At the EIC, we work with a variety of innovators with different goals. What they have in common is their genuine commitment to improving the way energy networks operate.
For the newest instalment of our Innovator Spotlight series, we’ve spoken with Andrew Padmore, the Chief Executive of decarbonisation innovation company Egnida.
He spoke with us about Egnida’s mission to ensure other companies succeed in the transition to net-zero, and about how the EIC supports this journey.
EIC: Hello Andrew. Please could you give me a run-down of what it is Egnida does?
We help organisations decarbonise. That’s our core business. We work with bigger public and private sector clients including a number of FTSE250 companies.
We help them to measure and manage their carbon impacts, develop science-based targets, develop their plans, and help to implement them.
Recently, we’ve also been doing a lot of adaptation work. This recognises that climate change is happening and so we’ve been working with these same clients dealing with the risks of climate change, particularly those linked to weather impacts.
What are some of the major cultural concerns that Egnida is focused on at the moment?
The root of all the projects going through the EIC is that we’ve consciously said: “let’s apply our innovation, and our innovative thinking, to specifically help the poor and vulnerable.”
Could you tell me a little bit about your current project to get gas boilers working during electricity power cuts?
If you look at the Northeast, you look at Storm Arwen, and climate change impacts; the biggest threat to people is to the poor and vulnerable, without power, who need heat to stay alive and well.
Gas networks can run under power outages. You can keep gas boilers running during power outages and cold weather, and you can keep poor and vulnerable people alive and well.
The core of the idea is to use portable batteries to keep a boiler running.
Part of the innovation is: trying to predict power outages, where the vulnerable residents are, and what the likely heat loss is for their individual properties. This is all needed to make sure a battery can keep their boiler running until power is restored.
Can you tell me about your relationship with the EIC and how that started?
We became aware of the EIC through the Energy Innovation Awards. We were nominated for an award and won!
The Awards were really good for people’s awareness of us: utilities and people we didn’t know approached us afterwards, asking “how can we work together?”
Once we understood what the EIC does, we thought, that interface [with the energy networks] is really useful!
When you’ve got multiple utilities and you have to get them to work together, it takes up a huge amount of time and effort.
To take that away, where we’ve only really got to work with the EIC is really valuable. We now run everything, every idea, through the EIC before we approach the utilities.
What does the future look like for Egnida?
In terms of innovation for the poor and vulnerable, we really want to roll it out at large scale, to make a bigger difference.
It’s challenging because we’re trying to do it at a time when it’s most difficult, because of the economic crisis. But it’s the time that people need it the most.