Industrial producers are under growing pressure to cut water use, reduce emissions, and meet tighter discharge limits, but today’s wastewater plants are sprawling, slow, and difficult to run, often dictating how and when a site can operate or expand. Existing systems take up valuable space, rely on specialist operators, and are too inflexible to cope with fluctuating conditions. As a result, wastewater becomes a hard cap on productivity and growth rather than an enabler of efficient, resilient manufacturing.

Nafura is developing a compact, plug-in reactor that treats wastewater continuously at the rate it is produced. Using a combination of submerged plasma and advanced fluid dynamics, the system destroys even the most hazardous and persistent contaminants at scale while simultaneously separating byproducts in a single step. This enables fast, effective treatment of heavily contaminated effluents in a small, low-maintenance device. The platform is designed for unmatched operational flexibility, relieving capacity bottlenecks for space- and infrastructure-constrained industrial producers.

The cold chain is the backbone of global food and pharmaceutical logistics, a $400B market with an outsized climate impact. It generates 3.5% of global CO₂ emissions, exceeding both aviation and shipping.While refrigeration units have improved, the power systems behind them have not. When refrigerated cargo moves by road or rail, it is still powered by mobile diesel gensets, which are inefficient, highly polluting, yet mission-critical. Regulations are tightening, customers are demanding decarbonization, and yet the industry’s power architecture remains fundamentally unchanged.Battery-electric, fuel cell, and alternative fuel approaches have repeatedly failed to meet cold chain requirements due to range limits, high costs, infrastructure dependence, or operational disruption. Shippers need solutions that deliver reliability, cost parity, and seamless integration into existing operations, without compromise.

Modjoule has built an intelligent power platform purpose-designed for refrigerated logistics. It cuts emissions by up to 80%, reduces operating costs, and extends range by 2–3×, all with no change to end-user operations. The platform not only saves users money, it enables new revenue for them.Compatible across all transport refrigeration use cases, Modjoule delivers sub-two-year payback in long-haul applications. It is a drop-in and economically compelling path to deep decarbonization for the cold chain.

Despite decades of optimisation, the iron-ore reduction process remains one of the hardest industrial systems to decarbonise. Emerging alternatives, such as hydrogen direct reduction, molten oxide electrolysis, or point source carbon capture, struggle to break free from the same constraints: they rely on exceptionally high-grade ores, require extreme temperatures or pressures, and carry prohibitive capital and energy costs. Even Electric Arc Furnaces, often seen as a “green” route, depend on limited scrap availability and high renewable electricity inputs. As a result, none of these pathways can achieve low-cost, scalable decarbonisation of primary iron ore, the source of over 70% of the sector’s emissions.

Ironic Metals is developing a low-temperature alkaline electrolysis platform that can directly convert a broad range of ores and residues into high-purity iron and nickel using renewable power. By operating at mild conditions and integrating a proprietary pre-processing step, the system achieves far higher electrical efficiency than existing electrolysis methods while tolerating lower-grade inputs, including mine waste and tailings. The modular architecture enables economic production from 100t to 300,000t per annum, cutting capital intensity by an order of magnitude compared to conventional plants. This combination of efficiency, flexibility, and feedstock tolerance positions Ironic Metals as a competitive, fully electrified pathway for decarbonising both steel and critical-metal supply chains.

Industrial plants generate terabytes of SCADA and historian data, yet most still run blind to creeping inefficiencies. The International Energy Agency states that 50 % of the 2030 net‑zero gap must be closed through efficiency, but today’s progress is stuck at ~2 % per year and needs to double to 4 %. Oil and gas processing alone releases 11.7 % of global emissions, while a single mid‑sized gas plant can spend US $30 million a year on utilities. Operators concede they are “drowning in data,” having paid millions for digital twins that will not converge or for consultants who deliver fortnightly slide‑decks instead of real‑time answers. As boilers foul, compressors drift and steam systems are re‑worked, more than 10% of energy is wasted. What the sector lacks is an always‑on engineering brain that can mine existing data, expose hidden losses and validate both the financial and CO₂ upside on the spot.

