Innovation to boost the economy – with commercialisation help

The UK has huge green-tech exporting opportunities in a gigantic global market but a rapidly closing implementation window,  two new reports suggest. RedCAT has drilled down to the core of this very common problem. The result is a four-stage commercialisation strategy that can take low carbon innovators, businesses and newly emerging sectors over the ‘valley-of-death’ gap to success in valuable world markets.

British breakthroughs and green-tech developments can help the economy to grow and increase exports. In many cases, the missing link is a focus on achieving realistic commercialisation. RedCAT can help here with its UK and globally-proven innovation, ventures, scale and advocacy methodology providing the whole ecosystem of support needed to complete their journey to actual sales.

The UK is not short of world-leading technologies. British know-how is often held up as a sterling example and we punch far above our national weight. However, we need to make the most of what we have got.

Rolls Royce engines keep many of the world’s civil air fleets aloft – the company is also Small Modular Reactor (SMR) nuclear technology leader. We also make ‘gadgets’, and lead in materials development, medical, automotive, telecommunications, aerospace, quantum engineering, and potentially the evolving AI (artificial intelligence) field.

However, as a country we often lack the umph to take ideas that have left the drawing board and passed the post-prototype stage over the final crucial minefield into the hands of paying customers.

Closing this gap is RedCAT’s raison d’être and we have studied the problems carefully – including the decisive role that government can play at a critical moment when innovators are most vulnerable.

In a moment, we will look at this and also the role that government policy can play in raising all-important investment capital for ideas, products and services of the future that is not so far away!

We would also like to introduce our experts and specialists who between them – with external partners such as the British Business Bank – bring the experience needed to take talented but understandably often quite naïve innovators over the long tough journey to success in competitive markets.

There are several bits of positive green-tech news. According to BloombergNEF (BNEF) as reported by the Energy Institute in ‘New Energy World’ (Ref: Energy Institute Knowledge) global 2024 investment in the low-carbon energy transition grew by 11% to a record $2.1 trillion, particularly in electrified transport, renewable energy (including on- and off-shore wind) and power grids. Established technologies fared slightly better.

Another report, ‘The Net Zero-Trade Nexus: Opportunities and risks for the UK’ (Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit) from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, says the UK can unlock significant export opportunities by aligning industries to net-zero. It adds that 94% of UK exports worth £796.3 billion already go to 146 countries and jurisdictions – including the EU, Japan and Canada – that share this climate target.

ECIU director, Peter Chalkley, noted that, “The transition to net-zero is an unstoppable global megatrend with renewables set to dominate power generation and EVs transportation”, with the UK well-positioned to capitalise on growth, in part to offset falling demand for high carbon products.”

The report adds that 300 of 626 major US companies – with a £7.9 trillion revenue – are working on their ‘Scope 3’ targets and may need green supply chain products and services – potentially from us if we capitalise on the shifting global trade environment.

… but hurry …

However, the cross-party Lords Science and Technology Committee says the UK has lost its position as a world-leader in engineering biology and is ‘squandering’ clean technology opportunities (House of Lords Science and Technology Committee)

Engineering biology includes lab-grown meat cultivation; processing waste with bio-engineered bacteria and biological processes to recover and recycle rare earth minerals from WEEE waste.

The Committee warns that the UK has a ‘wealth of specialists working in engineering biology at world-leading universities and in startups’, many are not commercialised properly. It cites risk-adverse investors and an ever-changing policy landscape with no robust industrial strategy or modern skills strategy – adding that these challenges are not unique to engineering biology.

… and scale up quickly …

Committee Chair Baroness Brown comments, “Pioneering companies urgently need to scale-up to become globally competitive – not get stuck in the investment ‘valley of death’.

She add, “All too often we hear that when companies reach a certain size, they move abroad for better investment and development prospects, taking most of the economic benefit with them. This failure to scale in the UK is a long-standing issue which requires an urgent, concerted, cross-government approach to fix.” The Lords warn there is a “small and closing window” of opportunity.

Exactly our point! Big oaks from little acorns often grow. Start-up companies RedCAT has already helped work in bio-engineered bacteria and biological waste processes, plus low-energy use net-zero technologies.

