Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top London based Founder operating in the Renewable Energy space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Joanna Hubbard
Co-Founder and CEO of Electron
Jo-Jo Hubbard is the co-founder and COO of Electron, one of the original energy tech firms to harness blockchain technology for transactive grid systems. She is a thought leader on the topic of digital energy and a frequent keynote speaker at energy and technology events. Her previous experience includes renewable energy investment banking, cleantech VC, and strategy consulting at McKinsey & Co. Jo-Jo sits on advisory boards for several UK utilities on digital transformation and community trading models and writes for international publications on these topics.
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About Electron: Electron is accelerating the energy industry’s transition to Net Zero by making granular, market-based interactions possible.
Paul Ellis
Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Electron
Paul Ellis is co-founder and CEO at Electron, a new platform focusing on reinventing the retail energy market in the UK using the Ethereum blockchain. Prior to Electron, Paul spent 13 years in Investment Banking. He founded a development business and fin tech incubator. He then created and ran an electronic trading platform for credit derivatives for a number of years.
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About Electron: Electron is accelerating the energy industry’s transition to Net Zero by making granular, market-based interactions possible.
Nick Boyle
Founder and CEO of Lightsource Renewable Energy
In 2010, Nick founded Lightsource Renewable Energy, then just a six-person start-up, which quickly grew over 5 years to become Europe’s largest solar developer and operator and a recognised global leader. In his role as Group CEO, Nick’s dynamic leadership and vision has driven the company to tremendous success and in December 2017, Lightsource announced a strategic partnership with BP which has committed aggressively to accelerate the low carbon transition. The company has rebranded to Lightsource BP in affirmation of this powerhouse commitment which is set to shape the future of global energy delivery. Nick previously sat at Board and Senior Director level in a number of leading retail financial service companies. Throughout his career, Nick has always been recognised for his entrepreneurial skill and success in pairing retail financial products with low-risk, predictable investments.
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About Lightsource Renewable Energy: Lightsource is a provider of ground and rooftop solar installations in the UK.
Arthur Kay
Founder of bio-bean
Arthur Kay is an award-winning designer and entrepreneur, the Co-Founder and CEO of bio-bean, an award-winning green energy company that recycles waste coffee grounds into advanced biofuels. Arthur came up with the idea for bio-bean whilst studying architecture at The Bartlett, UCL, and in two years has raised several million in financing, built the world’s first coffee waste recycling factory and a team of twenty. He currently holds positions on a number of boards associated with social enterprise and green entrepreneurship and is a Fellow of WIRED, the RSA and IoD. In 2013, Shell named him ‘the UK’s most Innovative Entrepreneur,’ he was appointed as a ‘London Leader’ by Mayor Boris Johnson, in 2014 he became one of NESTA’s ‘New Radicals’ and was named ’25 under 25 most influential Londoners’ by the Evening Standard. He was named the youngest ever Guardian Sustainable Business Leader of the Year in 2015.
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About bio-bean, Skyroom, UCL, United Nations Global Compact: bio-bean is a U.K.-based green company that offers its users with processes of recycling and waste management solutions.
Riccardo Segat
Founder & CEO of Amplio Group
During his career, Riccardo has worked on a number of private equity deals across Europe, which required international complex financial structuring. He was partner of AMP Private Capital a large international insurance company managing USD 2 billion of private capital in Europe, Asia and Australia. Prior to this, Riccardo was a Principal at Compass Partners, a USD 1 billion LBO fund focused on acquisition of non-core assets from large international corporations. Riccardo started his career in the Investment Banking group of Merrill Lynch in London and the Equity Capital Group at GE Capital.
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About Amplio Group, Envirogen Group, ReGen Future Planet: Amplio Group invests in renewable energy, alternative fuels, filtrations, recycling, environmental services and specialty care enterprises.
