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The Energy Innovation Agency is set to launch in Greater Manchester at the end of April to support organisations in the city-region find innovative solutions to the challenges of achieving net zero carbon emissions.
The organisation, which will launch at an event at Manchester’s Circle Square development on 28 April, aims to bring together the city-region’s academic, private sector and public sector expertise to help bridge the energy innovation gap.
The Energy Innovation Agency has been established by three of the city-region’s universities (Manchester Metropolitan University, The University of Manchester and the University of Salford), property specialists Bruntwood, Greater Manchester Combined Authority, The Growth Company, Hitachi Europe, and energy firm SSE.
Activities will focus on four core challenge areas, attracting and supporting energy innovators on their journey to commercialisation. The Agency will launch with a series of challenge events based on each focus area, which are designed to engage innovators from across the country and beyond, to solve some of the industry’s greatest problems and accelerate the journey to net zero carbon.
The first challenge will focus on finding new solutions to decarbonise heat generation in non-domestic buildings.
David Schiele, Director of the Energy Innovation Agency, said:
“Twelve per cent of the UK’s carbon emissions are produced from heating non-domestic buildings, of which sixty per cent still generate their heat by gas. Reducing these emissions will be essential for the UK and, indeed, the rest of the world to speed up the progress of creating carbon-neutral cities and towns.
“As the home of The Energy Innovation Agency, Greater Manchester will be our testbed for this challenge, as well as the three challenges to follow. The potential prize extends far beyond the confines of our city-region and as such we’re looking globally as well as locally to find solutions that can help to bolster this transition. We need innovators, entrepreneurs, and rainmakers to come forward with their brightest responses to this challenge – the world literally depends on it.”
The Energy Innovation Agency is inviting individuals and organisations, from within and outside Greater Manchester, to apply to pitch their solutions to the Agency and partner organisations at the launch event by 18th April. Those with the most promising five-minute pitches will be supported by the Agency to develop a complete roadmap to commercialisation, with the aim of accelerating deployment to make the biggest impact on reducing emissions both in Greater Manchester and beyond.
Craig Morley, Energy Manager, of partner organisation and commercial property specialists Bruntwood, added:
“Our company owns and operates over a hundred buildings across Greater Manchester and the UK, and we’re proud of our heritage of developing sustainably – from the very beginning choosing to recycle rather than rebuild, bringing new value and life to existing buildings.
“In addition to developing all of our new buildings with a sustainable focus, we’re actively embracing the opportunity to retrofit our building portfolio to improve efficiency and sustainability and doing so in a way which benefits our customers and communities. We’ve joined the Energy Innovation Agency to find, develop and embrace innovations that help us accelerate our journey to net zero, and to offer insights into the opportunities and to overcome barriers we’re all facing as we work towards a low carbon future.”