaboard is a plant-based replacement for standard plasterboard designed to sequester carbon dioxide. Photo: Adaptavate

Capturing carbon in buildings

Another way to have a rapid impact is to apply climate-friendly technology to an existing product. This is what Adaptavate set out to do with plasterboard, developing a plant-based drop-in replacement that avoids plasterboard's negative environmental impacts and makes a positive difference by locking in carbon from carbon dioxide.

"Breathaboard can lock in around 3kg of carbon dioxide per board, and since plasterboard production typically emits around 6-8kg per board, that's 10kg of carbon dioxide per board that would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere," explains company founder Tom Robinson. "So this is essentially carbon capture through our production process, and carbon storage using the material in buildings."

He developed the material used in Breathaboard during a Master's degree at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth. It is made from fibrous agricultural waste, selected according to local supply. "We are working with industrial hemp in North America and Australasia, with industrial hemp and oilseed rape in the UK and Europe, and in South Korea we will be looking at rice husks and rice straw."

This plant material locks some carbon into the boards, while more is captured during the production process. That can be carbon dioxide from the air or drawn directly from industrial processes such as lime or cement production. Adaptavate's business model is to offer a tool box of technologies to production partners who need opportunities to grow but must also cut carbon emissions. "We have four potential production partners around the world looking to license our technology, and we are currently raising money to build a demonstration facility," says Mr Robinson.

Breathaboard can lock in around 3kg of carbon dioxide per board, and since plasterboard production typically emits around 6-8kg per board, that's 10kg of carbon dioxide per board that would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere
Tom Robinson

Increasing regulation of carbon dioxide emissions and shortages in gypsum for conventional plasterboard are working in Adaptavate's favour but the construction industry is monolithic and resistant to change. "The challenge is to still be in the game when the market shifts towards us, which it is doing now, at an increasing rate."

Builders on site will use Breathaboard in the same way as conventional plasterboard, while benefiting from other properties of the plant fibres, such as its light weight, good thermal and acoustic performance, and an ability to absorb pollutants from indoor air. Finally, unlike plasterboard, it produces no hazardous waste. "At the end of its life, it's compostable – in fact, our current research project is looking to create energy from our waste."

For the future, Adaptavate is exploring how to close the production circle. "We are looking at taking that building material waste, using it to create energy through anaerobic digestion, then using the nutrient-rich leachate to grow more crops."

An ordinary-looking radiator valve with a red button on top and a finger pressing it.

The Radbot looks like a conventional radiator valve, but uses AI to reduce the temperature when the room in unoccupied. It is designed to be simple to use and does not require an app or wi-fi connection. Photo: Vestemi

Turning down the heat

Vestemi has also developed a drop-in product – a valve that can be retrofitted to existing radiators to turn down the heat when a room is unoccupied. This addresses one of the largest areas of wasted energy and avoidable carbon dioxide emissions. When co-founder Damon Hart-Davis set out to tackle this problem, systems that detected room occupancy were already available to commercial building managers but required expertise to set up and use. He realised that something simpler was required for the domestic market.

People think that smart heating involves Wi-Fi, your phone, and setting up schedules. We've removed these points of friction.
Damon Hart-Davis

The result is Radbot. It looks like a conventional radiator valve, with a dial to set the temperature and a single button on top to wake the radiator up, if necessary. "You don't need to set up or programme anything. It just works out when you are not in the room and sets the temperature back a bit."

Inside there are sensors, a microprocessor, and a small motor to control the valve. Strong occupancy signals, such as room lights going on or off, are given greater weighting, while weaker signals are treated more tentatively. Finally, Radbot has a rolling memory that helps it decide if the room is likely to be occupied or not.

Understanding how to interpret these signals and turn them into control decisions presented a classic artificial intelligence challenge, with the additional hurdle that the final algorithm had to run on a relatively small processor. "It is not biggest software system I've ever built, but it is very complicated," says Mr Hart-Davis, who previously worked as a technologist in the City of London. "And it has been a challenge shoe-horning it onto something that can run for a couple of years on two AA batteries."

