Claire Perry Makes 2 Annoucements and Airponix Wins Rushlight Awards 2017-18

PRESS RELEASE

IMMEDIATE RELEASE-26JANUARY 2018

CLAIRE PERRY MAKES 2 ANNOUCEMENTS AND AIRPONIX WINS RUSHLIGHT AWARDS 2017-18

With the Republic of Korea Ambassador to London, Joonkook Hwang, in attendance, Claire Perry, Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth, yesterday announced a matched funding arrangement with the Republic of Korea which will see £6m available for the further development of energy storage innovations and technology. This came at the Rushlight Show yesterday after announcing the launch of an online database of some 4,300 low carbon organisations and projects which have received some form of public sector funding over the past five years, in order to champion both the UK's clean technology development to investors and highlight government support for the sector.

The Rushlight Show took place at the Royal Geographical Society yesterday and, as well as the Minister, included major contributions from John Loughhead, Chief Scientific Adviser at BEIS; Rob Saunders, Head of Energy at Innovate UK; Julie Hill, Chair at WRAP and senior representatives from the Committee on Climate Change, Energy Systems Catapult, CBI, National Grid, Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the NHS. Now in its 9th year, the Show was kindly sponsored by Innovate UK, BEIS, Flanders Investment & Trade, Carbon Limiting Technologies, Sage, Granted Consultancy, Venner Shipley and Smith & Williamson and it attracted over 600 cleantech CEOs and entrepreneurs, investors and financiers, advisers, corporate customers and others involved in the sector.

Claire Perry, Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth said:

“Since the Rushlight Showcase last June, we have launched our modern Industrial Strategy which placed decarbonisation as one of our defining Grand Challenges, and our Clean Growth Strategy in which we committed to invest over £2.5 billion in low carbon technologies.

“As Rushlight has shown, clean tech businesses are flourishing in the UK and around the world. Today we have published our online Energy Innovation Portfolio which for the first time pulls together all the companies and projects with original ideas that have received government funding.”

The Rushlight Show hosted the Innovate UK Energy Catalyst Round 4 Showcase of over 60 projects and incorporated the Resourceful Conference focused on the circular economy, the Cleantech Innovation Showcase, the Sustainable Solutions Market Panel, an Exhibition and a number of other activities throughout the day.

Immediately after the Rushlight Show, Eventure Media then presented theRushlight Awards at a lively Awards Party. This was attended by organizations that are leading the way in clean technology innovation and sustainable solution deployment, investors, advisers, specialist and general media, trade associations and government departments.

Mark Taylor, Deputy Director at BEISand Head of Programme Delivery, Science and Innovation for Climate and Energy,and the guest of honour at the Awards Party, set out his past and the current activities of the department in the cleantech arena.

Clive Hall, Founder of the Rushlight Awards, commented: “Clean innovation is a key driver for growth across our whole economy, helping us find new ways to manage our environmental footprint, reduce costs and help put our businesses on a more sustainable and competitive footing. The progress that has been made over the last 11 years has been achieved in no small part through the successes of organisations such as those we are celebrating and promoting through the Awards.”

The overall winner was Airponixfortheir innovative technology that can help to mitigate world hunger by allowing staple food crops to be grown with no soil oragricultural land, less than 15% of the normal water input, no chemicals (organic quality produce), no fossil fuels or heavy plant and yields more than 10 times the output from conventional farming. The breakthrough innovation is its ability to create engineered fogs to feed the roots and foliage, as opposed to mists or sprays which conventional aeroponic systems use, and this is achieved by using the well-proven piezoelectric technology of inkjet printer heads resulting in a greater than 90% saving in energy requirements. Through the use of low-cost growth chambers, the system is resilient to weather extremes and climate change effects.

The group category winners were:

1.Fraunhofer UK Research working with Wind Farm Analytics Ltd and Thales UK (Optronics) Ltd for theirProject AMFIBIAL which seeks to commercialise a floating triple beam LIDAR (laser wind measurement) for the offshore wind industry.

2. Reactive Technologies Ltd for GridMetrix, an advanced, cloud-based grid measurement and analytics platform that delivers unique system data and deep insights to help manage electric systems in real-time. It enables grid operators to integrate safely increased amounts of renewable generation and make more efficient and cost-effective grid investment and procurement decisions.

