We cannot possibly know to what extent good ideas and smart technology might help us mitigate the effects of climate change, and even slow it down. Just as in the 1980s we had no inkling of how developments in computer chips and electronics would enable vast numbers of us to communicate with one another instantly around the world, and access a limitless amount of information, through a simple device we could carry in our pocket or handbag.
One way forward is to simply let the brightest and most energetic companies put their product or process out there, if they can overstep the many pitfalls of commerce, and let the market decide. But how many potentially planet-saving ideas would be left at the roadside because the people who came up with them weren’t good enough at business, or couldn’t learn fast enough?
Sensible societies, and governments, know that they have to nurture and support would-be entrepreneurs and their bright ideas, and help them develop whatever it is they have to offer. Some, possibly many, will still fail, but for better reasons. More will succeed. And who knows what benefits this might bring to us all?
Enter Climate-KIC, a useful ally for prospective entrepreneurs to acquire. It describes itself as Europe’s largest public-private innovation partnership, working with start-ups and bigger companies to address the challenge of climate change. Never heard of Climate-KIC (it stands for Knowledge and Innovation Communities)? No matter – this isn’t a public-facing body. What does matter is that people with an idea know where to find it.
With hubs in seven countries, Climate-KIC receives funding from academic and private sector partners, with an annual grant from the European Commission through its European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). There could scarcely be a better location for its UK hub, in Imperial College’s London Campus in South Kensington, next to the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Energy Futures Laboratory, with which it shares facilities and resources.
Templer outlined Climate-KIC’s guiding philosophy. “This is our fourth year. Our mission is to grow the green economy in Europe, which had lost its innovation mojo. We run a pipeline for innovation, the sort of start-ups you saw today. We need to inspire and stir students to success, giving them as good a chance as possible to make a success of their businesses.” Climate-KIC’s Accelerator programme is open to individuals or existing companies with “an idea for a brilliant climate-related break-through” who don’t know how to convert it into a commercially viable business.
Templer and his team will help the most promising start-ups connect with the right partners, help formulate their business plan, develop their entrepreneurial skills and fund the business through the early stages. They will provide “the tools, opportunities and network to transform ideas into commercial success’. “And that includes students of all ages,” said Templer. “So you saw Bert Bingham of Novagg.” (His pitch was for the manufacture of lightweight aggregate from 98% waste content, diverted from landfill.) “He is older than I am, and I am in my mid-50s. There are still things we can do to help people like him.
A good example of somebody coming through the “pipeline” is Kate Hofman, co-founder with Tom Webster of GrowUp, one of the 2014 competition prizes. (*) “Kate saw all sorts of things in this five-week course we provided. And that inspired her. She went back to IBM, where she was working, and three months later she decided she needed to make her own company. “The technology Kate showed in her pitch came after she visited Switzerland. She was inspired by work a company was doing there. GrowUp went on to develop and use their own tech. This is an example of how networks influence things.
“We inspired her to change job. She didn’t ask us for money at the beginning; she crowd sourced instead. The fact was we took a risk on her. But she [and her partner] had done some great things, they made all sorts of connections in London, they had raised the money themselves. “In three months they had enough money; in four months they had created the whole thing. It was terrific to watch them do it. So we put them into the process. There is the pitch training and sales training and all sorts of other things. But what we were really able to do was create links for them.
Such as Chess, one of the entrants for the 2014 Venture competition, with a process to generate electricity from fossil fuels while cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. “Chess, that’s a 10 year deal. The market for this doesn’t exist at the moment, because there is no price on extracting carbon from the atmosphere. We’ve got public money, and that gives you certain responsibilities. Our judgement is being made on behalf of the taxpayer. But the IPCC reports, the best scientific judgements on climate, tell you you have to do this. So we will do it. We will invest, we will kick it off and we will be looking for others to come in and co-fund.
“The thermodynamics stack up, we’ve really torn it into little bits. [Now] it will have to gp through a whole set of engineering projects to get it to scale. It’s still got to be piloted, so people can go and see it and touch it, and watch it.
Richard Templer was head of the Chemistry Department at Imperial before taking up this post. “In the last 15 years of my career I wanted to do something that wasn’t research. I had been involved with three spin out companies and felt I knew a little bit about it. I wanted to do something either connected with the ageing population, or climate change, because it was a bit of a change of direction for me. “I had lead a bid from the college for a very large amount of money for a bio-energy unit which almost killed me. We failed to get it, but I learnt a huge amount. Then this opportunity came up, and it was the same order of magnitude, same order of money.
“It’s my simpleminded conviction was, unless you’ve got money you can’t make an impact. And it’s not just getting this money, it’s then enabling others to bring in money and to create a real focus. What tends to happen is that money comes in from the Exchequer and it gets salami-sliced all over the place. And to create critical mass and be efficient requires the reverse. One way of doing that is to get enough money that you can attract other money.
“I think we are entering a new phase of our existence. We have all the ingredients we want to create a really vibrant system for doing this stuff.
* GrowUp and Reduse were selected as the two most investable UK climate start-ups of 2014 and will proceed to the next stage of competition, to compete in the Climate-KIC Venture Competition finals in Valencia, Spain in October this year.
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