While most of the innovation is in the software, the fact that Radbot is a physical product means Vestemi also had to put time and money into design, manufacturing, safety standards, and maximising product life and recyclability. Now that it is on sale, the challenge is to educate the market. "People think that smart heating involves Wi-Fi, your phone, and setting up schedules. We've removed these points of friction, as Radbot can do most of the work for you."

Green panels similar in appearance to solar panels

BioSolar Leaf panels use microorganisms to remove greenhouse gases from the environment. It emits oxygen and results in biomass that can be used as food additives. The panels could be deployed on a large scale on land unsuitable for growing food. Photo: Arborea

Harnessing photosynthesis

Arborea is working on drop-in products as a way to introduce a radical new technology into the food production market. The system, called the BioSolar Leaf, is a panel that circulates photosynthetic micro-organisms such as phytoplankton. The idea is that the panels can be deployed on a large scale, for example on fields or marginal land otherwise unsuitable for growing food.

As they circulate through the panels, the microorganisms draw in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, produce oxygen, and multiply. After a time, the raw biomass can be harvested and processed, to extract specific substances produced by the microorganisms.

"We have a platform that can grow different micro-organisms to produce numerous ingredients," says Julian Melchiorri, who founded Arborea to commercialise ideas developed during a double master's programme on Innovation Design Engineering, run by Imperial and the Royal College of Arts. "Our job now is to choose the right ingredients that can accelerate the transition to a healthy and sustainable food system, while also being commercially viable."

The BioSolar Leaf is a panel that uses microorganisms to draw in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen and biomass. The panels could be deployed on a large scale on land unsuitable for growing food.

The first two ingredients Arborea has chosen replace products already on the market: one is an antioxidant sold as an ingredient with health benefits, the other is blue food colouring. Arborea can produce these ingredients at lower cost, higher quality and more sustainably than competitors. "In the food industry, cost is still the first consideration, unfortunately, and second comes sustainability. However, we believe this will change soon."

But Arborea's formulation of the food colouring also has antioxidant properties. "The idea is that we can replace blue colours while adding health benefits to food. For example, if you eat a blue yoghurt you would get the same antioxidant potency as eating an apple. So our vision is not just to replace synthetic or unsustainable ingredients, but it is also to add functional health benefits."

In the longer term, the BioSolar Leaf could also be linked to industrial processes generating carbon dioxide, directly reducing their emissions. Within the food sector, this would appeal to brewers or distillers, for example.

Arborea is currently completing a round of equity financing, with the aim of building a commercial demonstration facility in Portugal. "With that we can do pre-production trials with customers, and also produce and develop novel products." Food ingredients are just the beginning. "With synthetic biology you can use this platform to produce virtually any biochemical."

Person holding a smartphone and another handheld device on top of a field of soil.

PES Technologies is working on a device that will help farmers maintain healthy soil, or recover soil that is in decline. Photo: PES Technologies

Sniffing out healthy soil

While Arborea has a solution for land unfit for farming, PES Technologies is working on a device that will help farmers maintain healthy soil or recover soil that is in decline. This connects to climate change because healthy soil is high in organic matter, locking in atmospheric carbon dioxide and making it more resistant to adverse weather conditions.

"If the soil isn't resilient, then the plants growing in it will not be resilient to climate change," says company founder Dr Jim Bailey. Healthy soil can also do without artificial nitrogen fertilisers, a substantial source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Soil health is usually assessed by collecting samples and sending them to a lab for analysis, but this is time consuming, expensive, and only gives a snapshot of how the soil is doing. What farmers need is a cheap way to take lots of measurements, literally in the field, so they can track the health of their soil and monitor regeneration efforts.

As a semi-conductor scientist, Dr Bailey could see a way of doing this, although strictly speaking it was not part of their past research at Imperial's Department of Physics. "I wanted to start a company, and my mentors encouraged me to look for problems I had the skills to solve, even if that didn't involve a technology I had developed in my PhD."

Soil health is usually assessed by sending samples to a lab, but this is time-consuming and expensive. Farmers need a cheap way to take measurements in the field.

The solution was to detect the volatile organic compounds given off by soil microorganisms. Building a separate sensor for each compound would be time-consuming and complicated, so instead Dr Bailey came up with a sensor that was more general, but much more sensitive. "We get a complex pattern, like a fingerprint, that can be interpreted with machine learning. It does not tell us which gases are in the soil, but things that are of interest to a farmer, such as the organic carbon content of the soil or the microbial biomass."

