Project Title:
Power-to-gas via microbial electrosynthesis of methane from biogenic CO2.
Acronym:
Efuels
Call:
Innovate UK Fast Start: Innovation
Start Date:
01/11/2022
Duration:
6 months
Grant Amount:
£50,000
Our Role:
Review
Through SETsquared’s Scale-Up Programme, RedKnight, has supported Efuels Technologies Ltd with its successful application to Innovate UK’s Fast Start competition, helping the innovative start-up to secure £50k. SETsquared’s Scale-Up Programme supports businesses to raise public funding and private equity. RedKnight is one of several approved grant-writing consultancies on the programme and provided Efuels with grant-writing services to secure this bid. Efuels Technologies is developing a novel power-to-methane technology to store renewable energy within the existing natural gas infrastructure. If the technology is successfully upscaled, energy generators could use curtailed electricity to convert biogenic CO2 into synthetic natural gas. The Fast Start innovation funding will allow the company, in collaboration with the University of Surrey, to build evidence of market validation and a bench-scale prototype of the technology. Dr Jose Batista, Founder of Efuels Technology Ltd said, “The connection of the electricity, and gas network will play a pivotal role in the UK’s transition to net zero. The UK is nowadays writing a new chapter of the grapple against climate change. Today, wind farms provide more than 21% of the total power generated. This is fantastic but the intermittency in wind power generation has led to a big problem. Negative electricity prices are already reported during windy days when supply surpasses demand. As soon as the grid exceeds capacity, wind farms must switch off to avoid collateral damage to the network. However, they are compensated via a constraint payment, which is passed onto consumers’ energy bills. It is known consumers have paid over £650m worth of constraint payments to wind farms. The government now wants 50 gigawatts (GW) of the UK's electricity from offshore wind by the end of the decade. If this problem remains unsolved, consumers will face larger costs in the energy bill”. Efuels Technologies proposes a simple but challenging solution. It aims to leverage the 7,660 km of existing gas pipelines across the UK to store and transport energy surpluses from wind farms. It achieves this by converting excess renewable power into methane, which can be injected into the gas network with no regulatory barriers. The technology could create a unique bi-directional link between the electricity and gas industry to unlock more flexibility and reliability of supply into the energy market.
Through SETsquared’s Scale-Up Programme, RedKnight, has supported Efuels Technologies Ltd with its successful application to Innovate UK’s Fast Start competition, helping the innovative start-up to secure £50k. SETsquared’s Scale-Up Programme supports businesses to raise public funding and private equity. RedKnight is one of several approved grant-writing consultancies on the programme and provided Efuels with grant-writing services to secure this bid. Efuels Technologies is developing a novel power-to-methane technology to store renewable energy within the existing natural gas infrastructure. If the technology is successfully upscaled, energy generators could use curtailed electricity to convert biogenic CO2 into synthetic natural gas. The Fast Start innovation funding will allow the company, in collaboration with the University of Surrey, to build evidence of market validation and a bench-scale prototype of the technology. Dr Jose Batista, Founder of Efuels Technology Ltd said, “The connection of the electricity, and gas network will play a pivotal role in the UK’s transition to net zero. The UK is nowadays writing a new chapter of the grapple against climate change. Today, wind farms provide more than 21% of the total power generated. This is fantastic but the intermittency in wind power generation has led to a big problem. Negative electricity prices are already reported during windy days when supply surpasses demand. As soon as the grid exceeds capacity, wind farms must switch off to avoid collateral damage to the network. However, they are compensated via a constraint payment, which is passed onto consumers’ energy bills. It is known consumers have paid over £650m worth of constraint payments to wind farms. The government now wants 50 gigawatts (GW) of the UK's electricity from offshore wind by the end of the decade. If this problem remains unsolved, consumers will face larger costs in the energy bill”. Efuels Technologies proposes a simple but challenging solution. It aims to leverage the 7,660 km of existing gas pipelines across the UK to store and transport energy surpluses from wind farms. It achieves this by converting excess renewable power into methane, which can be injected into the gas network with no regulatory barriers. The technology could create a unique bi-directional link between the electricity and gas industry to unlock more flexibility and reliability of supply into the energy market.