A year on from COP26, the UK chancellor committed to ringfencing the £20bn R&D budget in the 2022 Autumn statement. This demonstrated the Government’s recognition that innovation is vital to drive long-term economic growth and tackling key issues affecting society such as climate change.
NCUB brings organisations together to unlock innovation and harness talent across the UK and developed konfer – a collaboration platform to make it easy for innovators to connect.
One organisation using konfer is the EIC (The Energy Innovation Centre). In partnership with the UK Electricity and Gas utilities, the EIC facilitates innovation to improve the quality of people’s lives and to achieve a safe, affordable, net zero future for all.
To investigate how net-zero solutions can be designed to benefit a range of households, the EIC is supporting a Northern Gas Networks (NGN) innovation project. Building a ‘Customer Energy Village’, with representative homes, NGN aim to improve home energy efficiency, creating smart home environments, and reduce consumption of gas.
The EIC shared NGN’s call for the energy village project and received a proposal from a konfer listed innovative company. Soltropy Ltd pioneer simplified solar thermal technology for water heating applications. Their proposal was accepted by an EIC technical panel and trials are due to start in late February - once the Customer Energy Village build is complete.
Matthieu Michel (Operations Director) from The EIC said ‘In conjunction with our Partners, the EIC’s collaborative innovation environment facilitates innovations and solutions for a net zero future. Through konfer the projects we support are reaching an even wider pool of the brilliant innovators across the UK. We are really excited about the collaboration between Soltropy and NGN to co-develop and test new technology for home energy efficiency.’