The system is currently being taught how to recognise the smell of healthy soil with samples from around the UK. These have been characterised with the usual lab tests, backed up with information such as soil type and cropping history collected on the spot by agronomists.

But before reaching this stage, the company had to get the hardware right. "You have to train the software on the sensor that will eventually go into mass production, so we've worked hard to make the sensors scalable." It is now raising seed investment to take this work further.

The technology is applicable around the world, but the machine learning stage has to be repeated in each territory. To this end, PES Technologies is already working with partners in Kenya to bring soil health testing to small villages. "In order to make their farms profitable, and bring them out of poverty, they need to be testing the soil, and it needs to be affordable."

The River Medway in Kent. Ichthion used the river to test a prototype of its Azure system for extracting plastic waste.

Fishing for waste

Ichthion is also bringing its technology to less developed countries, to help close the circle on plastic waste, and protect marine ecosystems and the food industries that depend on them. It does this by removing plastic waste from rivers, before it ever reaches the ocean.

Using a test rig developed at Imperial's Dyson School of Design Engineering, co-founder Dr Inty Grønneberg was able simulate varying river currents and flow conditions, and so test different methods for removing plastic debris. "We wanted to understand how floating devices could direct material towards the bank of the river. And we found that they do not need to be connected, but can be arranged in a cascade," he explains. This means that a floating plastic removal system need not obstruct river traffic.

To complement the barrages it has designed, Ichthion has developed a conveyor belt that drops into the water at the river bank to scoop out the waste plastic. Designed to be mobile, one belt can service barrages in different locations, reducing the operating costs considerably. Overall, cleaning a river in this way is expected to be 70% cheaper than taking the waste out of the ocean.

The final part of system is a camera that scans the plastic coming out of the river, and applies machine learning to identify what is in the catch. Knowing more about the waste helps develop recycling solutions, and initiatives to reduce it at source.

Cleaning a river using Ichthion's technology is expected to be 70% cheaper than taking the waste out of the ocean.

Ichthion is currently deploying the system, called Azure, on the Portoviejo River in Ecuador. "Now we are in the process of testing the technology and optimising it in a real-life environment," Dr Grønneberg says.

A local recycling market already exists for plastic bottles and other polyethylene terephthalate (PET) products, but not for high and low density plastics. So Ichthion has partnered with recycling companies in the UK, who will bring tried and tested technologies to Ecuador and help set up a recycling plant.

This will also handle waste from other sources, such as landfill. "If we open a market for high-density and low-density plastics, there is something else that waste pickers can recover and generate income from, so the project has a social aspect as well."

More than a technical test, the project is a model for the company's commercial development, which is to provide a service extracting waste and generating data for local authorities, companies or governments interested in protecting biodiversity downstream. "Our aim is to put 300 systems around the world in the next seven years."

Counting all the carbon

In contrast to the physical technologies developed by these six companies, Carbon Analytics has a digital product. This addresses a fault in the market, rather than a simple gap. "We have a capitalist system that is brilliant at distributing goods and services around the world, but knows nothing about climate, habitats or water, or justice and social equity for that matter," says co-founder Michael Thornton. "All of these 'externalities' are then inevitably overrun, since they are invisible to the engine of economic optimisation that is running right now. The core idea of our business is to correct that failing."

In practical terms, this means building a system that automatically connects financial information with information about the externalities, such as carbon emissions. "Can we create a system where, every time you have a financial transaction, you have the carbon footprint of that transaction associated with it?"

We've developed our core algorithm into a platform we call Insight. That works with a company's financial data and produces a carbon footprint," says Michael Thornton. The cost of this automated service is modest compared to the alternative of hiring someone to do the job. "It's an easy sale for us."

In Carbon Analytics' solution, the inputs are accounting transactions. Algorithms tease out the ripple each transaction creates in a company's supply chain, then adds up the cost in terms of carbon, using public data, a growing dataset of measured footprints, and proxies for the companies involved where other data is unavailable. Proxies also allow the system to operate whether or not suppliers agree to participate, so that complete, comparable carbon accounts can be created for all users.

