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The Shell Springboard Awards will award £320,000 to business with great ideas in the low-carbon area.
Businesses in the clean technology sector can expect a cash injection from the Shell Springboard Awards soon. The company is inviting SMEs to apply for a £40,000 funding prize for the eighth year in a row.
If you are a UK-based SME with a commercially viable idea in the low-carbon area, you can apply for the Awards until January the 18th 2013.
This year, £320,000 will be awarded to businesses who have an innovative product or service that will help address climate change, normally in awards of £40,000.
Small and mid-sized businesses have been struggling to take clean-tech ideas into mass commercialisation, despite the fact that the green economy accounts for one third of the UK’s growth, encompasses 50,000 businesses and employs almost one million people.
Boris Johnson earlier this month announced £30m of investment for the London Sustainable Industries Park, London’s first business park for the growing number of low carbon industries. The Park was been designed to create a cluster of environmentally focused enterprises, such as low-carbon energy from waste plants, innovative waste facilities and other clean tech infrastructure, such as recycling, reneable energy, wind power, solar power, and biomass.
Shell has funded 62 clean-tech businesses since 2005, with a total of over £2.25m to develop new ways of cutting carbon emissions. Last year’s winner, Select Innovations, was awarded £40,000 for its innovative EnLight technology, a product designed to help local authorities keep street lights on by reducing power consumption.
EnLight delivers savings of up to 45 per cent by improving the efficiency of street lights. According to Select Innovations, EnLight could save the UK one million tonnes of CO2 each year by improving the efficiency of the eight million streetlights in the country.
Other winners include Cella Energy, a company developing innovative hydrogen storage technology. Since winning in 2011, Cella Energy has made rapid progress attracting further investment and is now working with global strategic partners to develop their technology.
Photo via Flickr / Max xx