Technology is predicted to become a powerful weapon in the life-or-death struggle to defeat, or contain, global warming – with the main battlefield being hot countries of the Global South where technical-breakthroughs developed in the more prosperous Global North are needed urgently.

However, the commercially viable, high-volume deployment of battery systems for stationary applications – such as energy storage for intermittent renewables – requires cost-effective manufacturing, robustness, easy installation and maintenance and resilience in high-temperature environments, where solar generation opportunities are greatest.

Crucially, battery systems must exploit abundant, locally available materials to ensure a secure, scalable, and sustainable supply chain. While niche applications may tolerate higher costs or imported materials, widespread adoption depends on these practical and economic realities.

This is where University of Lancaster spin-off LiNa Energy is finding success with the help of early financial support, commercial advice, and high-level introductions from RedCAT.

LiNa’s key innovation is the development of a low-cost, solid-state sodium-metal-chloride battery, sourced from secure and abundant materials, designed to challenge the dominance of lithium in energy storage applications.

While lithium-based batteries carry inherent risks – overheating, fire, explosion, short-circuiting, and toxic gas release – they also face significant environmental challenges related to mining and disposal.

These are challenges that sodium-metal-chloride batteries are uniquely positioned to resolve.

In the long-term, it is estimated that successful scale-up of LiNa’s groundbreaking technology could reduce annual GHG emissions to the atmosphere by circa 4.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ by 2050.

If achieved, this would be a huge contribution to reaching net-zero by the middle of this century. To put this into context, in 2024 circa 41.6 billion tonnes of human-generated CO₂ were released worldwide.

Solar energy potential is highest in hot climates – regions where conventional lithium-ion systems face performance and cost challenges due to inherent cooling requirements of the battery chemistry.

LiNa’s technology takes a different path: it leverages the high-temperature operation (>230°C) of sodium-metal chloride battery chemistry.

LiNa’s technology leverages robust, inherently safe, sodium-metal-chloride battery chemistry.

The electrode is made from inert ceramics, eliminating fire risk entirely. Lithium-ion batteries require complex cooling and fire suppression systems when surrounding temperatures exceed 27^oC – often the case in countries with greatest solar generation potential.

In contrast, LiNa’s cells operate at over 230^oC, making them virtually immune to the surrounding temperature and requiring only static insulation for handling and logistics purposes. This dramatically simplifies system design, reduces costs, while achieving round-trip efficiencies of 92% or higher.

This thermal design is not an adaptation – it is a strategic advantage. And to meet grid-scale needs, particularly the ‘duck curve’ challenge, where solar supply lags demand at peak times, LiNa batteries are optimised for durations of four to ten hours, enabling reliable, low-cost energy shifting in high-solar regions.

Helping start-ups to get low-carbon innovations off the ground and commercialised for global markets is RedCAT’s key mission.

RedCAT’s raison d’être is literally funding companies to start their low-carbon technology manufacturing locally and stay within the UK. LiNa received an £80,000 grant to help secure its first manufacturing base for the UK and fit-out its labs in Lancashire.

This has also been vital in subsequently scaling-up LiNa manufacturing in line with its own expansion strategy.

RedCAT’s funding for LiNa has been particularly important because – unlike most government grants – it can be used for capex spending needed for scaling-up. Government small business grants usually exclude capex; private investors avoid it too because of the risks of manufacturing problems and equipment becoming obsolete.

Securing the RedCAT prize was a pivotal moment for LiNa. It enabled the company to acquire key production equipment and validate the automatability of its proprietary manufacturing process, providing the confidence to commit long-term to Lancaster.

This led to a multi-year lease at LiNa’s White Cross premises and a decision to base the company’s R&D headquarters in Lancaster – anchoring its future in the heart of Lancashire.

By taking LiNa to the 2023 UN procurement summit in Copenhagen, and making the company part of the international trade mission team to meet global customers and suppliers at the 2023 COP28 in Dubai, RedCAT also helped the LiNa team prepare for their next two rounds of fund-raising.

However, RedCAT’s flexible grant meant that LiNa could make enough of its innovative battery cells at an early point in its development to run a 10kWh field trial demonstration in India, an important pilot project for the low-production cost that LiNa has developed with its proprietary automated manufacturing processes, ready to meet the anticipated high global demand from the renewable energy sector for its modular, stationary energy storage systems.

This is currently LiNa’s beachhead market.

No government or private institutional capital sources are currently willing to fund the high-risk, pre-revenue phase needed to turn post-prototype designs into market-ready products.

