Meet the founders making home EV charging trustworthy, carbon removal affordable, and industrial heat a no-brainer - Climate Tech Time
For our July edition of Climate Tech, we held our 38th edition in a room packed with founders, entrepreneurs, investors, and more. And what a joy it was. Even in the thick of another heatwave, the community once again came through in force.
This time, three founders took to the stage to share their stories of bringing climate technologies from concepts to reality.
Freddie Winterbotham, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Rightcharge, talked about incorporating trust into the product design. Oliver Weber, Co-Founder and CTO of AED Energy, shared the numbers behind the global renewable energy landscape. Then, Georgia Ware, Co-Founder and CEO of Hotgreen Solutions, closed the night with the story of how a conversation in the pub led to developing a more cost-effective industrial heat pump for the brewing industry.
Read on for the full roundup.
Building trust into home EV charging
Freddie Winterbotham, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Rightcharge, opened with asking: “Who here would happily accept a shiny new EV from their company?”
Plenty of hands went up. And who would still accept it if the company took away their car, told them they could only charge at home, and left them to submit expenses and trust that reimbursement would arrive?
The hands came down.
The rollout of EVs is happening faster than the shift from horses to cars.
As of last month, one in three new cars bought in the UK was electric, and for business fleets it’s one in two. Charging at home can be up to 16 times cheaper than charging publicly, and around 20 times cheaper than petrol or diesel. On a smart EV tariff, that can mean roughly 250 miles for as little as £3.20.
And that’s where RightCharge comes in. Their software and apps integrate three things (the driver’s home charger, their vehicle, and their home energy tariff) so that every time a driver charges, they can see:
How much energy was used
At what cost
Which vehicle was charging
RightCharge combines that across the month then bills the business for the energy used to charge work vehicles, reimbursing the driver directly via their energy bills.
Once Freddie had the technology working, the harder challenge was building trust amongst drivers. He and her team incorporated this into the product design so that:
Communication goes directly to the driver, not just the business
There’s a human on the phone, clear emails showing how much reimbursement is coming and why, and a simple route to resolve a query
Drivers can see the impact they’re having by going electric, including the CO2 they save every time they charge at home
Connect with Freddie on LinkedIn to follow his journey, or visit RightCharge to see how they’re making fleet charging simple and trustworthy.
“The technology works, but the trust isn’t there. That reimbursement layer is high-stakes stuff – so we have to communicate directly with drivers, meet them where they are, and bring them along the journey.”
– Freddie Winterbotham, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Rightcharge
Following the physics and economics of carbon removal
Oliver Weber, Co-Founder and CTO of AED Energy, began: “I’m here to speak a lot of hot air”. His talk ranged across solar thermodynamics, carbon removal and industrial heat, all in service of the idea:
Decarbonisation only sticks when the tech also supports cost of living and energy security.
The AED Energy team brings backgrounds in high-efficiency photovoltaics and some of the world’s largest solar thermal plants, and is currently running thermal demonstration projects in Lagos, Nigeria.
In 2025, solar was the fastest-deployed energy technology of any kind, by capacity, in history. China alone now has over a terawatt of PV manufacturing capacity a year, which, as he puts it, is like discovering a new North Sea basin every year that never depletes. Batteries are on a similar trajectory, and in both cases, it comes down to the affordability of technology.
From there, Oliver brought in the statistic that 99% of the hydrogen used in the world economy is still derived from fossil fuels despite hundreds of billions in public spending. To take vast amounts of carbon removal from the atmosphere, you have to let a biological or geological process do some of the unmixing for you.
Oliver argued that with green hydrogen being subsidised at high strike prices to replace far cheaper natural gas, and many solutions like heat pumps simplifying electricity reduction, the solution is to spend money where it makes sense.
Visit AED Energy to learn more about their work on thermal storage and solar, and follow Oliver on LinkedIn.
“The task now is to spend our money where the physics and the economics actually add up.”
– Oliver Weber, Co-Founder & CTO of AED Energy
Making industrial heat a no-brainer
Georgia Ware, Co-Founder & CEO of Hotgreen Solutions, closed the evening with a story.
The first starts in the pub. Her friend – let’s call her Stella – says she’s giving up beer for good after she learnt that it was brewed using fossil fuels. Specifically, industrial heating processes like brewing beer and drying paper: processes that are responsible for around 7% of global emissions, equivalent to the entire EU’s emissions.
As Georgia pointed out, if her friend was serious about process heat, she’d also have to give up fizzy drinks, dairy, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and paper.
As an engineer, Georgia also knew that there might be a 150-year-old solution: Industrial Heat Pumps. Where a boiler burns fossil fuels at about 80% efficiency and emits a lot of CO2 to make heat, a heat pump takes electricity and uplifts waste heat to generate three times as much heat in return. The plan could be to place industrial heat pumps into every brewery in Belgium and decarbonise Belgian beer.
Yet, when she spoke to equipment suppliers, the barrier wasn’t a lack of interest. It was cost.
So, Hotgreen set herself a goal to make industrial heat pumps affordable: a balance between upfront spend (capex) and what you spend over time (opex). She focused on the compressor, which accounts for around 40% of the upfront cost but 85% of the opex. By pairing with new manufacturing techniques, they built a system more affordable than existing fossil fuel boilers. Not happy with finishing there, she is also focused on making the process as convenient as possible.
Coca-Cola Europacific Partners is piloting their first solution, along with the 100+ Accelerator with ABInBev, the brewer behind Corona, Budweiser, and, yes, Stella.
“We solved this from a carbon perspective 150 years ago. Our innovation solves it from a cost perspective.”
– Georgia Ware, Co-Founder and CEO of Hotgreen Solutions
Connect with Georgia on LinkedIn or visit Hotgreen Solutions to see how they’re making industrial heat pumps a no-brainer.
After a well-deserved break in August, Climate Tech Time will be returning to The Conduit on 23 September.
Our next Climate Tech Time is on Wednesday, 20 May. Sign up for our newsletter for updates on all London climate events happening in the month, and follow us here for more updates.
