As you will have gathered from this podcast, I live in and love the intersection of clean technology and entrepreneurship. This passion, and my role as CEO at Hyperion Executive Search brings me into contact with so many fascinating people, and I love to hear and share their stories.

On recent podcasts I’ve spoken to leads at cleantech VCs, Publicly Listed tech funds and soon Corporate Venturing entities, but today a very import part of the funding ecosystem are Angels and Angel syndicates, and my guest Simon Acland has great insights into this part of the funding community.

About our guest

Simon Acland is a Founder and Director of Green Angel Syndicate, the only UK Business Angel group focussed on investing in companies that develop products and solutions that help tackle the climate emergency and environmental crisis and aim for a more efficient and sustainable use of global resources. He sits on the Board of Triple Point Income VCT plc, which has invested extensively in renewable energy and vertical farming, and is on the investment panel of the Triple Point Impact EIS Fund which makes green investments. He is a member of the investment committee of the Angel CoFund. He acts as chair or non-exec director of two companies he has backed in the green technology sector – Powervault, a developer and manufacturer of home electricity storage devices, including products which reuse batteries from electric vehicles, and NatureMetrics, a pioneer of environmental DNA sequencing techniques for monitoring biodiversity. Simon is a Non-Executive Director of the Satellite Applications Catapult, and Vice-Chair of Plantlife, the UK’s main wild plant conservation charity.

Simon has a successful track record from over thirty years of investing in young technology businesses. For 19 years he was part of the team that built Quester into one of the UK’s most active early stage venture capital investors, and was Managing Director when it was sold in 2007. Since then he has personally been an active Business Angel investor. Many of the businesses that he backed have floated on various Stock Exchanges, and/or been successfully sold. He has lost count of the number of company boards of which he has been a member.

Simon spent eight years as a Lambeth Borough Councillor and stood for parliament in 1987 as a candidate for the SDP/Liberal Alliance.

Simon’s 2011 book “Angels, Dragons and Vultures – how to tame your investors and not lose your company”, is widely regarded as one of the most useful guides for entrepreneurs to the world of venture capital. His First Crusade historical novels, the Waste Land and the Flowers of Evil, may be of less practical use to the budding entrepreneur.

GUEST LINKS HERE

Simon Acland on Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/simonacland/
Green Angel Syndicate on Linked In: www.linkedin.com/company/green-angel-syndicate/
Green Angel Syndicate on Twitter: twitter.com/GAS_Investments

EPISODE LINKS HERE

Angels, Dragons & Vultures – www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/18578…rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

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I’m very keen to hear feedback on the podcast and my guests, and to hear your suggestions for future guests or topics. Contact via the website, or Twitter.

If you do enjoy the podcast, please write a review on iTunes, or your usual podcast platform, and tell your cleantech friends about us. That would be much appreciated.

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What’s it all about?

Tom is one of those, like me, that tried to bring business acumen to a very nascent, and very hippy, clean and renewable energy sector in the UK in the late 2000’s. His journey, passion and drivers are fascinating to share, as is the story of Kaluza, a company really creating the Internet of Energy (IoE), across a range of domestic devices, proving new incomes and opportunities for businesses and consumers. Take a listen.

About our guest

Tom Pakenham is Director of Electric Vehicles at Kaluza, OVO Group’s intelligent energy platform. Driving the transition to a distributed, zero-carbon energy system, the Kaluza platform is able to securely connect millions of smart devices and create mass flexibility, helping offset costly and carbon-intensive peaks. Tom plays a crucial role in scaling this unique technology across the fast-growing electric vehicle market.

Before Kaluza, Tom helped lead OVO Energy’s transition from a pure kWh retail business into a diversified energy services company. In 2017 he spearheaded the launch of OVO’s ‘EV Everywhere’ energy bundle and developed industry-leading smart charging propositions for customers. Tom also developed strategic partnerships with key players including Chargemaster, the UK’s biggest provider of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, Indra Renewable Technologies, and ChargedEV.

Prior to OVO, Tom founded greentomatocars in 2006 – the world’s first low emission taxi company, which he sold to global transport conglomerate Transdev. After selling greentomatocars, Tom launched greentomatoenergy – an energy efficiency and micro-renewables business – which was acquired by a private equity firm in 2013. After this, Tom led the Business Development and Innovation team at Transdev Plc.

Tom graduated from Cambridge University with a History MA and has a Postgraduate Diploma in Law from BPP Law School. He is a qualified solicitor.

About Kaluza

Our mission is to securely connect all devices to an intelligent zero carbon grid

Kaluza is an intelligent energy platform able to connect and control millions of smart devices across people’s homes, such as electric vehicles, heaters and batteries. The machine learning platform introduces new flexibility into the energy system by optimising individual devices to use energy during off-peak hours, when costs and carbon are lower. An OVO Group company, Kaluza operates end-to-end, providing software, hardware and in-home installation services to a range of partners and is driving the global transition to a distributed and secure, zero-carbon grid.

GUEST LINKS

Kaluza on twitter: twitter.com/Kaluza_tech
Kaluza on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/kaluza/
Tom Pakenham on Twitter: twitter.com/tom_pakenham
Tom Pakenham on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/tom-pakenham-7424b3/
Kaluza home page: www.kaluza.com/

EPISODE LINKS

Small is Beautiful – EF Schumacher – www.amazon.co.uk/Small-Beautiful-…ed/dp/0099225611
The Story of Stuff – Animations – storyofstuff.org/

Follow us online, write a review (please) or subscribe

I’m very keen to hear feedback on the podcast and my guests, and to hear your suggestions for future guests or topics. Contact via the website, or Twitter.

If you do enjoy the podcast, please write a review on iTunes, or your usual podcast platform, and tell your cleantech friends about us. That would be much appreciated.

