The UK Government has awarded £19 million to 37 British entrepreneurs developing new green technologies during the Energy Entrepreneurs Fund’s (EEF) Phase Nine funding round.
The EEF is made available through the government’s £1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio and is awarded to enterprises developing new technologies to help decarbonise UK industry.
The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS)-funded RheEnergise project is one of the grant winners, receiving £1 million from the EFF.
The company will partner with the Universities of Greenwich and Exeter, using the funding to help identify waste materials that could be utilised in the high-density fluid (HDF), which is integral in RheEnergise’s grid-scale High Density Hydro energy storage system.
“The opportunities presented by the EEF grant are phenomenal. We are delighted to be able to lead and partner with two outstanding universities – Greenwich and Exeter. The project has the potential to solve three huge questions that affect people daily and globally: those of climate change mitigation, delivering firm power supply from renewables and how to use waste from other industries for new purposes, creating truly circular economies,” said chief executive of RheEnergise, Stephen Crosher.
“The government grant, from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, will help us to cut the operating cost of our hydro energy storage system, whilst increasing its sustainability. By using locally sourced waste materials, we can lower the costs of our projects, reduce carbon emissions from transportation and processing and create a new circular economy where none currently exists.”
Another organisation benefiting from the EFF’s latest funding round is energy data and software company, Advanced Structure.
The funding received will support the development of a data-driven solution that will allow power networks to optimise capacity and flexibility management, the company said. The 18-month industrial research project aims to predict load for 90% of unmonitored transformers using building-level smart meter data and machine learning techniques.
“The UK is a nation of innovators, and this funding will help the next generation of energy pioneers develop cheap and green technologies of the future,” said Grant Schapps, secretary of state for the newly established Department for Energy Security & Net Zero.
“This will not only deliver more green jobs and cheaper energy but also create world-leading solutions to help us reach net zero and economic growth.”
The UK Government also announced the launch a £5 million Local Industrial Decarbonisation Plans competition today (8 February) that will take place this summer. The competition aims to support industrial businesses in their decarbonisation efforts. Further details will be given in spring with winners set to be announced later in 2023.