We believe our commercialisation approach can help far more – with the caveat that government is uniquely positioned to help far more by providing hard-to-get early development funding at an exposed point when innovators need it most!

Part of RedCAT’s mission is persuading the Government that in economically tough times, early-stage finance for green innovation is a high-return investment into technologies vital for the future.

This is a two-way street. Small, well-targeted funding is needed to develop and commercialise green-technologies that will then pay for themselves many times over in a relentlessly warming world.

RedCAT CEO Prof. Miranda Barker OBE DL, and RedCAT Ventures MD Stuart Thompson have looked at the recent past of this relationship and what the most effective solution might be.

The UK has historically been a low-carbon economy leader with ambitious targets to cut emissions, explains Stuart. However, policy uncertainties create opportunities – but also affect decisions.

For example, investors worried about regulations, subsidies, or incentives may hesitate before committing funding to projects that need upfront capital and long-term planning. Sometimes these demand higher returns to compensate for this risk.

This can upset the financial viability of small but much-needed innovative ventures and their supply chains. Changes such as the sudden imposition of tariffs can cause delays and increase costs.

The UK onshore wind sector is a case where subsidy and planning permissions changes have led to both rapid growth and slowdowns. Another example is the electric vehicle (EV) market which has been affected by fluctuating infrastructure and incentive support that makes life difficult for manufacturers and consumers.

There can be key opportunities for companies that break through the maze, especially if they can offer investors opportunities to spread risks across different technologies and projects.

But they must get it right.

BritishVolt was an ambitious project to mass produce electric vehicle (EV) batteries that went into administration in 2023 four years after its formation and nine months after the unveiling of plans for its Northumberland battery gigafactory.

As explained in a Corporate Governance Institute analysis, it failed for many reasons and is described as case study of bad corporate governance. The founders had not secured all the funding needed to build out the factory and the Government did not follow up on funding it initially promised.

The result of the Government’s rapid policy change was a massive blow to EV manufacturers and business thinking about the use of EVs, says Miranda. Another example of unhelpful flip-flopping was the feed-in tariff (FIT) introduced to promote the uptake of domestic solar power.

“Everyone said wow at first. But when the Government of the day said to hell with this, it’s too expensive and chopped FIT, thousands of people lost confidence thinking there was suddenly something wrong with the technology.”

Stuart adds, “It would be helpful to create legally-binding, long-term targets for adopting renewable energy technology. This would provide investors with a predictable policy landscape. The lessons from previous FIT regression between variables led to market adoption and investment stalling for this type of technology.”

The next fiasco, says Miranda, was the Green New Deal which was made on a loan basis. “When the Government backed out, loan companies started knocking on peoples’ doors saying ‘ … you owe us’! That is not an experience we want to see repeated.”

“To make sure this does not happen again, we believe we need short-term subsidies that state at the outset how long they will last. That might be for two years at 100%, falling to 90% for the next period.

“The aim is to maintain confidence levels by incentivising people to act early and wean them off into proper commercialisation gradually with no hidden surprises.

“In fact, the right answer – which ties in well with RedCAT’s commercialisation philosophy – is small grants and short-term subsidies with Government-backed loans as a backstop, operating rather like the aviation sector’s ATOL (Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing) financial protection scheme.”

– Consistent – and enhanced – subsidies and tax credits are the key here – The UK needs to create a focused approach to subsidies and tax incentives for R&D and deployment in key sectors, he says. This would outstrip and outperform traditional investment routes while also incentivising risk.

At an early-stage level, this could take the form of enhanced incentives in mechanisms such as EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) and SEIS (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme).

– Developing performance-based incentives on the founder’s side – The aim here, he explains, would be to introduce sector-focused performance-linked incentives that reward velocity, efficiency and innovation, thus encouraging continuous improvement in cleantech solutions.

– Sector specialist innovation funds and grants – There is scope to expand funding programmes – such as the UK Innovation Strategy – to support sector-specific high-risk, high-reward cleantech innovations and reduce investor risk .

– Developing clear regulatory guidelines. The UK must also establish transparent and predictable regulatory requirements for cleantech deployment. These will include grid integration and energy storage integration. The current innovation funding in utility sectors is valuable, says Stuart.

