Tuesday 16th February 2021, 4:30pm
In response to a growing trend in the sustainability and climate change space, Converge announce the launch of a brand-new prize – the Converge Net Zero Award.
Last year alone, a quarter of all Converge programme participants were climate conscious entrepreneurs.
This new award, which includes a £10,000 cash prize, will shine a light on this important and growing opportunity in the year that Scotland prepares to welcome the world to COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference.
Climate change is the defining crisis of our time with Scotland’s universities playing a key role in the race to accelerate Scotland’s transition to a low carbon economy. Academic entrepreneurs, in particular, have the necessary skills, ambition and ethos to turn this global challenge into an opportunity to reinvent our future.
They include Faisal Ghani, winner of the 2019 Impact Challenge and creator of SolarisKit, a flat-packable, low-cost solar thermal collector that converts sunlight directly into hot water.
Faisal’s innovation has huge commercial potential, particularly in the developing world, with the promise of lifting millions of people out of energy poverty while at the same time making a large dent in carbon emissions. By 2025, SolarisKit aims to have installed over 90,000 collectors, annually saving over 27 million kilograms of carbon emissions.
“We launched our Impact Challenge in 2019 in response to a growing appetite from socially and environmentally conscious academic entrepreneurs. Now, two years on, a quarter of proposals across all our challenge categories are for net zero projects."
Claudia Cavalluzzo, Director of ConvergeThe winner of the new Converge Net Zero Award will be selected from participants from this year’s Converge, Impact and Creative Challenge cohorts. Projects from all sectors will be eligible but construction & the built environment; transport; agriculture and energy are of particular relevance, given the impact they have on Climate.
"With the climate emergency one of our biggest global threats and the need to take action more urgent and immediate than ever, I foresee even more climate conscious entrepreneurs stepping up to help shape our low carbon future. By launching the Converge Net Zero Award we hope to galvanise academic entrepreneurs across Scotland to develop scalable new technologies and nature-based solutions that will enable us to create a cleaner, greener, more resilient world."
Claudia Cavalluzzo, Director of ConvergeThe winner of the 2021 Converge Net Zero Award will be announced at the final of the annual Converge Awards which takes place on 30 September, a few weeks before the UN climate talks at COP26 take place in Glasgow in November.
Roslin Innovation Centre
The University of Edinburgh
Easter Bush Campus
Midlothian EH25 9RG
