An initial 20 businesses have been accepted into the first programme to help the UK’s climate tech companies overcome common growth challenges and scale faster.
Known as the Net Zero X programme, it aims to bring together climate tech businesses working to decarbonise a wide range of sectors. It also hopes to provide them with the support, coaching, and connections they need to drive down the UK’s carbon emissions by 1 gigatonne annually, and is run by Tech Nation and PwC.
This will be the programme’s first cohort of companies, with 11 coming from outside of London, headquartered across Northern Ireland, the North of England, and Wales.
The 20 companies have raised around £387 million in venture capital investment to date and are working across a range of sectors including agriculture, energy, aviation, construction, and carbon removal technology.
Eight of the companies are working to decarbonise the energy sector. Climate hardware company Solivus, for example, is creating thin, lightweight solar panels for homes and commercial buildings. Space tech company Satellite Vu is specialising in high-resolution thermal imaging to ensure any structure on the planet is energy efficient.
The cohort also contains Magway, which is creating all-electric, ultra-high-speed, and zero-emission underground delivery tunnels for transporting goods, and Better Dairy, which claims to be disrupting the dairy industry by creating alternative ‘dairy’ products that remove animals from the production process.
“We need to decarbonise globally at speed and scale, and the technology ecosystem is critical to achieving this,” said Leo Johnson, head of disruption and innovation at PwC UK.
“The companies included in Net Zero X have proven already that their innovations have a role to play in a cleaner future and we want to help harness this talent and ensure these startups have the investment and support they need to realise their potential."
Over the next six months, the 20 companies joining Net Zero X will be helped to tackle sector and stage-specific challenges through sessions delivered by specialised coaches and entrepreneurs.
They will also attend roundtables with industry leaders across the policy, corporate and investment landscape, which will look at how to collectively increase the impact of climate tech. Founders and their leadership teams accepted onto the programme will benefit from both Tech Nation and PwC’s expertise, investor networks and mentorship.
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Net Zero X hopes to futureproof the UK’s climate tech sector by reducing the climate tech carbon funding gap, and countering the climate tech ‘valley of death’ experienced by many R&D-intensive companies due to longer times before commercialisation. It aims to connect companies to investors, corporates, partners, and policy makers to help shape the ecosystem that founders need to succeed.
It also seeks to build on Tech Nation’s Net Zero programme for early-stage climate tech scaleups. The programme saw its first cohort of companies increase their collective funding by £154 million since completing the programme, an average increase of £5 million each, while its second cohort has increased their collective funding by over £100 million in the past 6 months, from £55 million to £156 million. Net Zero welcomed its third cohort of early-stage companies two weeks ago.
11 of the Net Zero alumni have scaled enough over the past two years that they now have qualified for Net Zero X and are joining the cohort. This includes Sero, Small Robot Company, Artemis Technologies, and Greyparrot.
