The BNEF New Energy Pioneers are innovators who are revolutionising the energy, transport and technology sectors. The winners are responding to changes and disruption in the energy system and are pursuing new opportunities in areas as diverse as storage, EV charging, digitalization, heat recovery, and blockchain. By recognising innovators, BNEF aims to highlight and accelerate the transition that is underway in today’s new energy economy, towards new business models, technologies, market structures and commercial opportunities.
An independent panel of industry experts, assisted by BNEF’s analysts and technology specialists, selected the ten winners from more than 160 applicants from close to 50 countries around the world. Each candidate was assessed against three criteria: technology or business model innovation, and what novelty it brought to the market; evidence of substantive progress in the form of strong commercial partnerships, the distribution channels in place and sales growth; and the potential to scale and have a global impact.
The 2018 New Energy Pioneers are as follows:
Advanced Microgrid Solutions (U.S.) - designs, develops, and manages portfolios of distributed energy resources providing dynamic grid management and value to wholesale markets.
Bidgely (U.S.) - a load disaggregation company that uses machine learning and data analytics to process smart meter data and provide its users with insights about their energy consumption.
BURN (Kenya) – a company that has designed and manufactured over 370,000 clean cook stoves, improving both air quality and access to power for low-income households.
Climeon (Sweden) - has commercialised the extraction of electricity from low-temperature heat (70-120 degrees Celsius), used in the context of waste heat or geothermal power.
Enbala (U.S.) - operates a real-time energy-balancing platform creating controllable and dispatchable energy resources from flexible loads, energy storage and renewable energy sources.
Greenlots (U.S.) - a hardware-agnostic provider of electric vehicle network management software and services. These give utilities, cities, communities and automakers the ability to control grid loads through smart charging and demand response.
Limejump (U.K.) - a demand response energy technology company and the largest virtual power plant operator in the U.K., using proprietary software to aggregate and manage a distributed fleet of flexible assets.
LO3 Energy (U.S.) - an early mover in peer-to-peer energy trading using blockchain technology, and is developing other applications for its blockchain platform.
SaltX (Sweden) - an innovator in storing heat chemically, using a proprietary salt-based technology. This uses a nano coating and graphene to prevent salt crystals from growing when energy is stored, greatly improving the number of storage cycles whilst also reducing corrosion.
WiTricity (U.S.) - has developed wireless charging through magnetic resonance technology, allowing high-efficiency power transfer for the electric vehicle industry.
“This year, we were delighted to receive a record number of strong candidates for the New Energy Pioneers programme, drawn from 47 different countries” said Michael Wilshire, selection committee chair and head of strategy at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “We have seen a sharp uptick in the number of applicants that use digital technologies and software to help make the electricity system more resilient, flexible and efficient – all critical elements of a more decentralised and renewable energy system. Emerging technologies such as machine learning and blockchain are being used to improve decision making and to make operations more efficient, as well as to create new capabilities, such as peer-to-peer energy trading and the ability to manage complex sets of distributed assets. Transport is being transformed, with two of this year’s Pioneers developing infrastructure, software, and services to support the rollout of electric vehicles. And we continue to see strong innovation in other areas, such as storage and energy in developing markets”.
The New Energy Pioneers programme partner is Cycle Capital Management.
Image: The Future of Energy Global Summit in New York City (BNEF)
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