However, the mechanism which allows commercialisation, post-TL8/9, for many of the ideas generated needs development (Technology Readiness Levels).

Miranda is adamant that failures like the Green New Deal must not be repeated. “This was made on a loan basis. But when the Government backed out, loan companies started knocking on peoples’ doors saying ‘ … you owe us’,” she says.

“To ensure this does not happen again, we need short-term subsidies that state at the outset how long they will last. That might be for two years at 100%, falling to 90% for the next period.

“The aim is to maintain confidence levels by incentivising people to act early and wean them off into proper commercialisation gradually with no hidden surprises.

“In fact, the right answer – which ties in well with RedCAT’s commercialisation philosophy – is small grants and short-term subsidies with Government-backed loans as a backstop, operating rather like the aviation sector’s ATOL (Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing) financial protection scheme.”

To help innovators and innovative companies through long, tough, often expensive, and unfamiliar commercialisation journeys – from post-prototype models through technical, financial, legal, regulatory and marketing development, to priced products in end-retailer catalogues and on shop and warehouse shelves – RedCAT employs experts in their field.

In the coming months, we would like to introduce our highly-integrated team of specialists who carefully complement each other’s work. The team currently includes: –

Ged Heffernan OBE

As our resident theoretical scientist, practical physicist and manufacturing excellence expert, Ged’s focus is making sure that all ’green’ technologies which RedCAT helps to develop and commercialise do perform as expected in practice and can scale effectively in the real product pricing world. With Miranda, Ged is one of RedCAT’s original founders and architects committed to achieving the real climate impacts of what we do.

Ian Trow – Technical consultant

Ian is one of our key technical consultants. He is embedded into companies as part of RedCAT support to help with anything from manufacturing flow to onwards sales strategy. An expert in Lancashire structures and politics, Ian helps companies to meet the right people to really accelerate!

Stuart Thompson – MD RedCAT Ventures

Stuart heads up RedCAT Ventures. He is also our internal financial guru and an expert in helping low carbon technology firms secure onward finance. His direct support helps them to prepare for venture capital deals – coupled to the perfect dating process to ensure they meet the right partners. Stuart has decades of experience in hand-holding climate-tech firms to investment success.

Prof. Miranda Barker OBE DL – CEO of RedCAT Group and East Lancs Chamber of Commerce

Helping businesses to create low carbon innovations for more than 30 years, Miranda’s priority is real outputs, products manufactured, jobs created, exports achieved, and above all real climate solutions. She knits RedCAT into regional, national and global politics and takes RedCAT businesses into this world.

Stephen Sykes – Chamber Director of Sustainability

Stephen is our true environmental consultant. He makes sure that every technology we support is genuinely low carbon. He also guides our RedCAT companies in making international climate contributions and meeting the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

Nicola Greenhalgh – RedCAT Group Operations Manager

As our operations manager, Nicola holds the reins governing carefully designed practical controls which ensure that all RedCAT companies continuously receive the consistent, tailored, and often frequently changing, support they need to deliver a maximum number of successful outcomes.

Jamie Parker-Jervis – RedCAT Group Policy & Market Research Officer

Jamie is our network whisperer who pulls RedCAT companies together within our support ecosystem  to reach their full potential. He also ensures their views are heard in Government consultations and is designing a new line in RedCAT field trips to showcase Northwest companies to the world.

Keeley Crabtree – Marketing and Projects Officer

As RedCAT’s marketing lead, Keeley converts the many achievements made by our broad panel of extremely active companies into digital case studies that showcase their innovative green-tech capabilities and commercial delivery abilities to the world at large.

If innovation involves controlling many risks, then innovators must be protected from burnout, according to ‘When the tank is empty: Reviewing burnout in entrepreneurship’

SMEs and start-ups are important because they represent 99% of all European businesses and two thirds of private sector employment.

But the attraction of being your own boss, says the study, can hide a serious physical and mental health struggle where start-up triumphs are celebrated but the psychological toll is rarely discussed.

One of the largest problems entrepreneurs face constantly is a financial cliff edge – ensuring a continuous long- and short-term cash flow.

With its sharp focus on finance, a fundamental aim of RedCAT’s commercialisation strategy is sharing and taking away stresses that can lead to burnout – including money worries.

You are not alone!