The UK government’s recent proposals for carbon emissions to be cut by 60% by 2050 means there is a real need for new low-carbon technologies, whether for energy generation or more energy-efficient devices and processes. Ideas range from the practical to the wacky, but unless they emerge from the research centres of large companies with big development budgets, how can they get funding?

Devotees of the TV show ‘Dragons Den’ will know just how difficult it is to get investors to stump up cash to fund projects – they’re very good at picking out the flaws in the pitch. Having a carefully prepared proposal that has considered everything that might be relevant is essential, with research done and credible people in place. And without experience, it’s not as easy as it sounds. This is where organisations like business incubators come in, such as the one managed by Angle Technology on behalf of the Carbon Trust. Its mission is to get low-carbon technology ideas into a position where the investors are more likely to hand over the money.

Based in a Guildford office, Angle’s staff includes an ex-Cambridge chemist (and former Chem@Cam cover star!), Malcolm King. He works as a consultant, helping academics and small companies prepare that all-important pitch, giving advice about what further research and development they need to do to increase their chances of success.

Malcolm’s career change was born out of his own experience. Towards the end of his PhD with Dave King, he and Victor Ostanin came up with an idea for a new type of computer mouse. ‘We put it to venture capitalists, and rapidly discovered we had a lot to learn!’ he says.

He’d been on a one-week entrepreneurship course organised by the university during the summer at the end of his PhD, and while his mouse idea may have died a death – it was a nice idea but the barrier proved to be access to market – contacts he made on that course ultimately led him to his job at Angle, helping other people and organisations put their ideas into production.

‘When a company comes to us, the most important factor to start with is that they must have a good carbon reduction case,’ he explains. ‘This can be directly by displacing fossil fuels in energy generation, or by using energy more efficiently. For example, if you can reduce the energy consumption of an electric motor by one-sixth, that could have a substantial impact, if you consider that electric motors and systems are responsible for about 40% of global electricity consumption. When you think of low carbon energy, you think of solar panels or wind turbines, not necessarily a motor!’ Another example is a novel bioprocess, developed by a Didcot-based company, that makes fermentation and biotransformation products in a preconcentrated form, so less energy is expended removing water.

The value of an idea at the outset depends on its features, benefits, advantages, the size of the market and its growth potential. ‘If you’re really lucky, 10 years down the line you’ll get a 100 times return on the initial investment, but getting there is the difficult part,’ Malcolm says. And whether you get there depends on both money and management. ‘It’s a chicken and egg situation. To be able to attract the management you need the money, and to attract investment, you need good management. The result is a repeated process of pitching for money to get the business to the next stage, until if all goes well it reaches the stage of being self-funding.’

If an academic has managed to take an idea to the proof-of-concept stage with a research council grant, showing that it works at the lab scale, Malcolm says there’s a danger that all they will see is the pound signs and not the pitfalls.

‘We worked with a university group that had developed a high efficiency motor with an EPSRC grant,’ he says. ‘We engaged with the customers really early on to develop a market-led design specification. The process helps academia turn their ideas and research into products for a real customer as well as published papers. It may take the form of simple alterations to the design, or a substantial rethink once we find out what a customer will actually be willing to buy.’

The next step is to engage a contract r&d house or an engineering firm to develop the specification and a plan for achieving it, and then work together with the academic to develop that customer-defined prototype.

In its three years of operation, the Carbon Trust Angle incubator has already successfully incubated 15 companies, which have gone on to raise a total of £27m in funding, £15m of that by Oxford Catalysts alone.

‘Once the project is ready, we match it with venture capitalists who have a specific interest in investing in that space,’ he says. ‘We’ll prepare them for their interrogation by firing all the nasty questions the potential investors would so that they are less likely to be caught off guard.’

He stresses that it’s not good enough just to have an idea – it’s essential that all the planning and, most importantly, the right people are there. ‘If you just turn up with the technology, the venture capitalists are likely to say no,’ Malcolm concludes. ‘We tend to be involved with companies who are burning cash and need to go through several funding rounds before they become cash positive. But without all the right people and plans in place, that is very unlikely to happen. You have to be able to convey the idea to the investor in the structured format that makes them feel comfortable enough to put their money into the venture.’