Cleantech Insights

Virtual Reality Meets Industrial Innovation: How Technology Can Aid Creativity

Louis Brasington
Posted on by Louis Brasington
Entertainment has been one of the drivers of Virtual Reality (VR) systems with popular offerings from Oculus, HTV Vive and Sony’s PlayStation VR system. Commercial applications are taking the next step. Mixed Reality (XR), overlaying graphics on top of the real world, is  led by companies like Magic Leap and Microsoft’s HoloLens. As an enabling technology, VR/XR has the potential to touch many facets of the industries we cover, including industrial design, data modeling and visualization. To date, problems with... Read More »

Data Abundance – Opportunities in Planet Management

Josh Gilbert
Posted on by Josh Gilbert
Author’s note: In January 2019, I will be moderating a panel on the topic of space-based data utilization at the Cleantech Forum San Francisco. In this blog, we look at market dynamics in this segment and highlight some of the innovators who will be joining us in January to discuss these topics in more detail. I hope you will be joining us too! Modern satellites and sensors are capturing huge amounts of data – around 2.5 billion gigabytes per day.... Read More »

Fixing Food Waste with Packaging Innovation

Chris Sworder
Posted on by Chris Sworder
Only two-thirds of food grown makes it to the consumer, at which point up to half of what’s left goes to waste. Innovation in food packaging is an effective way to tackle food waste, as extending shelf life of a product reduces waste throughout the supply chain. We spoke to two innovative companies to understand more about the market: Apeel Sciences and Food Freshness Technology. We discovered that there are three significant drivers for innovation in packaging. The first is reducing... Read More »

Portfolio Management of Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Assets – From underperformance to maximum value

Rob Andrews
Posted on by Rob Andrews
Like all stakeholders in large-scale industries, the actors within the solar market are susceptible to operation and maintenance costs that result from system underperformance, downtime or asset degradation. When a solar asset operates suboptimally, it can have repercussions from both cost and energy yield standpoints. Across many of the industries we cover, we see more innovators trying to capture the true potential of assets through new enabling technologies that address asset underperformance. One of these players within our network is... Read More »

Blockchain in Energy & Mobility: A report from the scale-up frontlines

Jules Besnainou
Posted on by Jules Besnainou
Last month, we held our second executive summit on blockchain in New York. Like last year, leading corporate executives gathered to meet some of the most promising innovators in the space. But the state of play has changed radically over the year, and so has the mood. Last November was full of hype, in the middle of the peak ICO wave. 2018 had a crisp “rubber hits the road” flavor. This was echoed in the rich content planned for the... Read More »

Battery Technology Show Recap: Emerging Battery Technology

Louis Brasington
Posted on by Louis Brasington
Contributions from: Pirmin Ulmann, co-founder and CEO at b-science.net Last month, I was fortunate enough moderate a session at the Battery Technology Show in London. Here are takeaways from that session as well as some additional insight from our own research. Delegates from across the battery industrial supply chain participated in discussions around the technologies and business model innovations that could disrupt their markets in the next few years. Speakers included topic experts like Billy Wu, a senior lecturer at... Read More »

What’s New at the Big 3? A Look at the Innovation of Bayer-Monsanto, Corteva, and Syngenta-ChemChina

Chris Sworder
Posted on by Chris Sworder
We have been speaking to innovation teams from the Big 3 players in plant science, Bayer-Monsanto, Corteva (DowDupont's agricultural business), and Syngenta-ChemChina, to gain insight into their approaches to engaging innovation, how this is changing with the mergers, and where else in the ecosystem they scan for agtech inspiration. Bayer-Monsanto Bayer Growth Ventures will incorporate approaches from both organizations' previous efforts to expand into new areas. Bayer previously focused on collaborations and partnerships, exemplified best by Joyn Bioworks, a joint venture between Bayer and Ginkgo Bioworks. Monsanto has a traditional... Read More »

Building The Pipeline: Corporate Engagement with Industrial Water Innovation

Josh Gilbert
Posted on by Josh Gilbert
Earth may be the blue planet, but both growing population and climate change are creating freshwater scarcity in many geographies. Industrial activities come second only to agriculture in the use of water resources, responsible for 16% of global freshwater withdrawals. Industrial wastewater volumes are predicted to double by 2025, and there is increasingly strict regulation regarding treatment and reuse. This should create incentives for technologies and services, but changes to create or capture this value have been slow. The expertise... Read More »

Driving to the Future: How Autonomous Vehicles are Changing the Automotive Landscape

Leo Zhang
Posted on by Leo Zhang
Safety first. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 94% of US traffic accidents are caused by human errors. Removing the human in human error will go a long way toward eliminating traffic accidents. The challenge: moving from driver assistance to full automation will take time, investment, and a lot of testing. Getting there will be a combination of hardware sensors and software algorithms to process the data and make decisions, hopefully better and faster than humans and with... Read More »

Echoes From the Past: Companies and Themes to Pay Attention to Beyond the APAC 25

Richard Youngman
Posted on by Richard Youngman
Maybe you have been following us closely enough to notice that we have been making a stronger push into the B2B future of industrial innovation ecosystem in Asia over the last year? This initial push will culminate with AsiaConnect week, in which we will host our 1st Cleantech Forum Asia in Singapore on November 13-14, 2018, followed by our invite only Next-Gen Energy & Cross-Border Innovation Summit in Nanjing, China on November 15-16, 2018. Maybe you noticed that, two weeks ago,... Read More »