Staying cool: Emissiv wins Greenhouse Demo Day with paint that cools buildings by emitting heat into outer space

Startup pioneering radiative cooling coatings and geospatial software wins top prize at Undaunted’s Greenhouse Demo Day.

Year-round cooling is essential for day-to-day operations across much of the world’s core infrastructure, including supermarkets, hospitals, and data centres. Climate change means temperatures are rising, and the cost of cooling, plus the risks associated with downtime, are set to double by 2050, which poses a big challenge for asset operators.

"Air conditioning is terribly inefficient at higher temperatures, and it paradoxically heats up the planet," said Nikhil Dawda, Co-founder of Emissiv. "If we don’t change our cooling behaviour, we’re set to release another Gigatonne of carbon dioxide equivalent into our atmosphere, so we need to rethink how we stay cool."

The best things about The Greenhouse have been the founder community, the DeepTech network support system, the one-to-one mentoring and upskilling, and Imperial's high-tech lab spaces. Nikhil Dawda Co-founder, Emissiv

Emissiv’s solution is an exterior paint that cools buildings down by harnessing the physics of solar reflection and radiative cooling. Sandra Go, Co-founder of Emissiv, explains: "our paint reflects over 95% of incoming sunlight, and at the same time, emits infra-red heat within a specific wavelength that passes through the Earth’s atmosphere into outer space."

Sandra and Nikhil met as students at Imperial, on the MSc Cleantech Innovation and MSc Sustainable Energy Futures respectively, and Emissiv has had an impressive evolution from student idea into a pre-seed startup in just 18 months. The team is currently based within WestTech London at Royce at Imperial. Its paint is market-ready and currently being piloted at the Earl’s Court Development Company in London.

"On our first pilot we’ve shown over 30 degrees roof temperature reduction, predicted 20% in cooling energy savings and enabled 24/7 cooling," continued Sandra "We're excited to collect more data this summer, from both the roof and inside the buildings we pilot on, to validate our models and technology further".

"The best things about The Greenhouse have been the founder community, the DeepTech network support system, the one-to-one mentoring and upskilling, and Imperial's high-tech lab spaces," says Nikhil. "These aspects of the programme have been instrumental in allowing us to keep agile moving forward, giving us the tools to validate and test technology and commercial propositions and use this insight to build better technology and products." Watch Emissiv's pitch again here.

Prototyping at the speed of imagination

Demo Day brings together Imperial’s climate innovation community to celebrate Undaunted’s latest cohort of talented early-stage founders, who take to the historic Royal Institution stage and pitch to investors as they graduate from The Greenhouse accelerator.

We feel really grateful to be building a startup here in the UK where we stand on the shoulders of some amazing scientists and investments in engineering biology. Zoe Woods Co-founder, Change Bio

Change Bio, a startup getting innovative proteins to market faster, took home the second prize. "Imagination is not the bottleneck here, manufacturing is," said its Co-founder, Zoe Woods.

"We’ve talked to designers with blueprints for proteins that can break down plastic, proteins that can do chemistries at room temperature, proteins that can form ice crystals in clouds and ward off drought, using biology to solve really important problems," she said.

"But they’re frustrated, because in the process of going from an amazing new design to a testable protein they get stuck. There's no infrastructure to prototype and rapidly test these proteins in application," she continued. "At Change Bio, we’re building a manufacturing partner that can prototype at the speed of imagination."

Zoe also emphaised how unique the opportunity to pitch at The Royal Institution is: "The Ri is just so special. Ten elements were discovered there - how cool is that! We feel really grateful to be building a startup here in the UK where we stand on the shoulders of some amazing scientists and investments in engineering biology. Being in The Ri felt like a testament to that." Watch Change Bio's pitch again here.

Third prize was awarded to Remedium, a startup developing the LimeLoop Heat Battery, which provides low-cost industrial heat while capturing CO₂ from industrial flue gas as a byproduct of the process, enabling industrial decarbonisation without financial sacrifice.

"What we're developing is highly complex, and I think receiving the award demonstrates that we've been able to communicate the solution in a way that audiences can understand, which is another major value of The Greenhouse," said Omid Saghafifar, Co-founder of Remedium.

As well as support with honing the pitch and telling a good story, The Greenhouse was also valuable because it gave Omid and his team access to a lab: "I cannot emphasise enough how valuable that was. We had won an Innovate UK grant, and having access to the lab helped us successfully deliver our part of the project." Watch Remedium's pitch again here.

