MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Energy Catalyst Community Seeks to Boost Commercialization of Solar, Wind, Battery, Payment, Other Innovations in Africa, Asia

Energy Catalyst, “a UK government-funded programme designed to accelerate access to sustainable energy” in Africa and Asia, recently launched its Energy Catalyst Community, offering a set of documents on commercializing energy innovations. The next phase of the project will allow companies funded by Energy Catalyst to collaborate in a private online environment “with other grantees and encourage knowledge exchange to develop and commercialise” renewable energy.

Among the documents available in the new library is an off-grid solar technical guide that details various business models for distributing solar products. These include pay-as-you-go via the distributor and financing via third-party lenders.

Energy Catalyst offers “grant funding, business acceleration support and brokerage activity,” generally supporting UK-based firms that are active in South Asia, Southeast Asia or sub-Saharan Africa. Since its first funding round was released in 2015, Energy Catalyst has committed GBP 140 million (USD 190 million) as of 2021 to efforts in 30 countries in areas “such as clean cooking stoves, energy storage, distributed solar, biomass and mini-grids.”

The program is part of Innovate UK, which serves as the “UK’s innovation agency,” supporting “businesses to develop and realise the potential of new ideas.” Since 2007, Innovate UK reports having served 8,500 firms, generating 70,000 jobs. The organization itself has 500 employees as of 2021.

Innovate UK, in turn, is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which launched in 2018 as “a non-departmental public body funded by a grant-in-aid from the UK government.” UKRI’s annual budget was approximately EUR 8 billion (USD 9.7 billion) as of 2020.

By Harriet Ritchie, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

Energy Catalyst press release
https://energycatalyst.ukri.org/2020/12/17/energy-catalyst-launches-new-community-hub-to-accelerate-innovation-to-achieve-sustainable-energy-for-all/

Energy Catalyst homepage
https://energycatalyst.ukri.org/

UKRI homepage
https://www.ukri.org/

Innovate UK homepage
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/innovate-uk

Domestic Off-Grid Solar technical guide
https://energycatalyst.community/developer/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Technical-Guide-Domestic-Off-Grid-Solar.pdf

Energy Catalyst commercialization guides
https://energycatalyst.ukri.org/commercialisation-guide/

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