Axle Energy, the London-based Virtual Power Plant (VPP) platform founded by ex-Bulb exec Karl Bach and data scientist Archy de Berker, has raised £18.7m ($25m) in a Series A led by Energize Capital, with Accel, Picus Capital and Eka Ventures also participating.
Axle links over 300,000 home batteries, EV chargers and solar systems into a single flexible capacity pool of more than 2GW, trading that flexibility on energy markets and paying households when their stored energy is exported.
This is a great gains, not guilt concept – the gain here isn’t an abstract “you’re helping the grid” but a tangible monetary payment. For those who’ve invested already in solar, batteries or EVs, there’s a real payback.
And for the rest of us, it’s another step towards balancing a cleaner grid.
Article link: https://sustainabilitymag.com/news/axle-energy-secures-25m-for-smarter-uk-energy-power-grids
Grimsby-based green tech firm myenergi is approaching its millionth unit sold as it marks a decade in business. Co-founders Lee Sutton and Jordan Brompton, alongside CEO Andrew Clint, built the company around smart EV charging and solar diversion products for UK homes.
I’ve long admired myenergi – a firm helping transform a part of the UK which has suffered economically for decades, delivering products that customers need and want, and marketing in a way that promotes gains, not guilt.
And a million sales across European territories is something to celebrate for sure.
£42bn and still climbing… The UK’s climate tech sector keeps maturing on paper, but a lot of these scaleups are still leading with the tech, not why a customer should care. Valuation isn’t message-market fit.
Article link: https://www.edie.net/uks-most-promising-climate-tech-start-ups-valued-at-42bn/
The Seventh Carbon Budget is a huge policy milestone but it’s also an important commercial signal.
The government has now set a legally binding trajectory to 2042 and committed to a delivery plan to follow. For climate tech founders, the question isn’t whether the direction of travel holds. It’s whether your marketing is set up to capture the wave of private capital this kind of long-range certainty unlocks. If investors have confidence in the policy environment, your job is to make sure they have confidence in you.
Article link: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/energy-security-jobs-and-investment-boost-through-climate-action
Bristol-based start-up Mykor has announced £4m funding led by the Clean Growth Fund to scale their construction materials business. They grow the materials from waste product using fungi.
Central to the success of the business is their ability to lead not on the sustainable aspects of their products but the practical ones.
“Decarbonising construction cannot come at the expense of cost, performance or practicality” says CEO Olivia Page. In today’s market in particular, this is paramount.
I was at the Chapter Zero launch of this report from Systemiq last week.
The headline argument is blunt: net zero as a framing has served its purpose, but it’s increasingly the wrong lens for boardrooms – and by extension, for the founders building the companies that will populate this new economy.
The shift they’re describing isn’t from brown to green. It’s from compliance to competitiveness. That changes how you tell your story, who you tell it to, and what they actually need to hear.
Everyone’s talking about AI as a growth tool. Fewer people are talking about what it costs the planet. Greenpixie just raised £4.7m to fix that. Digital sustainability is becoming a board-level conversation – and the founders who get ahead of it now will have a real edge…
Remember our adage that successful sustainability businesses focus messaging on Better, Faster, Cheaper? Greenpixie helps identify wasteful zombie resources as well as lower carbon alternatives.
Article link: startupsmagazine.co.uk/greenpixie-raises-4-7m-to-cut-cloud-and-ai-waste
Biochar has always had a financing problem – not because the technology doesn’t work, but because investors couldn’t get comfortable with the revenue model.
The Green Finance Institute’s new CDR Catalyst is trying to change that, and its first deal – £1m in finance from Oxbury Bank to a biochar developer in southwest England – shows how structured finance can unlock projects that wouldn’t otherwise get off the ground.
This matters beyond biochar. The same logic applies across nature-based and engineered carbon removal: the gap isn’t usually the science, it’s the bankability. Worth watching how the Catalyst evolves.
The Crown Estate’s third Supply Chain Accelerator round is open with £15m available, applications close 3 July.
The programme has already backed 26 projects totalling nearly £18m, from floating wind test centres to O&M hubs.
If you’re building in the offshore wind supply chain and haven’t looked at this, now’s the time. The match funding model (up to 50%, between £250k and £2m) is well-structured for early-stage businesses that need to derisk before going to investors.
There’s lots of talk (and rightly so) about early-stage climate funding. The harder problem is what comes next – the £25-100M commercialisation gap that’s pushing UK deep tech founders to look abroad. Innovate UK’s new FOAK Builder programme is trying to close it. Worth watching.
Article link: https://iuk-business-connect.org.uk/perspectives/unlocking-scale-for-uk-climate-tech/
The UK is leading Europe in clean tech investment – but dig into the numbers and there’s a warning sign for founders. Early-stage activity is falling even as the overall figures look healthy. That probably means more capital is concentrating at later stages, with fewer bets being placed on unproven ideas. For pre-seed and seed founders, that makes the job of standing out to investors harder, not easier – which puts even more weight on getting your story, positioning and go-to-market right from day one.
Article link: https://uktech.news/climate-tech/uk-leads-europe-in-clean-tech-funding-report-finds-20260501
Most climate tech coverage focuses on solar, EVs, batteries and residential heat. But industrial heat – the energy used to make whisky, ceramics, steel – accounts for a huge chunk of global emissions and has barely been touched. Exergy3’s £10m raise is a signal that investors are starting to take this seriously. Worth watching.
Article link: https://www.uktech.news/climate-tech/exergy3-raises-10m-to-shake-up-the-clean-heat-market-20260421
Exergy3 is a University of Edinburgh spin-out
I’m Richard Leader – a fractional CMO and marketing strategy advisor. I’m a Domain Expert at Carbon13 and a mentor at Draper University. I work with sustainability businesses and climate tech founders on messaging, positioning and marketing strategy.
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