Widening the scope of who gets to build the future

Stuart Tait, Head of Commercial Banking at HSBC UK, delivered a keynote address on the day, highlighting two exciting announcements. Not only has HSBC UK renewed its funding for The Greenhouse, supporting a further four cohorts – 80 startups over the next two years – it’s also launched a new Opening Opportunities Fund.

58% of recent Greenhouse applicants stated that financial pressures prevented full-time commitment to their startup. The Opening Opportunities Fund will enable founders who face financial barriers to commit to the programme full-time.

“We’re pleased to support Undaunted’s latest Greenhouse cohort and widen access through the Opening Opportunities Fund,” said Stuart. “By bringing together talented early-stage entrepreneurs, the programme helps founders test, learn and improve their ideas faster. At HSBC UK, we’re proud to support businesses as they scale solutions and turn innovative ideas into real economic progress.”

The Greenhouse: a proven model

Based at the Imperial Incubator in WestTech London, The Greenhouse supports startups to iterate faster, win pilots, and raise their first major funding round. The programme, which is sector-agnostic, accepts startups and spinouts working across myriad industries, providing founders with up to £20k equity-free grant funding and access to Imperial’s world-class facilities. Spaces such as Imperial’s Advanced Hackspace and Royce at Imperial also provide eligible greenhouse startups opportunities to use their facilities.

Demo Day marks the end of Cohort 8’s time on The Greenhouse: in reality it’s the beginning of a long-term relationship as these founders now join Undaunted’s thriving alumni network.

Since 2012 Undaunted alumni have raised more than $1.3 billion investment. Earlier this year, Shellworks announced a $15m Series A raise to scale its sustainable plastic alternative Vivomer; Vuala secured €1.8m Pre-Seed funding to turn food waste into energy assets; and Nanomox raised £2.4m Seed investment to scale sustainable ionic liquid platform for advanced materials and critical minerals. Notpla’s award-winning sustainable packaging also returned to its roots at Imperial to help reduce single-use plastic across our catering operations, and Notpla and Vuala recently announced a collaboration!

NEW: Sustainable Food Accelerator

Ventures will leave [the Sustainable Food Accelerator] with concrete outcomes: validated technology, commercial traction, and a corporate partner who has committed a pilot budget to work with them. Julia Espeso Bischofberger Venture Building and Commercialisation at Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein

Undaunted’s alumni companies have a survival rate of 88%, compared to the industry average of 10%. The Greenhouse accelerator model has proved so successful that Undaunted is launching new sector-specific programmes this year, beginning with the new Sustainable Food Accelerator, led by the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, the Microbial Food Hub, and Undaunted. 

Julia Espeso Bischofberger, Venture Building and Commercialisation at the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, made the announcement on Demo Day: “Our commitment is to generate impact, and impact only happens when technologies reach the market,” she said. “The Sustainable Food Accelerator is built around a simple premise: solving real market needs with technologies that are validated, commercially relevant, and ready for adoption.”

“Through this partnership with Undaunted, we will help companies generate the data that makes corporates confident to pilot, and investors confident to back. By bringing together partners from across the food, ingredient, and VC space, we are creating the conditions for ventures to leave with something concrete: validated technology, commercial evidence, and a corporate partner who has committed a budget to work with them,” she continued.

Find your place in the ecosystem

Investors

Are you an investor or innovation supporter with expertise, networks or resources that could help our founders thrive? If you’d like an introduction to one or more of our Cohort 8 startups, please contact us via this form.

Founders

Applications for Undaunted’s accelerators open every six months. Register interest to get notified when we open applications for the next cohort.

Corporate Partners

If you’d like to discuss potential opportunities to set up a sector-specific accelerator using The Greenhouse model, get in touch with us.

Watch again

Missed Demo Day? Fret not, take a whistlestop tour through the whole event via our highlights reel below, or watch each of Cohort 8's impressive pitches again here.

About Undaunted

Undaunted is a hub for the UK’s climate innovation community, creating new routes into green entrepreneurship and supporting the acceleration of startups tackling climate change. It is a partnership between The Royal Institution and the Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. 

The Greenhouse Cohort 8 was supported by HSBC UK, the Inflexion Foundation and CO2RE, the UK’s national research hub on Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR).