UK’s Energy Catalyst Program Launches New Community Hub

UK government Energy Catalyst program aims to support businesses to develop sustainable energy technologies and business models, which are accelerating the clean energy transition in developing and emerging economies. 

The program is run by Innovate UK and is co-funded by partners including the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Department for International Development, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and the Global Challenges Research Fund.

Energy Catalyst’s new online platform Energy Catalyst Community will provide practical information and enable networking for innovators developing technologies and business models to end energy poverty. The new Energy Catalyst community is the latest addition to the Energy Catalyst, a UK government-funded program.

The new Energy Catalyst community is the latest addition to the Energy Catalyst. It is designed to accelerate access to sustainable energy in sub-Saharan Africa and south and south-east Asia. The program will achieve this through grant funding, business acceleration support, and brokerage activity.

Dr. Nicola Lazenby, Innovation Lead, Energy Catalyst, at Innovate UK said that through Energy Catalyst, they provide funding to pioneers who are developing solutions that will help to close the energy access gaps. 

They have supported over 150 projects across nearly 30 countries based on a wide range of technologies such as clean cooking stoves, energy storage, distributed solar, biomass, and mini-grids. And with the Energy Catalyst Community platform, they want to harness the full benefit of the knowledge gathered over the past five years and make this accessible to help educate, inform and build capacity in the wider market.

As per the statement release, the global community is significantly behind in meeting the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) of ensuring affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all. Without sustained efforts, 620 million people will be left without access to electricity in 2030 and 85% of them will be in sub-Saharan Africa. To address this need, the Energy Catalyst is designed to benefit the wider energy access ecosystem by creating partnerships.