Government grants in the UK rarely support capital expenditure, and if they do, funding is minimal. Private investors are also hesitant to finance capex due to concerns about asset obsolescence – leaving SMEs struggling to secure the investment needed for pilot manufacturing.

This gap – often called the “Valley of Death” – is a well-known barrier for UK innovators, RedCAT funding is specifically designed to bridge this void – providing the capital and confidence to scale.

As RedCAT recently highlighted to the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, closing this gap is critical to unlocking homegrown clean tech innovation.

RedCAT often provides this vital missing piece of the commercial journey in the form of early-stage finance specifically to span the gap.

It does this via a now tried and proven five-step strategy – Innovation, Ventures, Scale, Advocacy and Network .

An extremely urgent but economically-sound policy change is needed, RedCAT believes, with more government programmes to boost the environment and economy.

Unfortunately, until that happens, no further help is available for many young SMEs until they sell their first products, it which point government and private sector capital programmes kick in again.

In LiNa’s case, RedCAT support continues at a strategic marketing level with the development of sector marketing messages that feed into a national and international RedCAT Advocacy campaign.

While RedCAT’s funding support has been invaluable to LiNa, it is important to understand the technical and economic significance of the company’s pioneering high-tech green innovation.

While lithium-ion batteries dominate consumer electronics and electric vehicles, they come with significant drawbacks: fire risk, thermal runaway, and reliance on scarce raw materials.

Lithium itself is increasingly constrained, with supply chains heavily concentrated in a few countries – particularly China, which controls much of the refining and processing. Extraction methods, from brine evaporation to hard-rock mining, are water-intensive and environmentally damaging.

Cobalt, another critical component, is mostly mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo under ethically and environmentally questionable conditions. These supply-chain vulnerabilities, combined with complex, hazardous recycling due to flammable electrolytes, make large-scale deployment risky and unsustainable.

LiNa’s solid-state sodium-metal-chloride battery offers a fundamentally different solution – designed from the ground up for stationary energy storage applications (not EVs).

The battery is built from abundant, low-cost materials – primarily salt and iron – that can be sourced locally across most geographies. This avoids the supply chain vulnerabilities and ethical concerns tied to lithium and cobalt extraction.

Manufacturing costs are projected at under $50/kWh, less than half the current cost of lithium-ion systems at scale – making LiNa’s solution uniquely viable for mass deployment.

LiNa’s innovation is not just chemical – it is architectural. A proprietary planar cell design improves efficiency, simplifies assembly, and enables scalable manufacturing.

The system is optimised for 4 to 10 hours of storage, directly addressing the so called ‘duck-curve’ challenge whereby solar generation drops at sunset just as grid demand reaches its peak. This makes it ideal for integrating renewable energy into national and regional power systems.

RedCAT’s methodology of intervention helping companies such as LiNa with in-depth support and grant funding has now enabled those firms collectively to raise more than ten times the amount from private VC sources. Another benefit of grants is that they tell investors that a business is well aligned with government policy.

RedCAT’s support not only helped de-risk the technology – it also sent a powerful signal to the market. LiNa has since secured a £3.5 million late seed round from new and existing investors who recognise the potential of a safe, low-cost, longer-duration storage solution.

In 2023, RedCAT CEO Prof Miranda Barker OBE DL and LiNa Company Secretary Mark Boland meet Jeremy Hunt at 11 Downing Street when he was the incumbent Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Their message was that for essential low carbon technologies like LiNa’s, a lack of government funding support could mean both Lancashire and the UK missing out in the ‘green industrial revolution’.

Miranda described LiNa is an example of how RedCAT helps to commercialise low-carbon innovations – with the added bonus that government investments can be multiplied many times over when they lever in extra private sector investment to boost exports and sales income.

“The vital message for the Chancellor was the same then as now. The UK’s low-carbon tech sector could be worth up to £1 trillion by 2030. But Government funding and business support must focus on the commercialisation of new low-carbon technologies to secure benefits for the UK economy.”

LiNa CEO, Will Tope, explains why the partnership with RedCAT is so important. “Taking a battery from lab validation to first-of-a-kind manufacturing is the hardest and least well-funded stage of our journey to a commercial product” he says.

“RedCAT’s willingness to fund equipment purchases was a critical differentiator. That support allowed LiNa to de-risk key equipment decisions, validate our manufacturing approach, and lay the foundation for scaled production – something we successfully achieved in 2025.”

Since 2023, LiNa’s impressive performance record and contacts with potential overseas buyers is further evidence that what the Chancellor was told in 2023 is even more important now, when economies, markets, and the global environment need powerful clean-tech innovations.