Funding Boost For Carbon Cutting

Funding of £21million has been awarded by the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) to entrepreneurs to help bring a range of new and innovative low carbon products to market.

The Energy Entrepreneurs Fund (£16million), Energy Storage competitions (£2million) and Advanced Heat Storage scheme (£3million) are all designed to spur on innovation in the low carbon sector, helping to support jobs and create export opportunities as well as help the UK meet its carbon targets.

Energy Entrepreneurs Fund
Thirty projects have been awarded a share of up to £16million under the first phase of DECC’s Energy Entrepreneurs Fund. The funding aims to support energy efficiency technologies such as building control systems, advanced lighting systems and space heating and cooling technologies, alongside power generation and energy storage technologies including fuel cells, biomass boilers and heat pumps.

Energy Storage Competitions
Sixteen organisations have been awarded a share of £2 million to help develop innovative storage solutions for energy. Energy storage systems are designed to store electricity generated at a time of low demand to be used a later time when demand is high.

Advanced Heat Storage
£3million has been awarded to entrepreneurs to carry out feasibility studies and demonstrate designs for innovative compact heat stores in the domestic sector. Heat storage can play a key role in reducing UK energy system costs by helping balance increased loads on the grid during periods of peak use, but more investment is needed in this area to drive forward innovation and cut costs. DECC has funded feasibility studies for 15 different designs and following on from this work, has awarded money to test out 9 large scale prototypes. The demonstrations will be completed by March 2014.

Energy Minister Greg Barker said: “This new investment will give these organisations the boost they need to drive forward the development of a range of innovative low carbon designs, helping cut costs and bring new technologies to market in this sector.”