Scaling innovative solutions to the climate crisis

Current funding structures fail to support the creativity and progress needed to enable innovators to turn novel climate ideas into fundable prospects. Programmes like the Royal Academy of Engineering’s new Green Future Fellowships aim to supercharge investment in climate solutions by enabling the scaling up of innovative technologies, explains Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, chair of the Green Future Fellowships Steering Group.

2023 was the warmest year on record, with global average temperatures rising to 1.45°C above pre-industrial levels. 2024 already looks likely to be another record year. Global greenhouse gas emissions reached a record 57.4 gigatonnes in 2023 – if we are to keep the average temperature increase from exceeding 1.5°C, they must be reduced by 43 per cent by 2030 (compared to 2019 levels).

The world is not on course to meet this goal. Almost 80 per cent of members of theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict at least 2.5°C of global heating above preindustrial levels in this century, while almost half expect at least 3°C. We are already experiencing the extreme impacts of almost 1.5°C of warming; 3°C would be a devastating prospect for people, nature and economies.

But we still have time to avert this bleak outcome if we act with urgency, and we are starting to see progress globally and at home. The International Energy Agency reports that, in 2025, 35 per cent of global electricity production will be from renewables, higher than the proportion from coal. It also reports that 50 per cent of the global growth in generating capacity from 2024 to 2025 will come from solar alone. The UK has legislated to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and the government has committed to deliver a decarbonised electricity system by 2030.

This will require ambitious solutions both for immediate impact and for the long term, so green investment is crucial. Climate finance flows reached almost $1.3 trillion in 2021/2022, nearly double 2019/2020 levels.

A new attitude to risk

There are already existing climate solutions to invest in. Whilst these are going to be key to delivering change in the short term, the challenge remains to get funding for novel and higher risk projects that could provide solutions for the ongoing challenge in the longer term. Despite facing what is probably our greatest ever risk – the risk of climate change – we appear to be risk averse in supporting potential new solutions.

Current funding structures often fail to support the creativity and progress needed to enable innovators to turn often novel climate ideas into fundable prospects. Our current approach risks letting potential high impact, urgently needed solutions slip through our fingers.

This is why the Royal Academy of Engineering recently launched the £150 million Green Future Fellowships programme, funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Its purpose is to help scale climate solutions and provide innovators, scientists, researchers and engineers with the space and time they need to transform their cutting-edge ideas into commercially viable, scalable engineering solutions.

Over the next five years, the programme will award at least 50 of the best ideas and scalable technologies with the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions or for adapting to the impacts of climate change. Support is available over a period of 10 years, with funding of up to £3 million each.

If we do not grow climate solutions to be self-sustaining ventures with commercially viable futures, we will make the path to a net zero and well-adapted future far harder and more expensive than it could be.

Supporting the water sector

Successful solutions could include ways to increase energy and resource efficiency. This might include new approaches to recycling, new applications for robotics, big data and AI in improving our energy system, or creating new bacteria to clean up pollution and waste faster, to name but a few examples. The UK’s water sector is responsible for one-third of industrial emissions and uses 3 per cent of total of electricity – no doubt there are innovators working to solve challenges like these who would benefit from long-term support.

Whatever the technology, the most important aspect of the Green Future Fellowships is that they enable innovators to scale-up impactful solutions at all stages of development and accelerate the pace at which innovations reach the market and society. The climate crisis is our greatest risk – it needs era-defining solutions that set us on the right course to keep average global temperatures within 1.5^oC–2^oC of pre-industrial levels.

To engineer a greener future, we need urgently to scale a diverse range of long-term solutions, and to do this we need to be able to take risks that conventional funding approaches shy away from. Unfortunately, the climate crisis cannot be solved with quick fixes alone.

Climate change is our biggest risk and we don’t have much time left. The Green Future Fellowships are an amazing opportunity to support innovators from a wide range of backgrounds, in academia and in companies, to scale climate solutions and technologies to make a real impact.

Author: Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge DBE FREng FRS FMedSci, chair of the Green Future Fellowships Steering Group