£39 million has been awarded to innovators working on high impact climate solutions. Here’s what you need to know about the projects and pioneers.
The first ever Green Future Fellows were recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering in December. In total, 13 individuals received £3 million each to continue developing projects, with money coming from a £150 million, long-term investment by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Winning applications come from experts working across a variety of endeavours, including technology to store renewable energy in ammonia, nano-engineered lightweight batteries for electric planes, capable of storing up to four times more power than lithium-ion, and a groundbreaking computer memory system that does not generate heat. The impact of which could see data centre carbon and water footprints plummet.
Other examples include processes to break down contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), a category which covers PFAS ‘forever chemicals’. The substances can be destroyed using high frequency ultrasound, which is much greener than the current incineration process. Elsewhere, a new climate-friendly way of converting biogas into energy dense pure fuel also secured funding. As did a method of producing volatile fatty acids – commonly used in plastics, fuels, and chemicals – from waste carbon.
‘Engineering is playing a critical role in addressing the climate crisis. We are awarding £150 million over the next five years to at least 50 long-term, scalable, commercially viable solutions that will have real-world impact, with each awardee able to develop their solution over a 10-year period,’ says Dr Hayaatun Sillem, CBE, CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
‘This novel and ambitious approach to supporting climate solutions fills a gap in the funding landscape by providing flexible support to talented innovators from any background to convert transformational ideas into climate impact,’ he continues. ‘The Royal Academy of Engineering’s Green Future Fellowships provide academics, entrepreneurs, innovators and engineers, the space and time to transform their cutting-edge ideas into scalable, commercially viable, technologies to secure a greener, fairer future.’
A full list of recipients follows:
Dr Madeleine Bussemaker (University of Surrey)
A Sound Solution for Contaminants of Emerging Concern Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), such as PFAS (also known as forever chemicals), pharmaceuticals and pesticides, are harmful pollutants that are hard to destroy. PFAS waste is usually incinerated, producing greenhouse gases. In England alone, the cost of cleaning up PFAS could be up to £120 billion. A new high-frequency ultrasound method, sonolysis, safely breaks down CECs without toxic by-products and with potential to be cheaper than incineration.
Dr Sharon Velasquez-Orta (Newcastle University)
Carbon dioxide conversion by intensified electrobiocatalysis
This project develops a practical technology that turns CO2 into fuel using microbes and bioelectrochemical reactors (BES). It upgrades biogas to pure fuel, boosting its energy content. If used across all UK anaerobic digesters, it could cut 3.1 megatonnes of CO2 and save £120 million annually. The system uses new microbial 3D biocomposites to stabilise and speed up performance. Scaling from an experimental level to full technology could help farmers and industry meet Net Zero goals and convert biogas systems into zero-carbon fuel providers.
Dr Jaime Massanet-Nicolau (University of South Wales)
BIO-VISTA: Biorefining Waste into VFAs: In Situ Recovery and Low-Temperature Adaptation
BIO-VISTA is a technology to produce volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from waste carbon sources such as biomass and waste industrial gases. VFAs are short-chain organic acids with a wide range of uses including plastics, fuels and chemicals.
Using novel, in-situ extraction and low-temperature fermentation, BIO-VISTA can boost yields of VFAs by 41% while cutting energy use by 60%. With a £10 billion global market, UK deployment could generate £1 billion annually and save up to 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. The project aims to move from lab to industrial pilots with major partners, aiming to create a UK Centre of Excellence in VFA biorefining.
Professor Robert Alexander House (University of Oxford)
Nanoengineering oxygen conversion electrodes for green electric flight
A new type of rechargeable battery that’s four-times more energy dense than current state-of-the-art lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, making them much lighter and more powerful, perfect for electric or hybrid planes. Using nanoengineering, they overcome the challenges of current Li-ion batteries, which carry a lot of excess unused weight in the electrode materials, instead storing energy using lighter structures. Increasing the energy density four-fold means batteries can be made much smaller and lighter, which could help to electrify aeroplanes.
Professor Moritz Riede (University of Oxford)
Achieving Terawatt-Scale Organic Photovoltaics
Organic photovoltaics (OPV) are solar cells made from carbon-based materials. These panels are flexible, lightweight and can be used on almost any surface. They already work well in the laboratory, but they are not yet good enough for factories to make cheaply at scale.
OPV will complement traditional solar panels where they do not work, for example on curved surfaces, transparent building facades, or wearable electronics, and provide clean energy at a fraction of the environmental footprint of traditional solar panels. Professor Riede will use AI and robots to test thousands of designs automatically and quickly to improve OPV so they match what the best labs can do – accelerating OPV commercialisation, supporting UK Net Zero goals and advancing a fair clean energy transition everywhere.
Dr Matthew Lloyd Davies (Swansea University)
ASPECT: Advancing Sustainable Perovskite Solar Energy
Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are a type of solar panel made from a crystal-structured material called perovskite that efficiently converts sunlight into electricity. ASPECT aims to make PSCs a mainstream, sustainable alternative to conventional solar panels – which are designed for a single life, are resource intensive and difficult to recycle.