Ultimately the aim is to go below the company level, and automatically produce carbon footprints for individual product or service transactions, and to cover other environmental externalities. "The vision is to build a global data infrastructure that is accessible anywhere a financial transaction happens or is recorded, and can solve this set of environmental externality problems with market forces," says Mr Thornton.

The main challenge in developing the company and its core product has been finance, with the consequence that effort had to be diverted into spin-offs with more immediate commercial potential. "We've developed our core algorithm into a platform we call Insight. That works with a company's financial data and produces a carbon footprint." The cost of this automated service is modest compared to the alternative of hiring someone to do the job. "It's an easy sale for us."

Another line involves building carbon calculators for air travel, power generation and carbon offsetting companies. "We do the calculations, sell the certificates, and so on, and that has become a good business for us."

The Queen's Lawn on Imperial's South Kensington Campus

Out of the accelerator

Many founders from the Cleantech Accelerator, such as Dr Bailey of PES Technologies, needed to be in a university environment to get past the pen-and-paper stage. "I thought I could develop a sensor, but I needed access to lab space to develop it. So, with the grant and organisational support, I was able to go back into my labs at Imperial, as a private company, to develop the sensor."

Conversations with academics in the Grantham Institute were also important for Ichthion, shifting its focus from oceans to rivers, and broadening its business horizons. "We realised that what we are doing goes beyond extracting material from rivers and avoiding pollution, but also involves conservation of biodiverse ecosystems, so that is also an opportunity for us," says Dr Grønneberg.

While the funding attached to participation in the accelerator was modest, it came at a crucial stage in the companies' development. "Without it we couldn't have done critical early stage tests, so the KIC was fundamental for financing Arborea in those early days," says Julian Melchiorri of Arborea.

From being in a situation where nobody wanted to know, the startups that began working on this ten years ago are now the best game in town."
Professor Richard Templer

Other participants appreciated the goal-oriented approach. "The funding was very open-ended, just based on milestones," recalls Michael Thornton of Carbon Analytics. "We were told: get to this spot and when you are there, there will be a little more money."

Meanwhile there was mentorship and training in areas such as pitching, financing, sales, and manufacturing. "These were really valuable. It was like having the good bits of an MBA, without going through the whole two years," says Damon Hart Davis of Vestemi.

And finally, the startups helped one another. "Your peers may not have 20 years of experience, but they do have a lot of experience that is relevant to the stage you are at," says Dr Abbo-Hamed of H2GO Power. "Bringing us together and making that interaction possible was also very valuable."

She is in no doubt about the impact of the accelerator. "Without the support from the Grantham Institute and the people running the Climate KIC, companies like ours might not have kicked off. We might have taken our skills and gone to work in the oil and gas industry instead."

The market now

While many of these companies have had to struggle with a scarcity of money and understanding, the situation has now changed dramatically. Addressing climate change is now seen as an imperative, and there is more interest in approaches that genuinely offset carbon emissions. "From being in a situation where nobody wanted to know, the startups that began working on this ten years ago are now the best game in town," Professor Templer says.

Even though the business climate has changed, the Grantham Institute has not changed its approach. "We have stayed true to our method: bring in good people, with good ideas, and make sure that they have really good business propositions that both they and the market believe in."

Creating the world of the future

Innovation is the process of turning ideas into impact to address the biggest and most pressing challenges related to climate change.

A centre for climate change innovation has been launched by the Grantham Institute at Imperial and the Royal Institution to catalyse innovation of all forms that address the causes and effects of climate change.

It is backed by six founding members: Arup, the Mayor of London, HSBC UK, Octopus Centre for Net Zero, Pollination and Slaughter and May.

The centre brings businesses, entrepreneurs, policy makers, academics and the public together around climate change innovation, creating a focus for London based innovators to implement global change through pioneering, practical solutions.

As part of the centre, The Greenhouse, an early-stage startup accelerator programme, provides support for technology and commercial development through access to Imperial College’s world-class research and innovation expertise, technological and commercial know-how, network, and support, to develop a credible and investable business. The Greenhouse is co-funded by European Regional Development Fund.