This year’s successful companies were assessed by 40 judges across key industries. These included climate specialists, investors and senior representatives from companies such as Google, National Grid, Sky Ocean, Bulb and B Corp, including Hayden Wood, CEO and founder at Bulb; Azeem Azhar, founder of the Exponential View; and Pippa Gawley, founder and director of Zero Carbon Capital.
Companies were judged based on their scalability and potential to help the UK reach its high-priority net zero goal. The chosen companies are actively decarbonising key sectors across energy and electricity, transport, buildings and cities, and agriculture. Carbon removals and space-tech are two emerging focus areas this year in the race to zero.
New data from Tech Nation and Dealroom has revealed there are 519 Net Zero startups and scaleups in the UK, nearly double the number than in France (270) and 63% more than in Germany (318).
With its Net Zero 1.0 cohort and new Net Zero 2.0 cohort, Tech Nation has now supported the growth of 13% of the UK’s climate tech companies in total, who are leading the race to net zero and disrupting the status quo. Of the cohort, 41% of the companies have at least one female founder and 63% are headquartered outside of London.
Sammy Fry, Net Zero lead at Tech Nation, said: “With Europe recording its highest ever temperature on record this Summer, and the latest IPCC report published last month, there isn’t a more urgent time to take climate action. Every successful climate tech company is another step towards decarbonising the world.
“I’m proud to say that in the run up to COP26, our pioneering Net Zero growth programme gives these revolutionary, high-impact scale-ups the access they need to investors, insights, education, networks and practical support, enabling the UK to lead our transition to a green economy as quickly as possible.”
Find out more about the new cohort here.