Laurence Kemball-Cook
CEO and Founder of Pavegen
Laurence is CEO and Founder of Pavegen Systems – a clean-technology company that generate electricity from footsteps. Winner of over 20 awards, including International Businessman of the Year at the PEA Awards 2013, Laurence is a renowned thought leader and worldwide speaker on entrepreneurship and innovation. He is acclaimed by The Guardian for “shifting perceptions of renewable energy.” Having spoken at more TED talks than any other technology company, Laurence’s TEDxBerlin presentation was featured among TED’s top talks on envisioning cities of the future and changing attitudes to fossil fuels. Clients include Google, Cisco, Nike, Adidas and the Federal US government and technology has been adopted in over 200 sites around the globe.
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About Pavegen: Pavegen is the global leader in harvesting energy and data from footfall.
Alexei Levene
Co-Founder of Desolenator
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About Desolenator, Gooseberry: An evolution in water purification, powered by the photons of the sun.
Jacopo Visetti
Co-Founder of Efforce
Jacopo is a pioneer in energy efficiency markets. After years of experience as a quantitative analyst, he founded AitherCO2, a leading company in the energy efficiency market. He is a visiting professor in several universities worldwide, regularly participates as a speaker at energy-saving events and has consulted on environmental market mechanisms to Fortune 500 Companies and to the California State Senate. Jacopo graduated in Finance from the Cattolica University of Milan and in Macroeconomics from Harvard University. He is Project Lead and Co-founder with Steve Wozniak of Efforce, the first blockchain-based energy-saving platform.
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About Efforce: Efforce is to be recognized as the first and main platform in the world for tokenized energy Savings.
John Durham
Co-Founder and Chairman of Moltex Energy
An active philanthropic environmentalist, John has been focused on innovative ways of influencing UK policy to tackle climate change since his retirement from the software industry in 2005. He co-founded the Weinberg Foundation with Bryony Worthington and through the Foundation met Ian Scott. He saw the enormous potential of the Stable Salt Reactor and formed a partnership with Ian, Moltex Energy LLP, to help bring this potentially world saving technology off paper and into reality.
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About Moltex Energy: Moltex Energy is developing a next generation nuclear reactor that can produce clean electricity
Kayleigh Bottomley
VP And Founder of Storm4
Kayleigh Bottomley is the Founder and VP at Storm4.
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About Storm4: Storm4 is a specialist GreenTech recruitment marketplace, connecting organizations with the senior talent to drive their mission.
Kevin Lind
Co-Founder and CTO of Perceptual Robotics
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About Perceptual Robotics: Perceptual Robotics is creating intelligent automation to make wind turbine and other infrastructure inspection simple and fast
Yohei Kiguchi
Co-Founder & CEO of Enechange
Graduated from the University of Tokyo and Oxford graduate school. Joined Milog in 2009. He participated as a co-founder. Joined Cambridge Energy Data Lab in 2013. Jointly joined as a co-founder and data scientist. Joined ENECHANGE in 2015. He participated as a co-founder. Joined SMAP Energy in 2016. He participated as a co-founder. Was elected in 2017 Forbes Europe as 30 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 (“FORBES 30 UNDER 30 EUROPE”).
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About Cambridge Energy Data Lab, Enechange, SMAP Energy: ENECHANGE is the technology-focused multi-national energy ventures.
Laurent Van Houcke
Co-Founder & Chief Operations Officer of BBOXX
Laurent is a graduate from Imperial College London where he obtained a first class honours (M.Eng) degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering. He was part of a team of students that founded “e.quinox” in 2008 and co-founded BBOXX in 2010.Laurent is responsible for macromanaging BBOXX’s operations globally from shipping to the point of sales going through marketing and long term business development in our different markets. Laurent has professional experience in the Energy Distribution Sector with EDF Energy in London and the Energy Consultancy Sector with Norman Disney & young. Laurent travels across our different markets to support BBOXX’s local partners from a technical, market and business development points of view.
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About BBOXX: BBOXX designs, manufactures, and distributes plug and play solar systems.