The project embeds circular economy principles, reducing toxic materials and improving recyclability to minimise environmental impact. ASPECT will develop scalable, low-cost, low-carbon solar modules, strengthening the UK’s leadership in next-generation solar technology.
Dr Rostislav Mikhaylovskiy (Lancaster University)
Terahertz magnetic recording for green data storage technology
As we rely more on wireless devices, cloud storage and artificial intelligence, data centres need to process more information and faster, generating a lot of heat. Data centres use 1.5% of all electricity produced, with up to 40% of that electricity used on air cooling.
This Fellowship aims to develop a new type of memory that uses extremely short bursts of terahertz radiation – light pulses a thousand times faster than today’s technology. They flip the direction of small magnets that store bits of data. Because these pulses match the magnets energy, they can switch them without creating heat. This could lead to much faster, cooler and more energy-efficient data storage in the future.
Professor Laura Torrente (University of Cambridge)
Dynamic, efficient and safe green ammonia synthesis
The way we store renewable energy for long-term use is the focus of this Professor Laura Torrente’s work. She is using renewable electricity, water and nitrogen from air to produce ammonia cleanly and safely.
In this way, clean energy is stored in the chemical bonds of the carbon-free ammonia which can be used as a fuel and as a backup for renewable power generation (producing only water and nitrogen when burnt). Her work also focuses on safe ammonia storage so it can be easily transported to parts of the country where more energy capacity is required.
Professor Rebecca Lunn MBE FREng FRSE (University of Strathclyde)
Mechanochemical reactions in silicate rocks: Decarbonising the production of critical materials
This Fellowship explores mechanochemical reactions – chemical reactions triggered by mechanical energy, such as the crushing, grinding, or fracturing of rocks. The mechanical force breaks chemical bonds in minerals, creating highly reactive surfaces that can react with greenhouse gases like CO2.
When silicate rocks such as basalt and granite are crushed in CO2, these reactions trap the gas as stable silicon carbonates, while also altering the solubility of valuable metals in the rock. Applied to the 72 billion tonnes of waste rock crushed globally each year, this low-energy process could capture around 1 billion tonnes of CO2 annually, reducing emissions from mining and material production.
Dr Akshay Deshmukh (University of Cambridge)
Membrane Cascades for Efficient Critical Metals Extraction and Purification from Brines and Leachates
This project develops clean, energy-efficient ways to extract critical metals important for batteries, magnets, solar panels, and fuel cells, without the harmful chemicals and waste of traditional methods. It uses membrane systems, like filters and electrically driven separators, to pull metals out of salty water and recycled materials while saving water, energy, and chemicals. By combining real-time monitoring and smart models, the approach could make metal extraction safer, scalable, and more sustainable, helping secure the metals needed for a green, Net Zero future.
Dr Kilian Stenning (this award is subject to commercial negotiations with Imperial College London and Rayd Technologies) Reconfigurable, non-linear photonic computing for energy efficient AI
AI and cloud computing use huge amounts of energy, causing unsustainable CO2 emissions. This Fellowship develops brain-inspired “neuromorphic” computing that uses light (photons) to process data and images extremely efficiently, with potential for more than 10,000 times less energy than current GPU microchips.
The system can learn from small datasets where traditional AI falls short and already works for tasks like image classification and medical imaging. By miniaturising the hardware and expanding its capabilities, this technology could drastically improve AI’s speed, energy and data efficiency, and lower data centre emissions. This will make AI faster and more environmentally friendly and enable a new class of AI which can learn and adapt limited data at the edge.
Idan Gal-Shohet (Fibe)
Sustainable natural fibre from agricultural waste
The company is turning fibrous farm waste, including from potatoes, into high-quality, low-carbon and affordable fibres as an alternative to cotton. Unlike cotton, this process uses very little water and no additional land. Cultivation of raw materials accounts for up to 2% of global emissions, yet 9.6 billion tonnes of fibrous agricultural waste is generated each year with limited value to farmers.
Fibe’s technology aims to valorise these residues for the first time to significantly increase global production of sustainable natural fibres. The funding will be used to build a pilot plant and scale up processes to an industrial scale. This award is subject to agreeing suitable commercial terms.
Dr Aled Roberts (Dekiln)
SPARK: Scaling Production of Advanced Recycled Kiln-free tiles Traditional ceramic tiles have a huge carbon footprint owing to high-temperature kiln firing necessary for their production. Dekiln has developed a technology (BioSintering) to produce tiles from over 98% recycled gypsum without the need for kiln firing, which slashes energy use and emissions.
The goal of the SPARK project is to scale the process from lab-sized batches to full industrial production by integrating the technology with existing tile factories. By solving engineering challenges and working with industry partners, SPARK could provide a low-carbon, sustainable alternative for the tile industry and help revive manufacturing in the UK. This award is subject to agreeing suitable commercial terms.
Image: Kvalifik / Unsplash
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