Twitter twitter.com/weekincleantech 
Facebook www.facebook.com/thisweekincleantech/ 
Instagram www.instagram.com/davidhunt2013/

I’m sure you get frustrated with all the EV and battery haters telling you how dirty and wasteful they are, and how they can’t be, or aren’t recycled. I do. So I approached an industry expert to shed some light on the life and uses of a lithium-ion battery. The answers even surprised me a little. Take a listen.

About our guest

Hans Eric Melin is the founder of the London-based Circular Energy Storage (CES) which is a consultancy focused on lifecycle management of lithium-ion batteries. He is also the main contributor to the company’s report “The lithium-ion battery end-of-life market” covering volumes, prices, market and technical development in the recycling and reuse industry.

Prior to starting Circular Energy Storage Hans Eric served as Vice President New Markets at Battery Solutions in Michigan, USA where he primarily worked with collection solutions and reuse of lithium-ion batteries. Before that he was the CEO of Refind Technologies in Gothenburg in Sweden which is a leading company in intelligent sorting of batteries and electronics. Besides batteries and recycling Hans Eric has long experience from working with eco design and renewable energy. He holds a BSc in Communication Studies and Business administration from Gothenburg University.

Circular Energy Storage Research and Consulting is a London-based consultancy specialized in life cycle management of lithium-ion batteries. We help battery companies, car and device makers, utilities and recyclers to develop end-of-life strategies for lithium-ion batteries, and advise investors and the raw material industry on how the the end-of-life sector affects the overall energy storage market. We do it through reports and monthly updates as well as through bespoke consulting projects.  As a foundation of the work lies a continuous data collection of what’s happening on the energy storage and raw material markets as well as trends in mobility and consumer electronics

News stories discussed this week

This is the state-of-the-art in lithium-ion battery reuse and recycling research https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/state-of-the-art-lithium-ion-battery-reuse-recycling-research-melin/

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What’s it all about?

As much as I am a clean energy and clean mobility geek, and entreprenuer, the circular economy also fascinates me. In the near future even the mainstream, not just us cleantech nerds, will question the stupidity of how we have done so much harm to the home (planet) that supports us. Rightly so, we’re frantically addressing the clean mobility transition, but no matter how you power your vehicle, it still has tyres right. So what happens to them when they’re done…. It’s not pretty, until now.

About our guest

Martijn Lopes Cardozo is a Dutch entrepreneur and international executive. He spent several years in the US where he built and grew a number of technology companies, all of which had successful exits. Upon his return to The Netherlands in 2008 Martijn joined several large corporations in strategy and M&A roles. He now brings the circular economy to tires as the CEO of Black Bear Carbon, the tire-to-Carbon Black upcycling company, which earlier this week was selected as a Global Cleantech 100 company for the second year running. Martijn holds a MSc degree in Applied Physics from TU Delft and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Are you worried about tires? With climate change and ocean plastic keeping us up at night, probably not. But every year, more than 1.5 billion polluting end-of-life tires enter the global waste stream, with no sustainable solution for their re-use. Until now. Black Bear upcycles end-of-life tires to produce sustainable, high-quality Carbon Black. This replaces virgin Carbon Black traditionally produced by burning oil – preventing CO2 emissions and solving the global waste tire problem.

Black Bear sells their recovered Carbon Black to major clients worldwide for use in tires, technical rubber, coatings, plastics and inks, including the coatings multinational AkzoNobel and more than 30 other strategically-chosen customers.

Black Bear currently operates an industrial-scale prototype plant in the Netherlands, which is capable of processing more than 1 million tires annually. Their plan is to lead the transition towards a circular economy for tires by rolling out hundreds of tire upcycling plants with local partners around the world, focusing on Europe for their next plants. When Black Bear reaches their full potential of repurposing every end-of-life tire with their circular solution, they will reduce global annual oil consumption by more than 215 million barrels.

Black Bear’s energy-positive process for producing the world’s first Cradle-to-Cradle certified™ Carbon Black is scalable, quickly implementable, and by far the most cost-effective way of producing Carbon Black. Their automated, IoT-optimised production follows a circular economy model: tire rubber with all steel removed is carbonized — carefully heated in the absence of oxygen. This creates gas, crude oil, electricity and solid char. The solid char is processed to create high-quality rCB, while the oil, gas and energy produced can either power the process or be sold into other markets.

In 2018 Black Bear secured €16 million in fresh capital from a consortium including investors like ING Sustainable Investments and Capricorn Venture Partners, to further refine their technology and commence the global rollout.

Martijn Lopes Cardozo on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/martijnlopescardozo/

Martijn Lopes Cardozo on Twitter   https://twitter.com/martijnlopes

Black Bear Carbon on Twitter https://twitter.com/blackbearcarbon

Black Bear Carbon   https://blackbearcarbon.com/

Book recommendations

Black Box Thinking – Matthew Syed https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Box-Thinking-Marginal-Performance/dp/1473613809/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464252285&sr=8-1&keywords=Black+Box+Thinking

Walter Isaacson: The Genius Biographies: Benjamin Franklin, Einstein, and Steve Jobs https://www.amazon.co.uk/Walter-Isaacson-Biographies-Benjamin-Franklin/dp/1501189018/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548766218&sr=8-1&keywords=walter+isaacson

Follow us online, write a review (please) or subscribe

I’m very keen to hear feedback on the podcast and my guests, and to hear your suggestions for future guests or topics. Contact via the website, or Twitter. If you do enjoy the podcast, please write a review on iTunes, or your usual podcast platform, and tell your cleantech friends about us. That would be much appreciated.

Twitter twitter.com/weekincleantech
Facebook www.facebook.com/thisweekincleantech/
Instagram www.instagram.com/davidhunt2013/