Christopher Baker-Brian
Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer & Chief Technology Innovation Officer of BBOXX
Christopher is a graduate of Imperial College London, where he obtained a first class honours (M.Eng) degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering. He was part of a team of students that founded “e.quinox” in 2008 and co-founded BBOXX in 2010. Christopher is responsible for product development, supply chain and BBOXX’s manufacturing partnerships. In addition, Christopher has extensive technical experience in the petro-chemicals (Shell) and aerospace (Rolls-Royce) industries. He is a full member of the IEEE and IET (Institute of Engineering and Technology) and currently serves as a general member of the 2011-2014 IEEE Ad-Hoc Committee on Humanitarian Activities.
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About BBOXX: BBOXX designs, manufactures, and distributes plug and play solar systems.
Ron Kastner
Founder / CEO of Future Spectrum
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About Future Spectrum: Future Spectrum is an independent wind energy developer involved in creating environmentally-sensitive wind farms.
Alessia Affinita
Founder & Creative Director of Idea 188
Alessia has been passionately working in the advertising ir1JUSUV since 1996. Born copywriter and grown up as art director. she worked in well-known creative agencies in Italy and the UK for over 10 years. before becoming a professional freelancer. She won the Design S Art Directors Advertising Workshop in 2004. Alessia founded Ideai88 in 2008 and is enthusiastically leading the team. ty •
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About Idea 188, it’s campus: Idea 188 is driven by experienced creative freelancers. carefully selected across the world.
Tom Mason
Co-Founder and CEO of Bramble Energy
Tom has led the engineering and manufacturing development of the PCBFC since 2013. He was involved in the development of the PCBFC whilst working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at UCL. With initial proof of concept shown, Tom was appointed as the technical lead of an InnovateUK funded manufacturing project (101979). As a co-founder of Bramble Energy Tom joined the company as a director and Chief Technology Officer when the company spun-out of the universities in late 2016 before moving to the role of CEO in September 2017. With close to 10 years of electrochemistry experience, Tom is the foremost authority on all things PCBFC. Tom’s appointment to the role of CEO brings a fresh approach to leading the Bramble Energy team.
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About Bramble Energy: Bramble Energy is an innovator energy technology company that designs and manufactures high-performance, low-cost, and fuel cell stack
George Fowkes
Co-Founder and Director of BasePower
George Fowkes is co-founder and director of BasePower, an award-winning Combined Heat and Power (CHP) developer to industrial sectors such as automotive and plastics, food manufacturing and pharmaceutical. Tailoring world-class technology and service to the specific needs of each customer, its projects create significant cost savings and carbon reductions for high-energy users at no capital expenditure or operational risk. George’s career has spanned the development of clean power, water and waste technologies in the UK and Europe. Prior to founding Basepower he was Head of Business Development at biogas developer, Tamar Energy, where he led the team overseeing five projects into construction and fifteen into development.
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About BasePower: BasePower designs, develops and finances CHP systems for intensive energy users, delivering energy security & savings.
Julian Hammond
Co-Founder/Chairman of Zamare Minerals
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About Zamare Minerals: Zamare discovers, acquires, and explores mineral resources, such as copper and cobalt, that are needed in renewable energy industries.
Peter Fraenkel
Director & Co-Founder of Gravitricity
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About Gravitricity: Gravitricity develops a novel storage technology which offers some of the best characteristics of lithium batteries and pumped storage.
Stephen Pomeroy
Chief Executive & Founder of HardHat
cStephen is a high-level strategist and communications expert in business and media communications, with over 20 years’ experience in devising and implementing communications strategies in both the private and public sectors. He has provided advice, has managed and been instrumental in countless campaign programmes for international, national and regional clients.
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About HardHat: HardHat is a specialist communications consultancy for the property, development, energy and infrastructure sectors.
Julian Sproule
Co-Founder of Hydraredox
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About Hydraredox: Hydraredox develops and manufacturers electrochemical energy storage based on proprietary vanadium redox technology.
Molly Webb
Founder of Energy Unlocked
Molly Webb is a Founder at Energy Unlocked.
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About Energy Unlocked, The Climate Group: Energy Unlocked is accelerating energy system and market innovation, not specific technologies.