3. Greater Than have developed a technology, based on deep machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), that can analyse driving and assess risk in real-time. The technology (Enerfy) is a platform, which includes a hardware plug-in, the consumer's smartphone, and their cloud-based service with algorithms and AI. With their technology analysing in real-time, the driver gets feedback and information in their smartphone immediately.

4. Heriot-Watt Universityfor theSCORRES Project with 5 other partners – Auraventi Ltd, Scene Connect, Findhorn Foundation College, Auroville Consulting and Auroville Centre for Scientific Research . The project is developing a robust, efficient, affordable and smart irrigation system to help tackle the food, water, energy trilemma. The system combines a highly localised weather forecast with local know-how on irrigation needs and soil conditions, to produce a ‘right time, right volume’ approach to micro-irrigation. The test system has increased crop yields, reduced labour and composting requirements and reduced water and energy consumption, leading to improved utilisation of power, increased grid stability and potential higher farmer revenues.

5. SteamaCo for theirInternet of Things technology which enables companies to sell clean energy in frontier markets. Their Energy Autopilot enables its customers to sell energy anywhere on the planet and is simple, robust and four times cheaper than comparable smart meter platforms.

The complete list of Rushlight Awards winners is set out below:

In addition to the Rushlight Awards judging, the 2017-18 awards also incorporated a number of other benefits and prizes for entrants and we are very grateful to these generous supporters.

Tmara made an awardto the UK market entry they felt had the biggest chance of adoption and breakout potential, unique contribution to the management of the environment and multiple potential applications both commercial and retail ofa Product-Market Fit Assessment, Minimum Viable Value Specification and Strategic Alignment Mentoring to NatureMetrics.NatureMetrics is pioneering the use of high throughput DNA sequencing to measure and monitor biodiversity. These new sequencing techniques allow them to identify all the species present in complex biological samples, so they can monitor natural communities at unprecedented scales. They can even sequence water samples to find out what species of fish are nearby. This facilitates evidence-based decision-making in environmental management, routine surveillance for pest and problem species, and detection of ecological changes long before they can be noticed at a landscape level.

Leading Edge Only has offered all awards applicants free promotion on their Global Innovation Marketplace and all of the winners will be given free access to their Cleantech Network, to gain additional exposure to other relevant organisations.

Barking Dog Communications continues to offer all the group winners and the overall winner promotional support in respect of their success at the awards.

Stephens Scown offered to all applicants a 30 minutes telephone initial IP assessment, to include a mini IP MOT and assessment of eligibility for IP audit funding.

Granted Consultancyoffered all entrantsan assessment of their Executive Summary in relation to securing grant funding and a skype call to discuss relevant grant funding and general funding opportunities for their business, with summaries of grants provided on a following email.

ENDS-

Contact:Clive Hall020 8870 9345, 07712 554343

Chief

Rushlight Awards

Now in their 11thyear, the Rushlight Awards are a celebration and a promotion of new technology, innovation and best practice across the whole environment spectrum for organisations throughout UK, Ireland and internationally. Designed to highlight innovation, initiatives and the holistic environmental benefit of technologies that are most likely to or are already creating a real impact in the market, they are a means of disseminating the successes to support further development.

Judges:

The judging was performed by an independent panel of recognized experts covering all the clean technology sectors drawn from academia, trade associations and institutes, independent experts and government departments. In particular, the judges included individuals whose full or part-time roles extend to representing BEIS, FCO, DfID, Chatham House, WRAP, Carbon Trust, UKERC, Innovate UK, STFC, The Knowledge Transfer Network, WWF, Energy Technologies Instituteand the Office for Low Emission Vehicles. One of the unique attributes of the Rushlight Awards is the fact that the judges are entirely independent of Eventure Media.

Eventure Media Ltd

Eventure Media launched the Rushlight Awards in 2007 and the event has gained a substantial following. As the only awards for technology developers and innovation across the whole cleantech spectrum, it has attracted the interest of companies both large and small which are leading the development of renewable energy, clean fuels, power generation, energy efficiency, sustainable products, services and agriculture, water, waste and pollution management in the UK, Ireland and internationally. In addition to the Rushlight Awards, Eventure Media runs the Rushlight Show, the Rushlight Summer Showcase, a range of evening Rushlight Briefings, Investor Briefings in association with Forbury Investment Network andthe London Cleantech Cluster. The company also provides incubation services to early stage companies developing new clean technologies.