Kondor supplies that missing brain. Its AI Copilot deploys a hierarchy of agents that build physics‑based process models directly from a site’s existing historian or DCS feeds - no new sensors, no downtime. The platform continuously scans boilers, compressors, steam headers and other high‑load assets, quantifying every inefficiency, recommending optimal set‑points and pinpointing root causes before they erode performance. In parallel, the sandbox environment enables teams to trial new scenarios and technologies. This closed loop turns “what-ifs” into “what’s next”: insights are proven in silico, guarded in operation and continuously refined, giving operators a living efficiency roadmap instead of another one-off report."

$10.7BN is currently spent annually on fossil fuel-powered industrial gas boilers for low and mid-grade heat. ~$150BN is spent annually on fuel. The obvious alternative is heat pumps, but despite their higher efficiency, existing designs have similar or higher opex to gas boilers because of the cost of electricity. This is in addition to the fact that available heat pumps can cost 4x the capex of gas boilers. But volatile gas prices and pressure to reduce emissions make this an unstable equilibrium.

HotGreen's design combines 2x TRL 9 technologies in a novel array to achieve efficiencies that are up to double the efficiency of existing solutions whilst also driving down capex, allowing total decarbonisation, reduced energy costs and greater cost-base predictability: all with a payback of less than 2 years.

Novel material innovation and energy infrastructure require a dramatic increase in metal supply. The problem is threefold: 1) Mineral demand forecasts are conclusive: we will need to 5X rate of metal extraction by 2040 2) Yet, inconclusive in what metal commodities we will see rate increases 3) Current mining methods will not adequately scale due to do tremendous efficiency and environmental challenges from waste rock due to excavation and processing. We need mining methods that can scale multiple metal commodities while reducing waste rock.

Mining without excavation, crushing, or waste. The existing cost, energy, and environmental bottleneck at mine sites is due to rocky waste material. Instead, our solution uses high voltage electricity to enable controlled and scalable in-situ mining while keeping rocks in the ground. This can reduce environmental footprint 95%, leave the ground intact, and respond rapidly to 5X demand fluctuations all while keeping metal prices affordable.

Decaying biomass represents 10% of CO2 and 20% of CH4 emissions. Around 10Gt of biomass is produced annually as waste, of which ~80% is landfilled or burned. We often have little choice - biomass is rarely readily recyclable - it’s often wet, contaminated or already decaying by the time it is collected. Putting biomass into landfill or onto farmland or incinerating it is ever-less viable - nobody wants landfill or incineration sites near where they live, leaching into their water systems and polluting the air their children breath.

Kairos uses supercritical water oxidation in order to enable permanent ‘biotic’ carbon removal. This approach approach can <$50 /tCO2t by leveraging the efficiencies of natural CDR and the quality of engineered CDR, is extremely energy efficient (<100kWh/t and potential to be energy positive), can recover 100% of carbon, works with wet biomass of any water content, produces clean water, destroys toxic ‘forever’ pollutants like PFAS and recovers valuable inorganics like phosphorous

We could shut down every fossil power plant, every gas-powered vehicle, every refinery, every cement plant, and every smelter and the planet will continue to warm–albeit at a slower rate–from the carbon we’ve already put into the atmosphere. And we’re nowhere near eliminating emissions, especially in hard to decarbonize sectors like chemical manufacturing or steelmaking. Carbon capture and sequestration is no longer a choice: it’s a necessity.

Aquarry will remove 1GtCO2 from the atmosphere and permanently store it by 2040, with costs <$70/tCO2. They apply ocean carbon capture techniques in flooded open-pit mines, turning these environmental hazards into carbon sinks. They’re optimizing their process using a GIS platform which maps pit lakes, geology, materials sources, roads, and rail lines to maximise efficiency and minimize associated emissions. They work directly with pit lake owners to reduce their remediation costs and help them decarbonize.

As you'll have read in the descriptions for our other DAC companies: it's not enough to slow the rate at which we're filling the bathtub: we need to pull the plug too. Almost all realistic pathways to 1.5C warming over pre-industrial levels or less require carbon to be removed from the atmosphere. And if we're removing it, we should be remove it on the same terms as which carbon dioxide is being added: we should remove it permanently.

Yama use process integration of scalable heat sources to reduce the energy required for direct air capture. Their hybrid thermal and electrochemical CO2 desorption reduces energy consumption by 40% and capex by 25%. Yama requires 20% of the land required by other DAC processes, with 80% less water. Yama are targeting deployment of a 1Mt per year plant by 2030, on the path to 1Gt by 2045.

Downtime from roller chain breakages is often the single largest source of unexpected expense for manufacturers. The “roller chain” has not been re-designed in more than 300 years and suffers from a number of limitations: wear means they must be made out of high density metal, lubricated regularly and cannot be reduced beyond a certain size.

New Motion Labs are re-designing power transmissions with a re-designed chain that is compatible with existing systems, but lasts ten times longer before breaking, can be made of materials other than metal (carbon fibre, plastic, reducing weight), does not need to be lubricated (reducing maintenance costs) and can be miniaturised.

Decarbonisation of heating systems has proven more challenging than providing electricity from clean energy sources: heating buildings, largely with natural gas, accounts for nearly a quarter of UK emissions. More effective insulation can reduce the energy required to heat these buildings but this has traditionally come at the expense of fire-safety and price.

Thermulon develops aerogels for building insulation. Aerogels are the most insulating materials known to man. Thermulon's aerogels are the first to beat the tradeoff between fire-safety, thermal performance and price.

CO2 is not only an environmental issue: it is also a commodity, however today is produced exclusively as a waste product of other processes. This makes supply of CO2 inelastic to volume and location of demands.

Inspired by how the human body distributes CO2 from tissues to the lungs, Mission Zero produces high-grade CO2 continuously, on-demand and on-site. It is entirely electrically powered, consumes 3-4x less energy than existing thermal regeneration approaches, and leverages existing, scaled, mature technologies such as cooling towers and electrochemical water purification.

Direct air capture (DAC) systems are needed to limit warming to 1.5C, but DAC in development today uses vast amounts of energy and rare materials,often requiring fossil fuels to run.

Parallel Carbon has developed renewable mineral looping for scalable direct air capture at rock-bottom costs, a virtually limitless low energy DAC solution. Once constructed, no further inputs are required. Sunshine, wind and minerals are combined in a renewable loop to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

Green hydrogen is necessary for our energy transition, but current approaches to generate green hydrogen are not economic and subsidy-dependent. The biomass in wastewater is a great source for green hydrogen which remains untouched today. Current wastewater treatment processes primarily convert biomass to sludge, CO2 and methane, contributing 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Aquature generates green hydrogen by treating wastewater and removing 99% of organics in it, by splitting it into energy, CO2, nutrients and clean water. Energy is recovered as hydrogen at 85% efficiency and nutrients and CO2 are converted into green chemicals and treated water. Customers gain access to green hydrogen from £2/kg with a service fee 40% lower than average.

The development of viable catalysts is the critical bottleneck in key net zero technologies, holding back new carbon neutral processes in everything from chemicals to mineral extraction. Today, catalyst development takes 20 years and up to $30m per candidate, with search spaces of up to 10^60 possible combinations for each process.

Dunia is developing the world’s 1st self-driving lab for CO2 Utilisation Catalysis, reducing time &amp; cost to market by up to 90%. They are targeting critical chemical pathways such as CO2-to-Ethylene first, where no viable process exists and potential savings for the customer run into the hundreds of millions.

Hydrogen is critical for the decarbonisation of hard to abate sectors such as fertiliser, steel and cement. Currently the production of hydrogen is reliant on steam methane reforming or electrolysers that deliver gas at low pressure, requiring further compression to be useful, whether that’s for storage, transport or usage.

Supercritical is developing the world’s first high pressure, ultra-efficient electrolyser, for the production of hydrogen and oxygen from water, with zero emissions. By using heat and pressure, their proprietary design exploits the benefits of supercritical water and delivers gases at over 200 bar of pressure, without the expense or challenges of hydrogen compressors.